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Psychology GRE - April 2009
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The test isn't that hard at all. As long as you have a psych background, do at least one practice test, and use one book to study you'll be fine. I studied for two weeks doing one practice test and skimmed my first year psych text book and did great. Also think about the strategy you want to use for omitting questions because you lose a certain percentage for incorrect answers.
I am taking it in April but I haven't started studying for it, I've been told to review a bit and I will be fine. I downloaded that free practice test from ETS that I will take and see how I am doing next Month..
I have actually been studying for the general GRE to take in the summer because thats the one thats terrifying me
lol
But I can't imagine the subject test being too hard?
I have actually been studying for the general GRE to take in the summer because thats the one thats terrifying me
lolBut I can't imagine the subject test being too hard?
I have to be honest: I didn't study at all. I just took the ETS practice test three times. And I did pretty well.
The most important part is the strategy for how many questions to guess on vs. how many to skip.
The most important part is the strategy for how many questions to guess on vs. how many to skip.
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I'll be taking the regular GRE in April, and then the Psych GRE in May or so...which leaves me enough time to re-take either of them (if necessary) in June or July. I've mainly been studying the main GRE stuff, not so much the psych.
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I took the Psych GRE last April. I started studying for it in February and got a stellar score. The test prep books like Kaplan are only good to a certain point. You shouldn't rely on them as your only study materials. They have a lot of holes in terms of what they cover and I even found some errors in them. Definitely review your class notes/textbooks (especially your Intro to Psych book). Also, if you have a friend who is taking the test, take advantage of it and study with them A LOT. I found that to be the most helpful- my friend and I kept each other motivated, had a lot of interesting discussions that helped me remember the material better, and we had fun doing it. I also agree with the previous posts that knowing when to skip questions is important. You might say that I over-studied, but if you can squeeze the time in, I think it's well worth it. Good luck!!!
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I'll be taking it in April as well. I have a Princeton Review book that seems to be pretty good, so hopefully it will be enough to get a good score.
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I don't plan to retake anything. I wanna score exceptionally well on both GREs. So, I just wanna be very thorough in my prep. I'm giving myself the entire summer to prepare for the General GRE.
Good luck 2 you all!
lol You and me both, but I want to give myself the time to be able to retake it if necessary.
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Ooh, GRE post! Finally something on this forum I'm not in the dark about!
I was similarly motivated, demanding excellent scores from myself the first attempt. Before I began studying, I did a great deal of recon on the test prep materials themselves, methods of success used by people close to the 99th, and worthy resources beyond the review books. You don't want to blow dozens of hours on a crappy study aid.
Regarding the nature of preparation guides:
First, as you probably know, do not study purely from one guide. Get multiple guides, and then thoroughly absorb them all. The overlap will function to solidify what is often "easy points" material. Even if you know this stuff, enhancing speed of recall and recognition is really the only way to alleviate some of the time-constraint burden. I also re-read and then studied from my undergraduate intro, personality, cognition, and developmental textbooks. Lecture notes are great.
Heed miripsych's comment about the Kaplan guide being good only to a certain point. I found that all my prep plateaued at an evident content threshold. You'll see it - there's an obvious halting point for the information in your guides that will only aid you in guessing. If you're serious about countering this, use each term and topic in all your guides as a jump off point, and do some research into them. Google is your friend, as are glossaries in your old textbooks, etc.
Think of even the most up to date preparation guides as "chasing" the actual test - they have a great deal of focused, pertinent information gleaned from previous exams... but that's it. ETS purposefully and intentionally pushes the test beyond it's prior each round, so as you've probably read, there is no perfect study strategy.
Do not put your faith in your practice test results. After a few months of daily preparation, I came to these conclusions. A quick rundown:
If you're serious about jumping into the 90th and above, you need unwavering certainty of... basically, all undergraduate psych. Didn't have Biopsych & Physio? Play head, shoulders-knees-and-toes with the parts of your brain. Department didn't care much for counseling? Know to what degree of yuppie Rogers was (I kid! 🙂). Didn't have / take history of Psych? Inhale a textbook. Then memorize your textbooks textbooks, because it's critically important to know who wrote what and when! I mean... I can't remember, but you need to know it! You need to know the guides to the point that its trivial, and then go beyond them. And you need to know that everyone else that's that serious is likely utilizing the same material as a base, and they're doing the same "above and beyond!" academia mantra in their heads every day, and probably thinking about tatooing it or it's runoff somewhere.
