Review: The Princeton Review Cracking the GRE Psychology Subject Test 7th Edition

If you are considering continuing on to graduate school in psychology, you will have many things to work on in order to get yourself into the program you desire. While you are probably aware that you will need to take the GRE, it is likely that you will need to take the GRE Psychology Subject Test as well. Half of Ph. D programs and one-third of master's level programs require this test for admission. The thought of having another test to prepare for on top of everything else you need to do can be daunting but there are many things you can do to help raise your score. While review classes are very expensive, you can often get the same type of help from a review book for about $20 if you are willing to put in some work of your own.

In my preparation for the Psychology Subject Test, I have been studying from The Princeton Review's book titled Cracking the GRE Psychology Subject Test 7^th Edition as well as a couple other books. The Princeton Review book is by far my favorite. The book claims that it's students will see an average score improvement of 210 points.

The authors have really done their research on past subject tests and found out which topics appear most often. The common topics are heavily focused on in the book. If a question has only appeared on a couple of past exams, there is less space devoted to that topic. The book also covers topics that are fundamental in psychology and could possibly show up on a future test but have not been questioned in the past. This set up allows you to study what is most likely to be on the test more than other information so that you do not waste time.

The book also includes a full length practice test at the end. I plan to take the practice test as soon as I finish going through the book for the first time to see where I stand. Then, I will decide how much more work I need to do in order to achieve the score I am hoping for.

There is a helpful appendix in the back about the application process for graduate school. It discusses the different programs that are available and the best ways to strategize so that you will get accepted.

I am very pleased with the help this book has given me in my studying process. The information is organized in an outline format. There are short, 3 or 4 page chapters which make studying small chunks of information at a time easy. If you are trying to decide which prep book to purchase, make sure you check this one out.