Marriage and family therapy
A Comprehensive Guide to the Best Master's and Doctoral MFT Programs
Every COAMFTE-accredited program has to disclose how many of its students graduated, found work and reached licensure. Those tables sit on 127 separate university websites. This site puts them in one place.
127
accredited programs
35
states with a program
$66,940
median pay, May 2025
What to weigh when choosing an MFT program
Choosing an MFT program comes down to three questions, and only one of them is the ranking.
01
Accreditation
COAMFTE accredits at three levels: 98 master's, 27 doctoral, 2 post-degree. There is no accredited bachelor's degree in this field at all.
See every state ranking02
What it publishes
Every accredited program must disclose its graduation, job placement and licensure rates by cohort. 88 of 127 publish a table, and 78 publish enough of one to be scored.
How the scoring works03
Where you can study
15 states have no accredited program at all, and 29 programs can be studied at a distance. Every one of those still requires in-person clinical hours.
Online and hybrid programsRankings: the best MFT programs by published outcome
The best MFT programs here are the ones with the strongest published record, scored on graduation rate 45%, job placement rate 35%, licensure rate 20%.
Master's · National
Best master's MFT programs
Every accredited delivery mode at the level that qualifies you to practice.
59 scored of 98 accredited
Master's · Online and hybrid
Best online master's MFT programs
The subset you can study without relocating, with the campus comparison stated.
10 scored of 22 accredited
Doctoral · National
Best doctoral MFT programs
PhD, DMFT and PsyD. A small field, so this is all of them rather than a top 25.
18 scored of 27 accredited
Doctoral · Online and hybrid
Best online doctoral MFT programs
The whole population, which is small enough to name in a sentence.
3 scored of 5 accredited
Across the scored programs the median cohort finishes at 80.6% and reaches licensure at 92%. Every card marks both.
How accredited MFT programs are delivered
Delivery decides whether a program is open to you at all. Most are still campus-based.
No accredited program is fully remote. Licensure needs supervised face-to-face hours, so online means online coursework with a practicum near where you live.
Accredited MFT programs in your state
State pages rank every accredited program in the state, including the ones that publish nothing, and pair them with what the license pays there.
Alabama
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Florida
Georgia
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maryland
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New York
North Carolina
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Washington
Wisconsin
Accredited MFT programs by city
A city gets its own page where it can say something the state page cannot: more than one accredited program, or a wage figure for its own metropolitan area rather than the state's. 48 of them qualify, covering 87 of the 127 accredited programs.
Programs in the towns that do not appear here are on their state's ranking, which covers every accredited program wherever it sits.
What marriage and family therapists earn
Marriage and family therapists earn a median of $66,940, on a range from $44,650 to $123,730. The state and the setting decide most of where you land in it.
Marriage and Family Therapist
The licensed profession itself: relational and systemic treatment of couples, families and individuals, under an LMFT.
Couples Therapist
MFT practice concentrated on romantic partnerships, usually with both partners in the room and a named model behind the work.
Family Therapist
Systemic work with families and children, heavily represented in agency, school and child-welfare settings.
Mental Health Counselor
The adjacent license most MFT graduates work alongside, and the occupation many are counted under before they are fully licensed.
Behavioral Health Clinician
Therapy delivered inside a medical system: integrated primary care, hospitals and community health centers.
Clinical Supervisor
The post-licensure role that trains the next cohort, and the one an AAMFT Approved Supervisor designation exists for.
The same license covers work that goes by several names. Substance abuse, behavioral disorder and mental health counselors, a heavily overlapping occupation, sit at a median of $59,350.
How an MFT license actually works
An MFT license comes from a state board rather than from the accreditor, and the degree is one step of four.
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1
An accredited degree
A master's from one of the 98 accredited programs, usually two to three years.
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2
Supervised hours
Clinical practice after graduation, counted in hours and set by the state board rather than the accreditor.
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3
The national exam
A passing score on the national marriage and family therapy examination.
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4
The license
Granted by your state board. Every state sets its own rules, so confirm them before you enroll.
A program's licensure rate is the most useful number it publishes, because it reports the share of graduates who got through all four steps. Roughly a quarter of accredited programs do not publish it.
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