It is almost given that admissions committees will ask to see your GRE General Exam
scores, but whether the GRE Subject Test is required varies from program to program. The GRE Subject Test in Psychology tests for specific content learned in undergrad psychology courses. As a result, you're gonna want to know your stuff! This test is where you can really showcase your knowledge as a psychology major. However, most people have no idea how to start preparing for the GRE Psychology.
Here are 5 preparation tips to help you reach your highest score:
1. Absolutely be sure you need to take it.
This is self-explanatory. I can really think of about 1000 different (and more fun) ways to waste $100 than taking a standardized test that I never needed to in the first place.
2. Make sure you have taken the psychology courses that will prepare you.
According to Educational Testing Services (ETS) - the folks who bring you the GRE - questions will fall in three major categories:
* Experimental or natural science oriented (about 40 percent of the questions), including learning, language, memory, thinking, sensation and perception, and physiological psychology/behavioral neuroscience.
* Social or social science oriented (about 43 percent of the questions). These questions are distributed among the fields of clinical and abnormal lifespan development, personality, and social psychology.
* General (about 17 percent of the questions), including the history of psychology, applied psychology, psychometrics, research design, and statistics.
In order to cover your bases, you want to make sure that you've taken the following psychology courses: Intro, Cognition, Sensation & Perception, Abnormal/Clinical, Social, Statistics, Research Methods, Personality, and History of Psychology. (Some of the names of courses may vary across colleges/universities). I cannot stress enough how much these courses prepare you for the kind of content that will appear on the GRE Psychology Test. Make sure each of these courses appear somewhere on your transcript.
3. Use Intro to Psychology textbooks to review.
Hopefully you didn't sell your Intro textbook. If you did, it's a good idea to find one because it will help you study. Try this tip: Go through all of the bold-faced terms in old textbooks. You may be shocked at how many of the core concepts you remember from years ago.
4. Compensate for your weak areas.
You may remember a lot, but you won't remember everything. Whatever is kinda fuzzy in your memory, concentrate your studying in those areas. Needless to say, if you don't remember all of Freud's stages, it's time to do some studying.
5. Pay attention to famous names and studies.
Those Old Dead Guys are famous for a reason. You will need to know who Freud, Piaget, Pavlov, and Milgram are. Ditto to the Stanford Prison Experiment. (Helpful hint: If a person is talked about to any extent in an Introductory Psychology text, you'll definitely want to know who they are to prepare for the GRE Psychology Test).