I passed yesterday. I sometimes appreciated the insights from those who had met the EPPP and returned to tell of it, so I’m fixin to write yall a small novela about my encounter.
During the exam, I’d have guessed a 70% chance of a pass at any given time. I did not feel like I was cleanly failing as some have reported, but I also wasn’t entirely positive. I took two breaks, about 10 minutes each time. I finished with an hour to spare, looked at a couple of flagged questions, and decided to just throw it to the universe. My kid got sick 5 days ago, and I got his illness the night before, so by #225, I was done. Somebody in one of these posts said that if you come out and get one piece of paper, you’ve passed. Two papers = fail. That stuck with me. The first thing I noticed was that the woman was holding one piece of paper. The difference of a few seconds notice, but what a fun way to find out.
Something that shows up often in EPPP discussions is “test taking skills” and admonishments to focus on strategy rather than material. I swear to you all on everything that is good and pure, every time I saw that, I wanted to throw my computer into a water trough. For those that find it helpful, I am glad. Personally, I did not find it helpful. “How do I study?” “You can’t. Focus on strategy.” What does that even mean? Sure. Read the question thoroughly, paraphrase, simplify, use possibility of elimination, manage your time. Yaddi, yadda. Literally like every other test in the entire world. But also, like most tests, learn the content. I felt really good about at least half of this exam. Very clear questions and answers. Click it, move on. For those questions, I used content knowledge and it saved me an immense amount of time and, I would assume, stress.
As I was taking it, I was trying to hone in on advice that I’d give to others. I think, based on my experience, I’d encourage folks to use AATBS and learn the verbiage inside and out. If you have a penchant for language, use it. Learn every rogue heuristic, don’t neglect weird terms like “in-basket” and “door-in-the-face,” and make sure you’re clear on all of those fun words like anosognosia. Recognize concepts, laws (like Yerkes-Dodson), models and theories without them being referred to by name. Certainly, nail down classic concepts like operant behavior. There were a lot of neuropsych questions on mine, and a fair bit of social stuff. Also, questions that required a good entry level medical understanding. Find an older Midwest Paramedic (not an EMT) with a jaw full of chew, and ask him to explain sympathetic/parasymp, ach, acetylcholinesterase, cholinergic/anti-cholinergic, neurotransmitters, all that jazz. He knows it well enough that he could recite it while working a multi vehicle pile-up at 2am in driving hail, and he can pass it on. SLUDGE vs. Red as a beet, mad as a hatter, blind as a bat, dry as a bone. I have yet to take a single practice test that didn’t allude somehow to the cholinergic system and the actual EPPP was no different, so understand it and understand it well. That Midwest medic will do better than any test prep course I’ve come across. Total bonus if he shares with you his opinion that psychology isn’t an actual science. I was a Paramedic prior to this endeavor, and that EMS knowledge helped me immensely. Absent a midwest medic, maybe look up Paramedic classes on YouTube within these topics. The neuro physio is beyond the EMS range, and the Midwest medic can’t help you with that, but the prep courses can. You got this.
This was my first time taking the exam. A common query is how long people studied. That’s difficult for me to succinctly say. I am older, non-trad, with a lot of crazy life demands. I started trying to study for this about a year ago, but my daughter got pregnant and had a baby. My brother’s mother had a heart attack, died, was resurrected by a very skilled ER doc, and was in hospital and rehab for a long time. And my other adult kid has epilepsy. Major seizure rounds with multiday confusion stints are really common for us. Stuff like that. So, there was a lot of start and stop to my study.
I tried Academic Review, Psychprep and AATBS. AATBS was my favorite, by far. Academic Review is very similar though, and much cheaper. I found Psychprep to be the least helpful. I really enjoy test questions (sadist, right) and remember them pretty well. In some cases, Psychprep and AATBS had the same question, almost verbatim, with different answers. An example is one about a supervisor complimenting a supervisee. She doesn’t like it, asks him to stop. He stops. Ethical or no? PP said no- it is “sexual harassment” because he shouldn’t be complimenting her in the first place. AATBS says ethical because he stopped. Another was how best to handle a delirium patient. AATBS and PP had wildly divergent answers. My inclination from my history in EMS is that the AATBS info was much more reality based. In general, I flew through the PsychPrep questions and did find a few concepts I’d not heard of before, but overall, their program is about “strategy,” and, as mentioned before, I was using this whacky strategy of, like, learning the content.
Everyone likes to hear about exam scores. Starting out a year ago, my AATBS scores were an average of 50s, with one outlier in the 60s and one in the 40s. AATBS is pricey and the aforementioned family crisis interrupted me, so I wasn’t able to work through all of their exams. That was the point at which I switched to Academic Review. I used Goodnotes to make flash cards on my ipad that were then easily accessible on my phone for waiting around in hospitals and whatnot.
About a month out from my exam is when I signed up for Psychprep for the first time and my first scores on their tests were:
PP A – 67%
PP B – 69%
PP C – 69%
PP D – 70%
PP E – 68%
Retakes were all upper 70s, so below their target level for retakes, but, as I said, I wasn’t taking PP too seriously and didn't do much review on their missed questions.
I also resumed AATBS in this window. Doing some of their tests again for the first time in a year, and others for the first time ever, my scores were consistently between 68% and 72%. I focused on speed in practice tests. Fast recognition and recall. Never sat down to do an entire test in a 4 hour block, but instead would rock out 30 here and 50 there as time allowed. Didn’t do SEPPO. EPPP score was 535. If I’d not been sick, I imagine it would have been higher, but I really wanted out of there and I trusted the reliability on the practice test scores would likely translate to at least a passing score, which it did.
Last advice- don’t personal fable your way into believing that everyone BUT you can pass. That’s not true. Don’t go in assuming that the test writers want to end the field of psychology. They don’t. Don’t assume a clear-cut Q&A is a riddle. It isn’t.
It’s a weird test and it sucks. But it really is doable. Good luck to all!
