How to Apply

Dear Prospective Applicant:

 The Psychology Department offers a Master of Science degree in psychology. This program is designed to prepare students for licensure in Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) in the State of California.

 The MFT license is administered in California by the Board of Behavioral Sciences (BBS). The BBS sets all the requirements for the coursework, degrees, and exams needed to become a licensed MFT in California. The BBS has evaluated our program at Cal Poly Pomona and determined that our graduates meet the requirements for licensure.

 This is a two-year, full-time graduate program. Students are expected to attend classes on a full-time basis; it is not recommended as a part-time program. Most classes are scheduled during the day, so part-time employment may be possible while enrolled in the program, but not full-time. It may happen that a student will need to withdraw from a semester due to an emergency or to severely cut down on his/her schedule due to an unforeseen circumstance. Should this occur, students will not be able to graduate until at least three years after entrance into the program because courses are only offered once per year.

Do I Qualify for the Program?

 To qualify for admission to our program, you must have:

• 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 ofCounseling, 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 at http://www.CalState.edu/Apply . 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.

• Other factors such as ethnic background, bilingual skills, and relevant professional and life experiences will also be considered. 

• Please note that we DO NOT require the GRE for admission.

Letters of Recommendation

 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, 2025

 Applicants who wish to be considered for Fall 2025 admission should have completed files by February 1, 2025. Please note that students from international universities must submit their application one month earlier, by January 15, 2025. Applications open on October 1, 2024.

If you want to check on the status of your application, go to: http://www.broncodirect.cpp.edu 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, 2025 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. 

Dr. Lori Barker, Director of Graduate Studies
labarker@cpp.edu

Phone: 909-869-3904
Office: Building 5, Room 110