In terms of time - It's really contingent on how many hours a day you can put into it. To feel thoroughly prepared, I needed about 4 months. Working full time, I could only devote 3-4 hours a day, and other commitments frequently punched holes in that schedule. Put yourself on a regiment; a daily (or weekly) hour-requirement, and keep track. It'll help you estimate how long you'll need to inhale all your material, and later it can be a motivator once you start locking some serious time in. If you're fortunate enough to be in a position where you only need to work part time, or if you don't need to work - play that to your advantage! Many people will be at a disadvantage simply because of a lack of time - spouse, family, career, kids, etc.
In terms of difficulty, over-studying, etc - Totally contingent on what standards you set for yourself, and your level of depth in present knowledge. If you have any background in psych, didn't sleep through your lectures, and actually read your textbooks, no, it's not hard at all to lock in a score that ranges from "not embarassing" to "well". Honestly, alot of great schools don't even care about the exam at all. And lots of programs (Master's specifically) require participation at best. Assess your needs: don't waste your time if you don't have to.
Obviously, if you took 100 credits of psych in a decent department, hunkered down and learned it (with permanency), and pulled in top-end non-inflated grades, then a skim-review for recognition and speed will suffice, absolutely. Doing anything more in that case may very well be a waste of time if you have other pertinent work.
However, if you're not the exception listed above, and if you want to hit a score / percentile range that means you'll never have to revisit the possibility of taking the Psych GRE again, it's a whole different game. What you will find is that you have 205 - 225 questions, and only those questions, to push your score to a certain point. Thus, setting the bar higher and higher begins to require a decreasing margin of error, and increasingly flawless speed. If you want 90th or 95th, you need to walk into your exam planning on getting maybe 5-10 wrong, guessing 50/50 on 20, and knowing with confidence you can recognize the other 175ish corrects, quickly, without hesitation. Couple that with the heavy time constraints, and knowledge that no matter how rigorous or broad your training you didn't cover everything, and things become a little more intimidating. At least, I found it pretty scary.
Or, screw ALL that; if you just want to be able to actually walk in and DO Princeton's "three-times through" method, be ready to yield no more than seconds to paragraph-length questions. Seriously. Do people read that fast??
I'm genuinely sorry for the long post. As lame as it sounds, that test kept me cooped up in a library through a beautiful summer, and it seems to have had some lasting (read: neurotic) effects. I do hope this helps!
I was similarly motivated, demanding excellent scores from myself the first attempt. Before I began studying, I did a great deal of recon on the test prep materials themselves, methods of success used by people close to the 99th, and worthy resources beyond the review books. You don't want to blow dozens of hours on a crappy study aid.
Regarding the nature of preparation guides:
First, as you probably know, do not study purely from one guide. Get multiple guides, and then thoroughly absorb them all. The overlap will function to solidify what is often "easy points" material. Even if you know this stuff, enhancing speed of recall and recognition is really the only way to alleviate some of the time-constraint burden. I also re-read and then studied from my undergraduate intro, personality, cognition, and developmental textbooks. Lecture notes are great.
Heed miripsych's comment about the Kaplan guide being good only to a certain point. I found that all my prep plateaued at an evident content threshold. You'll see it - there's an obvious halting point for the information in your guides that will only aid you in guessing. If you're serious about countering this, use each term and topic in all your guides as a jump off point, and do some research into them. Google is your friend, as are glossaries in your old textbooks, etc.
Think of even the most up to date preparation guides as "chasing" the actual test - they have a great deal of focused, pertinent information gleaned from previous exams... but that's it. ETS purposefully and intentionally pushes the test beyond it's prior each round, so as you've probably read, there is no perfect study strategy.
Do not put your faith in your practice test results. After a few months of daily preparation, I came to these conclusions. A quick rundown:
- The ETS practice test is (not surprisingly) most accurate in presentation, but an inaccurate gauge of content depth.
- The Kaplan test's posess slightly more demanding content, and actually ask quite a few questions on content beyond that reviewed in the guide.
