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Licensure · California
Every gate between a master’s degree and an LMFT license.
26 guides plus a directory of 78 California programs, priced and dated — 66 of them with a page of their own. The four requirements that close at different speeds, what the Board charges now that fees have halved, and which one is actually holding you up.
Becoming an LMFT in California is five requirements with no discretion in any of them: a qualifying degree, practicum before you graduate, 3,000 supervised hours over at least 104 weeks, supervision that meets the Board's form, and two exams. The 3,000 is rarely the requirement that decides your date. A caseload of adult individuals will close it and still leave you ineligible, because 500 of your 1,750 direct hours have to be couples, families or children. The calculators here project all four requirements from the week you actually work and name the one you are waiting on.
Money runs alongside all of it. Board fees for the whole route fell from $1,750 to $875 on 1 July 2026 and revert in 2030. An associate job offer is really two questions wearing one coat — what it pays now, and how fast it closes your hours — and offer letters only answer the first. What the site cannot settle: whether the Board will accept a particular supervisor's paperwork, or whether a specific degree qualifies. It gives you the code section to check, not the ruling.
92 pages, in 6 sections: The route, and what it costs · The exam, and the wait after it · Counting the hours, and the job that banks them · Where the degree comes from · The practicum, and the year before you register · Doors by stage. Every figure below is computed or cited, and links to the page that carries it.
Key insights
$70,304 salaried-exempt floor
Published pay scales for LA and the Bay Area, the wage floors an offer must clear, and the four numbers that decide it
What you should know about this figure
This figure comes from Nonprofit salary or private practice per session — which associate job is actually worth more?, on the Board's published fee schedule and the statute sections linked on the page. Your own number will differ — the page shows the working and, where there is a calculator, runs it on your figures.
$0 to file, 3 years to do it
The wage claim the Board cannot help with: how to file it, what it costs, and the five statutes that decide what it is worth
What you should know about this figure
This figure comes from My supervisor doesn’t pay me for notes or supervision — is there anything I can actually do?, on the Board's published fee schedule and the statute sections linked on the page. Your own number will differ — the page shows the working and, where there is a calculator, runs it on your figures.
$180,000, associate tier
Which settings can legally bill for a pre-licensed clinician, the $180,000 associate loan-repayment tier, and what a worse offer taken sooner is actually worth
What you should know about this figure
This figure comes from I have 547 hours and everyone wants someone almost done — how do I get hired?, on the Board's published fee schedule and the statute sections linked on the page. Your own number will differ — the page shows the working and, where there is a calculator, runs it on your figures.
