Psychophys

I'm aware of a cog neuro lab that is currently looking for someone to be a full-time lab manager. Private message me if you're interested.

I applied to a doctoral program that "strongly recommended" the Psych GRE. I didn't take it and was still admitted. Now, this could be due to the fact that one of my majors was in psychology, so they probably weren't worried about my background knowledge. Anyway, to answer your question directly, I've heard from others that you should read through an introductory psychology textbook in order to prepare yourself. There are probably also other "official" study materials that I'm not aware of. Best of luck.

LostPsych, did you do anything different in terms of studying between the first and second times you took the GRE, and how much time did you allow yourself to prepare both times? Also, I agree with Mono in that if you think you'll do significantly better, retake it, especially given your percentiles on the Verbal and AWA portions of the GRE. Reading papers and (eventually) writing papers is a HUGE part of academic psychology, so if an admissions committee sees those scores, they may believe you'll struggle with understanding the scientific literature in your area (which can be quite dense) and eventually write scientific papers. On the other hand, while the quant percentile isn't great, I don't believe it has to be phenomenal for most subfields of psychology, and your quant score probably falls close to the median score of recently admitted applicants at many programs (when I was applying, my quant percentile was close to yours, and my quant score was either at the median or just above for almost all of the programs I was interested in). Most psychology programs make their median GRE scores available in the APA's Graduate Study in Psychology handbook, or on their program's website. Lastly, different subfields have different acceptance rates (with clinical psych's being the lowest by far), so your subfield should also influence your decision about how to proceed and how to apportion your time and energy with respect to different aspects of your application. I am interested to know what subfield you're interested in and what your other "stats" are (e.g., major GPA, overall GPA, research experience) in order to get a better picture of your current status as an applicant so that I can potentially offer some advice. Anyway, hopefully others will respond to your question, given that it is an important one. Best of luck with the rest of your preparation.

I studied by myself for about 2 months, utilizing the Official GRE prep books and Magoosh, and found that my quantitative skills weren't improving significantly. I even tried practicing a timed version of the test, and this only worsened my apprehension about the quant portion (given that I felt the pressure of time and felt I was getting many quant questions wrong). Eventually, after I felt like I could do no more to improve it (and for the sake of my own mental well-being), I stopped preparing altogether. I'm not sure if my struggles were due to the fact that I hadn't taken a math class since my senior year of high school, or if this was my innate "ceiling". Nevertheless, I took the test and scored in 60-70th percentile range for quant, but in the upper 90's for verbal (which has seemingly always been my strong suit, at least for standardized tests). So, maybe my fluid intelligence (as assessed via the quant portion) isn't all that great! Supporting that idea, my GRE score seems to be line in with my math score on the ACT, which was also above average, but not stellar. Anyway, that's just my own experience in a nutshell. Best of luck with the test and your future endeavors.