Outcomes & Admissions Data | Palo Alto University

Doctoral Programs

Psychology

The PhD in Clinical Psychology and the PAU–Stanford PsyD Consortium publish Student Admissions, Outcomes and Other Data, as required by American Psychological Association (APA) accreditation. The tables below reproduce the APA 2025 data editions for both programs; each disclosure also carries admissions and attrition tables not repeated here. Costs for every program are below.

Internship placement

Students who applied for internship over the ten years to 2024–25, including those who withdrew during the application process, and the share placed. Source: the programs’ 2025 disclosures, PhD and PsyD consortium.
Program	Applied	Placed at an APA or CPA accredited site	Placed at any internship
PhD in Clinical Psychology	754	70293%	72196%
PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium	314	30998%	31099%

Licensure

Graduates whose doctorate was conferred between two and ten years before the reporting date, and the number who have since become licensed psychologists. Licensure requires supervised postdoctoral hours and a national examination, so recent graduates are outside the window by design. Source: the programs’ 2025 disclosures, PhD and PsyD consortium.
Program	Window	Graduates	Licensed	Rate
PhD in Clinical Psychology	2015–2023	344	294	85%
PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium	2015–2025	251	240	96%

Time to completion

All students entering the program, for degrees conferred in the ten years to 2024–25. Mean and median are years to degree. The five columns from under 5 to over 7 are the disclosure’s own time-to-degree bands, in years, and sum to the degrees conferred. Source: the programs’ 2025 disclosures, PhD and PsyD consortium.
Program	Degrees	Mean	Median	Under 5	5	6	7	Over 7
PhD in Clinical Psychology	619	5.91	5.87	112%	19732%	26142%	9415%	569%
PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium	303	5.24	4.95	00%	24481%	4214%	72%	103%

Counselor Education and Supervision

The PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision admitted its first students in 2024 and no cohort has yet reached graduation, so it has no outcomes to report. There is no specialty accreditation that sets an outcome disclosure for the program. Its costs are listed below.

Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling

The Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling program reports graduation, licensure examination and employment outcomes each year, as its CACREP accreditation requires. Figures below are from the program’s 2024–25 report.

Graduation and employment

On-time completion is measured against an expected enrollment period of two and a half years. Employment comes from two separate instruments. The first is a future plans survey completed by students on graduation, so it records how many had already secured a post by that date rather than how many are employed; it covers all graduating counseling students, not only this program. The second is the annual alumni survey, a different population at a later career stage.
Measure	Value	Basis
Graduates, 2024–25	163	—
On-time completion rate	93.2%	2.5 years
Employment secured by graduation	62%	81 of 131 surveyed
Alumni employed, full or part time	73%	34 respondents
Alumni pursuing further education	2.4%	34 respondents

Licensure examinations

California Board of Behavioral Sciences examinations taken by program graduates. Licensure as a professional clinical counselor and as a marriage and family therapist each require two examinations. The California column is every candidate who sat that examination in the state over the same calendar year, on the same all-takers basis as the program figure beside it. The two marriage and family therapy rows are reported over a period that spans two calendar years, and the board publishes calendar years only, so no comparison is shown for them.
Examination	Period	Passed	California	First-time
California Law and Ethics (LPCC)	Jan–Dec 2024	48 of 5686%	66%	44 of 5088%
National Clinical Mental Health Counseling (NCMHCE)	Jan–Dec 2024	14 of 1878%	69%	13 of 1681%
California Law and Ethics (LMFT)	Jan 2024–Jun 2025	102 of 12284%	—	86 of 10185%
LMFT Clinical	Jan 2024–Jun 2025	86 of 10185%	—	78 of 8394%

Sources: M.A. in Clinical Mental Health Counseling Program Outcomes, 2024–25, and the California Board of Behavioral Sciences examination statistics for the statewide figures. Five students sat the National Counselor Examination in spring 2025 and all passed.

Program Costs

Tuition and fees for students entering in 2026–27. Programs are billed differently, so they are stated differently: the doctorates charge a flat rate per year, and everything else is billed by the unit against a published degree plan, where the whole program is the meaningful figure. The basis column says which is which. The university catalog is the governing statement of tuition and fees.

For the psychology doctorates a year is the fall, winter and spring quarters at the standard-program rate; the dissertation and internship years that follow are billed at their own lower rates. Program totals assume the published cohort degree plan and will vary with transfer credit and course load; social work students admitted with advanced standing complete 56 units rather than 88. Distance-learning students in the counseling program pay a separate residency fee.
Program	Level	Tuition and fees	Basis
PhD in Clinical Psychology	Doctoral	$60,240	Per year, flat rate, years 1 to 3
PAU-Stanford PsyD Consortium	Doctoral	$71,274	Per year, flat rate, years 1 to 3
PhD in Counselor Education and Supervision	Doctoral	$27,534	Per year, flat rate
Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling	Master’s	$67,757	Whole program, 94.5 units at $717
Master of Social Work	Master’s	$63,096	Whole program, 88 units at $717
Master of Science in Psychology	Master’s	$39,816	Whole program, 36 units at $1,106
Bachelor of Science in Psychology and in Business Psychology	Undergraduate	$51,360	Whole program, 96 units at $535

Source: the 2026–27 tuition and fees schedule in the university catalog, which governs. It sets out what this table does not: the year-by-year degree plans, installment billing, the separate dissertation and internship year rates, post-defense registration, and the terms that apply to counselor education and supervision doctoral students.

Undergraduate Programs

The WSCUC-accredited Bachelor of Science in Psychology and Bachelor of Science in Business Psychology are degree-completion programs, enrolling students who have already begun their studies elsewhere. There is no specialty accreditation that sets an outcome disclosure for the programs; the federal graduation-rate survey counts only students who start their degree at this university, so PAU’s bachelor’s students fall outside the cohort it measures. Federal figures that do count transfer entrants are published through College Navigator.

Doctoral Licensing Examinations

The California Board of Psychology publishes examination results by school each year. These count candidates who sat in California and are not reported by program.

Palo Alto University candidates, calendar year 2025. Candidates recorded under the university’s former name, Pacific Graduate School of Psychology, are reported separately by the Board and are not included here.
Examination	Passed	First-time
Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology (EPPP)	46 of 5485%	40 of 4785%
California Psychology Law and Ethics Examination	54 of 5992%	45 of 5582%

Source: California Department of Consumer Affairs, Board of Psychology, Exam Results by School, 2025.

Outcomes and Data