The National Marriage and Family Therapy Examination is administered by AMFTRB and used by nearly every state. A passing score generally transfers, so endorsement applicants rarely retake it. Scores are reported directly from AMFTRB to the receiving board.
Applicants bracing for the worst often assume that moving states means sitting the national examination again. It is one of the few pieces of genuinely good news in this process.
Why the score travels
The National Marriage and Family Therapy Examination is administered by the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards, which is a body of the state boards themselves rather than a private testing company selling to them.
Because nearly every state uses the same instrument, a passing score means the same thing everywhere. There is no equivalence analysis to perform and no state-specific version to sit. This is exactly the kind of shared standard that a compact would have been built around, and in a limited way the profession already has it.
Requesting a transfer
The mechanics resemble license verification. You request a score transfer from AMFTRB, pay a fee, and the score is reported directly to the receiving board rather than to you. A copy in your own files does not satisfy the requirement.
Request it early, alongside your license verification, since it is another item that leaves your hands and comes back on somebody else's schedule.
The exceptions worth checking
A few situations complicate this. If you were licensed before your state adopted the national examination, you may hold a license issued on a state-specific test instead, and a new state may then require the national exam. This affects therapists licensed a long time ago in a handful of states.
Some states also require a separate state law component, which is the jurisprudence exam and is a different thing entirely. It is not a retake of the national examination and it is not waived by having passed one.
Confirm both points with the receiving board at the outset. For the large majority of applicants the answer is simply that the score transfers and there is nothing to study.
What this reveals about the system
It is worth sitting with the contrast. The examination, which is the most rigorous single hurdle in the profession, transfers between states without argument. The graduate coursework, reviewed and accepted by a board once already, historically did not.
That inversion is not principled. It exists because AMFTRB built a shared instrument and a score reporting system, so boards had an easy way to rely on each other's work, while education review had no equivalent infrastructure and every board did it individually.
The Access MFTs model law is an attempt to extend the same logic to the rest of the file. If a passing score can be trusted across state lines, so can a license issued by a board that examined everything behind it.
Keeping your own records
Keep your score report and your candidate identification number with your license documents. Score transfers are straightforward when you can supply the identifiers, and considerably slower when AMFTRB has to locate a record from decades ago against a former name.
If your name has changed since you sat the examination, tell AMFTRB when you request the transfer rather than leaving the receiving board to reconcile two documents that do not match.
Common questions
- Will I have to retake the national exam?
- Almost never. States accept a passing score from any jurisdiction that used the same examination, and the score is reported directly by AMFTRB.
- How do I get my score sent to a new state?
- Request a score transfer through AMFTRB and pay its fee. The score goes board to board, like license verification, rather than through you.
- Does a very old passing score still count?
- Generally yes. Most states do not impose an expiry on a passing score where the license issued on it has been maintained continuously.
Need Help with Your Application?
We handle the MFT licensure process end-to-end — eligibility screening, documents, board follow-ups, and tracking.