- The Princeton test's only real worth is in gauging how well you know the Princeton review guide material, which is often humorously curt. The presentation is off, the questions are too easy, and question length is often very short. Unfortunately, this contributes to an inaccurate read on how long it will actually take you to answer questions on the real exam, which is a pretty big flaw, as rationing your time is vital. (I remember doing a double-take at my watch, thinking I'd miss-counted an hour and a half after completing one of the practice guides. In that respect, I suppose it's not all bad - it can be a mood-boosted if you want to blow through a few hundred questions in an hour and feel smart! =D)
- I can't speak for the Barron's tests, but I haven't heard good things. Anyone else have thoughts here?
If you're serious about jumping into the 90th and above, you need unwavering certainty of... basically, all undergraduate psych. Didn't have Biopsych & Physio? Play head, shoulders-knees-and-toes with the parts of your brain. Department didn't care much for counseling? Know to what degree of yuppie Rogers was (I kid! 🙂). Didn't have / take history of Psych? Inhale a textbook. Then memorize your textbooks textbooks, because it's critically important to know who wrote what and when! I mean... I can't remember, but you need to know it! You need to know the guides to the point that its trivial, and then go beyond them. And you need to know that everyone else that's that serious is likely utilizing the same material as a base, and they're doing the same "above and beyond!" academia mantra in their heads every day, and probably thinking about tatooing it or it's runoff somewhere.
In terms of time - It's really contingent on how many hours a day you can put into it. To feel thoroughly prepared, I needed about 4 months. Working full time, I could only devote 3-4 hours a day, and other commitments frequently punched holes in that schedule. Put yourself on a regiment; a daily (or weekly) hour-requirement, and keep track. It'll help you estimate how long you'll need to inhale all your material, and later it can be a motivator once you start locking some serious time in. If you're fortunate enough to be in a position where you only need to work part time, or if you don't need to work - play that to your advantage! Many people will be at a disadvantage simply because of a lack of time - spouse, family, career, kids, etc.
In terms of difficulty, over-studying, etc - Totally contingent on what standards you set for yourself, and your level of depth in present knowledge. If you have any background in psych, didn't sleep through your lectures, and actually read your textbooks, no, it's not hard at all to lock in a score that ranges from "not embarassing" to "well". Honestly, alot of great schools don't even care about the exam at all. And lots of programs (Master's specifically) require participation at best. Assess your needs: don't waste your time if you don't have to.
Obviously, if you took 100 credits of psych in a decent department, hunkered down and learned it (with permanency), and pulled in top-end non-inflated grades, then a skim-review for recognition and speed will suffice, absolutely. Doing anything more in that case may very well be a waste of time if you have other pertinent work.
However, if you're not the exception listed above, and if you want to hit a score / percentile range that means you'll never have to revisit the possibility of taking the Psych GRE again, it's a whole different game. What you will find is that you have 205 - 225 questions, and only those questions, to push your score to a certain point. Thus, setting the bar higher and higher begins to require a decreasing margin of error, and increasingly flawless speed. If you want 90th or 95th, you need to walk into your exam planning on getting maybe 5-10 wrong, guessing 50/50 on 20, and knowing with confidence you can recognize the other 175ish corrects, quickly, without hesitation. Couple that with the heavy time constraints, and knowledge that no matter how rigorous or broad your training you didn't cover everything, and things become a little more intimidating. At least, I found it pretty scary.
Or, screw ALL that; if you just want to be able to actually walk in and DO Princeton's "three-times through" method, be ready to yield no more than seconds to paragraph-length questions. Seriously. Do people read that fast??
I'm genuinely sorry for the long post. As lame as it sounds, that test kept me cooped up in a library through a beautiful summer, and it seems to have had some lasting (read: neurotic) effects. I do hope this helps!
What I did is figure out how many questions I had to answer in order to get the score I was aiming for, that would also allow me to get 50 questions wrong. It worked extremely well. My first practice test I skipped a lot, and got very few wrong, but my score was lower (somewhere in the 500s) because I hadn't answered enough questions. Second practice test I took more of a chance and skipped less, which led to my getting a 600. Then for the real thing, like I said, I used the strategy that I mentioned and got a pretty good score (percentile in the 80s).
