Admission Test for the Master’s Program in Psychology
Information about the application year 2023: The admission test will take place on Saturday, May 13, 2023. Participation is possible in presence only. Information on the registration modalities will be published here in due time, by mid-March at the latest.
The admission test is an optional selection criterion for the additional determination of professional aptitude for the master’s degree programmes Work, Economy and Society and Clinical Psychology and Psychotherapy (planned introduction for HWS 2023/
The duration of the test is 90 minutes, and the test comprises 172 items. The answer format is multiple-choice with 5 answer alternatives, of which exactly one is correct. The test is free of charge.
Applicants who take the admission test can earn up to 20 additional points. A necessary condition for the award of additional points is that the proportion of correctly answered test items corresponds to at least 30% of the maximum achievable score.
The result of the admission test is only valid for the current admission procedure and cannot be transferred to the following year. Repeated participation in the admission test is possible.
Specific recommendations for preparation cannot be given. The knowledge acquired in a bachelor’s degree programme in psychology or in an equivalent bachelor's degree should prepare for test participation.
Calculation of additional points
The number of additional points awarded depends on an applicant’s individual performance in relation to the distribution of points among all participants in the same year who achieved at least 30% of the maximally available points. These participants’ test results are ranked from the lowest to the highest. The percentile ranks of the test results are divided into 10 intervals that correspond to the first 10% (percentile rank >90), the second 10% (percentile rank >80 to 90) etc. Additional points are awarded based on the interval the applicant’s individual performance falls into:
- Percentile rank >90: 10 additional points
- Percentile ranks >80 to 90: 9 additional points
- Percentile ranks >70 to 80: 8 additional points
- Percentile ranks >60 to 70: 7 additional points
- Percentile ranks >50 to 60: 6 additional points
- Percentile ranks >40 to 50: 5 additional points
- Percentile ranks >30 to 40: 4 additional points
- Percentile ranks >20 to 30: 3 additional points
- Percentile ranks >10 to 20: 2 additional points
- Percentile ranks >0 to 10: 1 additional point
In case the points an applicant has achieved cannot be exactly assigned to one of the defined intervals but fall between two percentile ranks, he or she will be awarded the higher number of additional points.
What subjects do the questions in the test refer to?
The test asks for basic knowledge from the fundamentals, methods and application areas of psychology and psychotherapy.
This includes the following subjects in the fundamentals and methods:
- General Psychology I + II (Thought, Language, Memory, Learning, Motivation, Emotion, Perception)
- Professional Ethics and Professional Law
- Biological Psychology and Neuropsychology
- Differential Psychology and Personality Research
- Developmental Psychology
- General Principles of Assessment
- Social Psychology
- Statistics
Application areas:
- Work and Organizational Psychology
- Consumer Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Clinical Psychology
- Fundamentals of Medicine for Psychotherapists
- Fundamentals of Pharmacology for Psychotherapists
- Preventive and Rehabilitative Concepts of Psychotherapeutic Action
Sample items
1. What is the correlation between an item and its corresponding scale called?
a) Item-total correlation
b) Item difficulty
c) Covariance
d) Cronbach's alpha
e) Beta coefficient2. What do you call the difference between the right and left retinal images?
a) Emmert’s law
b) Müller-Lyer illusion
c) Ponzo illusion
d) Binocular disparity
e) Relative perspective3. With respect to depression, what does the cognitive triad (Beck, 1979) describe?
a) The interplay between affect, behavior, and cognition
b) The connection between pain, perception of pain, and emotion
c) Not having been able to cope with loss, which leads to frustration, self-loathing, and self-blame
d) Negative thoughts about oneself, the world, and the future
e) Arbitrary inference, selective abstraction, and overgeneralization