I just passed the EPPP today on the first attempt, and although I’ve never posted on SDN, I wanted to share some of my experience because I discovered the EPPP-related threads here several days ago and found them very supportive as I was getting closer to exam day.
I’m a couple months into a postdoc, and probably would have waited until next year to take the EPPP were it not for concern that PA might adopt Part 2 in January (it now looks like the PA Board has no immediate plans to adopt Part 2, but back when I started my intensive studying, that wasn’t clear).
Some background: I attended a highly theoretical PhD program that emphasized phenomenology, existentialism, and qualitative research. It was APA accredited and definitely the right program to prepare me for the kind of work I want to do, but it did very little to transmit the kind of knowledge necessary to do well on the EPPP. As in, I learned a lot about Derrida and Lacan, but virtually nothing about physiology, major developmental models, CBT, conditioning, quantitative research design...my development class was called “Phenomenology of Human Development” and my emotion/motivation/behavior class consisted entirely of reading Sass’ “Madness and Modernism” and McGilchrist’s “The Master and His Emissary.” All this to say that when I began studying, I felt that I was starting from scratch. I was extremely overwhelmed by the sheer amount of material I had never learned before.
For that reason, I gave myself a full six months to study, starting during my internship. And I’m glad I did. I passed today by a wide margin, but would have been perfectly content with a 501. Did I end up overprepared? Yes. Is that a bad thing? Not for me — but no one else can tell you what kind of studying or what degree of preparation is best for you. I’ve heard/read many folks saying that they studied for a far shorter period of time and did well. That would not have been a good fit for me.
I decided early on I didn’t want to spend any money on preparation if at all possible. Someone at my internship site generously gave me his 2017 AATBS books for free, and I used a free flashcard app to create my own flashcards as I worked my way through every page of every book. Making my own flashcards felt like a lot of work, but it allowed me to digest the material better than if I had relied on pre-made cards. I reviewed my flashcards really frequently, using moments between therapy sessions, bus rides, and setting aside several hours on the weekend just to review flashcards. I also enlisted my husband — I gave him the login info to my flashcards app, and he texted me random cards three times a day for months! It was really helpful and made me feel less alone with my studying. My goal was to overlearn, and I eventually got to the point where remembering the bulk of the material in the books became automatic for me.
I started using free practice exams (lots of these are widely available online or through folks at your training site) only after getting more than halfway through learning the material (again, for me it wasn’t review, it was learning it for the first time — probably makes sense to start with practice exams earlier if you have a history with the material). The practice exams were wildly useful. Taking the exams was partly a chance to test my knowledge of the material, but primarily an opportunity to learn *how the test wanted me to think.* That’s such a crucial component of test-taking — getting into the minds of the test designers and understanding how they want you to think, especially for topics like ethics. Also, as others on this site have mentioned, there ended up being a lot of overlap between what questions I encountered on practice exams and what questions I encountered on the actual exam. Can’t emphasize enough how useful it is to take as many practice exams as possible.
Because my practice exams were free and came without branding, I don’t know which company’s tests I was using. I never scored above 75% on any of them. I found that worrying — until I discovered this site and realized that’s a common experience, even for people who are well-prepared. A couple days before my exam, I tried 225 retired EPPP questions (also available for free — just search for them) and got 90% correct. That calmed me way down going in.
The most important part of my preparation was this: understanding that my life would be a full and fun one, and that I would find my way through the world, whether or not I ever passed the EPPP. I think this exam is hogwash in a lot of ways, but I have no interest in going into that here. The most important thing I got from studying for it was a reminder of the deep necessity of perspective. No exam is worth your mental health or your sense of self. I lost my perspective at a few different points along the way, and had a couple impressive meltdowns, both from the senioritis of having completed a 6-year program and *still* feeling like I was in school, and from anxiety about the potential financial burden of not passing. But others who loved me were there along the way to remind me that my heart is too big to be reduced to worrying about an exam result, and too big even to be reduced to my career. It was my job to believe them, and to remember that that’s what I already knew to be true anyway. Most of the messages of support I got in the week before I took the exam weren’t about hoping I would pass — they were about hoping that no matter whether I passed or failed, I’d remember I was cared about. My best advice is to be radically gentle with yourself and to surround yourself with support. Make passing, if passing happens, the icing on the cake rather than the cake itself. If you can find your way into that headspace, you’ll owe yourself gratitude, whether exam day ends with laughter and relief or with tears and rebuilding.