Btw, this was the ETS practice test that they sent.
Btw, this was the ETS practice test that they sent.
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Hey, I wanted to wish you the best of luck on your test and thought I might offer a few thoughts myself... from my experience, the Psych GRE was a bit of a mixed bag in terms of its content (some stuff was obvious and would be covered in just about every psych course in that subfield, but other stuff was actually pretty arcane and seemed, at the moment, a bit odd to have included considering its apparent obscurity in the field). It's definitely not easy but it's really not too difficult with some committed and strategic studying. I scored quite well (near the 99th) with about 6 weeks of preparation (plus 4 years of undergrad and some TA, RA, and applied experience thrown in for good measure). Since most of my testing suggestions would be pretty generic, I thought I'd instead give you a brief overview of how I prepared:
I started reviewing 6 weeks before the test. Before starting, I took the Kaplan diagnostic test 1 and scored around a 700 (based on approximate scaling -- they don't offer a guide, so my raw score was like a 150/215 if I remember right). Following this, the first 4 weeks were spent reading 25 pages/day of the Gleitman "Psychology" text (excellent intro text -- get an old edition, the 6th is a good choice, for like $10 off on Amazon, the new info won't really matter anyway for your purposes, but it covers things at just about the right level of depth and covers an excellent amount of breadth as well). After the first 4 weeks, I took the official ETS psych GRE and scored around a 750. For my final 2 weeks before the test, I skimmed the Kaplan review book (which highlighted a surprising number of items that were actually on the test). When I took the test, I ended up with a score significantly in excess of 750, so either the Psych GRE itself was easier than all of those diagnostic tests or the studying helped... you decide!
When I took the actual test, I went through and answered all the questions I knew the answer to with at least 50% confidence (that is, I could eliminate at least all but two answers), skipping any I totally didn't know; then take a second time through and tried to eliminate any wrong answers on the remaining ones (if I could eliminate at least one answer for sure and strongly suspected another was wrong, I went ahead and answered it, otherwise I figured it was best to leave it blank for the sake of odds). Also, I would disagree that time is that big of an issue. If you have a good grasp on the field already, which you hopefully do if you're considering getting a Ph.D. in it, 205-225 multiple choice questions in 3 hours should really not be a big deal (they go a lot faster than you'd think). After going through all of the questions twice, I still ended up having almost a half hour left over to go through and calculate a predicted score so I wouldn't have to wait for ETS to send results (if you think you did well, the peace of mind is nice to have, lol...call me neurotic). I ended up getting something like 180 of the questions correct, leaving 5 blank, and getting 19 wrong (there were a total of 204 questions on the form I took, I believe).
I started reviewing 6 weeks before the test. Before starting, I took the Kaplan diagnostic test 1 and scored around a 700 (based on approximate scaling -- they don't offer a guide, so my raw score was like a 150/215 if I remember right). Following this, the first 4 weeks were spent reading 25 pages/day of the Gleitman "Psychology" text (excellent intro text -- get an old edition, the 6th is a good choice, for like $10 off on Amazon, the new info won't really matter anyway for your purposes, but it covers things at just about the right level of depth and covers an excellent amount of breadth as well). After the first 4 weeks, I took the official ETS psych GRE and scored around a 750. For my final 2 weeks before the test, I skimmed the Kaplan review book (which highlighted a surprising number of items that were actually on the test). When I took the test, I ended up with a score significantly in excess of 750, so either the Psych GRE itself was easier than all of those diagnostic tests or the studying helped... you decide!
When I took the actual test, I went through and answered all the questions I knew the answer to with at least 50% confidence (that is, I could eliminate at least all but two answers), skipping any I totally didn't know; then take a second time through and tried to eliminate any wrong answers on the remaining ones (if I could eliminate at least one answer for sure and strongly suspected another was wrong, I went ahead and answered it, otherwise I figured it was best to leave it blank for the sake of odds). Also, I would disagree that time is that big of an issue. If you have a good grasp on the field already, which you hopefully do if you're considering getting a Ph.D. in it, 205-225 multiple choice questions in 3 hours should really not be a big deal (they go a lot faster than you'd think). After going through all of the questions twice, I still ended up having almost a half hour left over to go through and calculate a predicted score so I wouldn't have to wait for ETS to send results (if you think you did well, the peace of mind is nice to have, lol...call me neurotic). I ended up getting something like 180 of the questions correct, leaving 5 blank, and getting 19 wrong (there were a total of 204 questions on the form I took, I believe).
