Version 2.0
Ranking methodology
Every ranking on MFT Programs is built from three numbers that MFT programs are already required to publish about themselves. There is no editorial override, no pay-for-placement and no hidden adjustment, and there is no factor in the model that depends on our opinion of a program.
Why the MFT ranking model has three factors and not seven
The MFT ranking model has three factors because the field supplies three worth having. Most ranking models invent their factors because their field gives them nothing better. Marriage and family therapy does give them something better. The Commission on Accreditation for Marriage and Family Therapy Education requires every accredited program to publish a Graduate Achievement Data table showing, cohort by cohort, how many students it admitted, how many graduated within the length it advertises, how many found relevant work and how many reached licensure.
That is the outcome data a prospective student actually wants, disclosed by every program in the country in a comparable format. Adding invented factors on top of it would dilute evidence with judgment, so we did not.
The three factors
| Factor | Weight | What it measures |
|---|---|---|
| Graduation rate | 45% | The share of each cohort that finished within the length the program advertises. It carries the most weight because it is the figure that varies most between programs, and because a degree not finished is the most expensive outcome a student can have. |
| Job placement rate | 35% | The share of graduates working in a role that uses the training. Almost every program reports well here, so it separates the field less than graduation does, but a program that dips is telling you something real. |
| Licensure rate | 20% | The share of graduates who reached any level of MFT licensure. It is the outcome that decides whether a graduate can practice, and roughly a quarter of programs do not publish it. |
How each program's figures are averaged
Each program's rates are averaged across its completed cohorts since 2015 and weighted by how many students each cohort held. Weighting by headcount is the part that matters: without it a two-student cohort reporting 100% would outrank a thirty-student cohort reporting 92%, which would make the whole list a ranking of small programs.
Where a program publishes no licensure rate, the score is renormalized across the components it does publish. A missing figure is never counted as a zero, and it never earns a program credit either. 61 of 78 ranked programs publish one.
What a program must publish to be ranked
- At least 3 completed cohorts. A program needs a record, not a result. Two good years is a sample too small to separate a strong program from a lucky one.
- At least 12 students since 2015. Below roughly a dozen students the rates stop being evidence and start being arithmetic. One student either graduates or does not, and the program scores 100 or 0.
- Cohorts from 2015 onward only. Older cohorts describe a program that no longer exists in the same form. Faculty, curriculum and clinical placements all turn over.
Of the 127 accredited programs in the directory, 88 publish a usable table and 78 clear these thresholds. The rest are absent because of what they disclosed, not because of what we think of them. Some link a blank COAMFTE template where their own table should be, and a handful link a URL that no longer loads.
How are all the programs in a state scored?
All the programs in a state are scored on three components rather than one, because a state page has a different job from a national ranking. A national ranking answers “which of these has the best record”, so it can only contain programs that have one. A state page answers “these are your options, in order”, and leaving 49 of them off the end of the list unranked answered that badly.
- Published outcomes, 60 points. The same three measures and the same weights as the national ranking. Where a program has published only one or two completed cohorts, its figure is pulled toward the field median first, so a single flattering year does not read like a decade of them.
- Transparency, 25 points. Whether the disclosure COAMFTE requires is actually there and reachable at the address the accreditor lists. A program publishing a full table scores this in full; one whose link does not resolve scores almost none of it.
- Accreditation standing, 15 points. Whether the accreditation carries conditions, and how long the current term has left to run.
The decision worth arguing about is what happens when a program publishes no outcomes at all. Its 60 points go unearned, and they are not redistributed across the other two components. Redistributing is the right move inside the outcomes component, where a program publishing graduation and placement but not licensure is scored on what it published rather than penalized as though its licensure rate were zero. It is the wrong move here: sharing out the whole outcomes block would score a silent program on standing alone, and since nearly every accredited program is in good standing, silence would finish near the top. The site would be rewarding programs for telling you less.
So a program publishing nothing cannot pass 40 out of 100, and that ceiling is the point of it. It says the program has not shown its results. It does not say the results are bad, and no figure is estimated in their place. Publishing graduate achievement data is a condition of COAMFTE accreditation, which is what makes the absence something a program did rather than something we failed to find.
How ties are broken
Programs on the same score are ordered by how many students sit behind their numbers, then alphabetically. Both tiebreaks are deterministic, so the order never depends on the order the data happened to load in, and a rebuild cannot quietly reshuffle the list.
What the MFT ranking model deliberately excludes
- Cost is not scored. COAMFTE does not require programs to publish it in a comparable form, and tuition pages are not consistent enough between institutions to rank on without inventing a comparison.
- Reputation is not scored. There is no measurable input for it that is not a proxy for institutional wealth or age.
- Selectivity is not scored. A program that admits fewer students is not thereby better, and treating it as better rewards exclusion.
- A program that publishes no licensure rate is scored on the two components it does publish, and its card says so. It is not penalized for the gap and it is not credited for it either.
- Job placement barely separates the field. Almost every program reports near the ceiling, so it is included for completeness and weighted below graduation rate deliberately.
Where the numbers come from
- COAMFTE Directory of Accredited Programs, read 2026-08-21. Supplies which programs are accredited, at what level, in what delivery mode, and with what status.
- Each program's own Graduate Achievement Data table, linked from every card, read 2026-08-21. Supplies every rate and cohort size.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release, for all wage figures. Wages are context on the pages, never an input to the score.
85 programs currently carry a computed score. Model version 2.0, last changed 2026-08-21.