Counselor education program faculties evaluate applicants to masters and doctoral level programs using criteria that the faculties hope will predict the applicant's potential for academic success and then effectiveness as a counselor, counselor educator, or researcher. Choosing admission criteria to assess this level of potential in an applicant is quite a task. Those counselor education programs that are accredited by the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) have the benefit of the admission guidelines provided by CACREP standards for accreditation. These guidelines give only basic, general direction to programs regarding their admission criteria but each individual program determines their own criteria for admission. The purpose of this study was to discover any recognizable trends in admission policy criteria, in terms of specific criteria used to evaluate and select students from the applicant pool, for CACREP accredited masters and doctoral programs. This study also sought to discover any recognizable trends in admission policy criteria, in terms of a specific number of criteria used to evaluate and select students for CACREP accredited master and doctoral counselor education programs. This qualitative study investigated 178 masters level CACREP accredited counselor education programs and 45 doctoral CACREP accredited counselor education programs. …