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Studied mostly from a review book (Kaplan if memory serves) and a bit from Peter Gray's Intro psych book.
I didn't find it nearly as painful as the general GREs. The material is much more interesting to me(obviously), which certainly helps. Recognize that there will be some obscure stuff on there you may not have studied and don't freak out. I remember mine had at least 4-5 questions on the anatomy of the ear, which I wasn't remotely prepared for, a large number of questions about incredibly outdated theories and very few about modern ones, etc. Still did very well on it though. Just use those test-taking skills to eliminate answers and realize that its all about recognition and not recall.
I didn't find it nearly as painful as the general GREs. The material is much more interesting to me(obviously), which certainly helps. Recognize that there will be some obscure stuff on there you may not have studied and don't freak out. I remember mine had at least 4-5 questions on the anatomy of the ear, which I wasn't remotely prepared for, a large number of questions about incredibly outdated theories and very few about modern ones, etc. Still did very well on it though. Just use those test-taking skills to eliminate answers and realize that its all about recognition and not recall.
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I thought the subject test was given only twice or thrice a year. On the other hand, the main GRE can be taken anytime.😕
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M
mrlisham
I wouldn't stress about it too much. Buy a book, take the practice tests and just review material that you aren't as familiar with. I talked to a faculty member at a school that didn't require it and he said "nobody is going to give a **** if you score a 700 on your test." Also, a faculty member at a place that did require it said he doesn't really look too much into it because he feels he can teach you the psych if you need it.
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OK, or whenever the Psych GRE is closest to the May date lol I'm not entirely sure I need to take it, it's mostly "suggested" at most doc programs I'm applying to (I'm applying in behavioral neuroscience, but out of mostly psych. departments)
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Oct, Nov., and April, so I guess Oct. for me. General GRE's I want to get out of the way first!
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i studied for about 3 weeks hardcore using kaplan and i think princeton review (the two main people who make the psych gre guides). i took some classes in college in psychology, but even the bio stuff on the test i needed to review. i was able to score in the 90+ percentile, and it was definitely due to studying with these guides. they both covered all of the topics you needed to know for the test.
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I had a really low undergraduate GPA so I had to do really well on the GRE Psych. I basically studied from 2 undergraduate texts (Essentials of Psychology by Jeffrey Nevid and the text by James Kalat.... both are perfect for the GRE). I also managed to take 3 Official GRE tests. Two of these tests were old editions of the GRE Psych that were in my library (one was from the eighties!). Taking these official tests really helped as there were many similar questions on the test I took (October 2008). I managed a score of 830 (99th percentile)..... which I really needed, to show schools that I was much better than my undergrad grades would suggest.
Good luck on the test.... it really is not too bad.
Good luck on the test.... it really is not too bad.
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That is, in fact, the highest score on the psych GRE I've ever seen.
Seriously, though - Princeton Review books. Also, if you're iPod-ish, there are psych lectures available to download and listen. Just the standard undergrad psych lectures. The psych gre isn't that deep, but it's fairly broad, so listening to the lectures (when I was doing other stuff) helped me quite a bit.
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I had a similar experience when I took the test. My undergrad GPA was lower than the mean at most places (3.41), so I really needed to score high on the Psych GRE. I studied the Kaplan prep book, the Kalat intro textbook, and I also read The Story of Psychology by Morton Hunt the summer before I took the test. I took the Kaplan practice tests and the ETS practice test, and then took each one again. There was a surprising number of repeat questions from both practice tests on the real thing. I also think simply doing well in all of one's undergrad psych courses is probably the best preparation.
Personally, I did not use a strategy for skipping questions. I guessed unless I had absolutely no idea at all, and here is how my responses broke down: Correct - 179
Incorrect - 21
Omits - 4
which worked out to a 790 (98%).
Here I was feeling good about my subject test score until I came onto this thread. Thanks, guys.
No, I'm kidding. Congrats on scoring so high. 😉
No, I'm kidding. Congrats on scoring so high. 😉
