How to Apply

• A minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.2
• A bachelor's degree in psychology with at least 24 semester or 36 quarter units in psychology. Consideration will also be given to students from related majors who have completed the same number of psychology units (24 semester or 36 quarter). In either case, prospective applicants should have taken clinically relevant courses, such as Theories of Personality, Abnormal Psychology, Theories of Counseling, and Developmental Psychology
• Three letters of recommendation (at least two from professors who can assess your ability to perform successfully in graduate studies in psychology)
• A personal statement (2000 word maximum) which should include: 1) a brief personal history about factors that influenced you to pursue a career in marriage and family therapy, 2) the reasons why you want to pursue a career in marriage and family therapy, 3) short-term educational and career goals, and 4) long-term professional goals
• A completed online application. This online application will instruct you to upload the other application materials (e.g., personal statement, letters of recommendation, unofficial transcripts)
• An unofficial copy of all your transcripts
• One official copy of all your transcripts sent directly to the Admissions Office, including community college and graduate transcripts, if applicable.

You are required to submit 3 letters of recommendation. Two of those must come from professors. When you apply through the CalState.edu/Apply website, you will be sent a message asking you to provide the email addresses of the people writing your letters of recommendation. Your recommenders will be contacted and instructed on how to submit their letters online. The submit button will say “Add Recommendation” which really means for you to add the email address of your recommender. 

Application Deadline: February 1, 2026

Applicants who wish to be considered for Fall 2026 admission should have completed files by February 1, 2026. Please note that students from international universities must submit their application one month earlier, by January 15, 2026. Applications open on October 1, 2025. 

If you want to check on the status of your application, go to Broncodirect or call the Admissions Office at (909) 869-4555. The website will give you three types of information: 

• application is incomplete (requiring additional documentation); 

• complete application and waiting to be reviewed (your application is in queue for consideration); 

• graduate admissions review completed and forwarded to the department for final 

Because we receive many more applications than positions available, our review of applications will not begin until after the February 1, 2026 deadline. Therefore, even applications submitted months in advance of this deadline will not be reviewed until after this date. Review of applications is a lengthy process, so you may not hear anything about the status of you application until sometime in April. Applicants in whom we are interested will be invited to Interview Day. This is a day where we conduct both individual and group interviews and give applicants the opportunity to learn more about our program. After these interviews, we will make decisions about acceptance into our program. We accept a maximum of 16 students. Please note that we typically receive approximately 200 applications, so this is a competitive program.