All graduating students are required by the college to take an exit exam in their major area. For psychology students, this is the Educational Testing Service (ETS) Major Field Test in psychology. The ETS tests are used by colleges and universities throughout the nation to measure student academic achievement and to assess the educational outcomes of their programs. In addition, the MWSU Psychology Department uses the test results to evaluate its curriculum, to suggest curriculum changes, and to measure the progress of our students.
The ETS test in psychology consists of about 140 multiple choice questions, some of which are grouped in sets and based on such materials as a description of an experiment, or graphs of psychological functions. The questions are drawn from the courses most often offered in undergraduate psychology programs. Questions often require students to identify theories, psychologists, methods, and other information from the field. Some questions also require students to analyze relationships, apply principles, draw conclusions from experimental data, and evaluate experiments.
Approximately 40% of the ETS test questions are from the natural science areas of psychology (learning, cognition, perception, physiological), and another 40% are from the social science areas (abnormal, developmental, personality, social). About 10% of the questions deal with measurement and methodology, and the remaining 10% are general questions, e.g., history of psychology. The best way to prepare for the test is to review a comprehensive general psychology textbook.
You do not have to obtain a certain score on the ETS test in order to graduate from MWSU. However, it is important that you do as well as possible on the exam. The results are used in both the college's assessment (state funding is partly tied to assessment outcomes) and in the department's. Furthermore, you will receive your individual results, which will allow you to assess your own level of achievement within psychology. You will be able to compare your progress against national norms not only for your overall score, and for each of the subfields assessed by the exam. Feedback from the ETS test is also very helpful in helping to prepare for the GRE advanced test in psychology.