An EPPP study plan around your supervised hours

An EPPP study plan around your supervised hours

Studying for the EPPP during your postdoc? Set the weekly hours first. Your supervised hours are fixed, so the plan has to fit around them. This article shows how to build that plan from ASPPB's published blueprint, when to start practice exams and what to do in the last weeks.

As of October 2026, the exam facts below come from the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB), which writes and administers the EPPP. The plan itself is guidance, not a promise of a result. It covers the exam and how to prepare for it, and it teaches no clinical content.

How many hours can you actually protect each week?

Start with your calendar, not the syllabus. Write down your supervised hours, your seminars, your commute and the evenings you are already spoken for. What is left is your study time, and it is smaller than you would like.

Then turn it into fixed blocks:

  • Choose two or three weekday blocks of 60 to 90 minutes, on the same days each week.
  • Add one longer weekend block of two to three hours for practice questions and review.
  • Put every block in your calendar as an appointment, and leave one weekday evening empty on purpose.

Short, repeated blocks fit a postdoc better than a promise to "study when work is quiet". Work is rarely quiet. If a block is missed, move it within the same week and do not stack two missed blocks onto one night.

Which part of the EPPP are you preparing for?

Your licensing board decides which part or parts you need and in what order, so confirm that before you plan. According to ASPPB's EPPP Candidate Handbook, the Knowledge portion (Part 1) has 225 items, of which 175 are scored and 50 are pretest items, with 4 hours and 15 minutes for the exam items. The Skills portion (Part 2) is a separate part that ASPPB describes as assessing how you apply knowledge to decision-making in typical situations of independent practice.

ASPPB has also announced an integrated EPPP, which it says will be beta-tested in spring 2027 and operationally administered starting in fall 2027. ASPPB's announcement says that the Part 1 and Part 2 exams administered in 2026 and 2027 will use their published blueprints. If your test window could fall near the change, ask ASPPB and your board which version applies to you. Build your plan around the blueprint you will actually sit.

How do you order the content areas?

The rest of this article uses Part 1. ASPPB's EPPP exam topics page lists eight content areas with these weights:

Content area Weight
Assessment and diagnosis 16%
Ethical, legal and professional issues 16%
Treatment, intervention, prevention and supervision 15%
Cognitive-affective bases of behavior 13%
Growth and lifespan development 12%
Social and cultural bases of behavior 11%
Biological bases of behavior 10%
Research methods and statistics 7%

A simple rule for ordering the work: give each area study time in proportion to its weight, then shift extra time toward the areas where your own practice results are weakest. The weights tell you where the scored items sit. They do not tell you where you are weak, and your first practice exam is what shows that.

Here is one way to split a study week of about six hours. The split is an example of the method, not an ASPPB figure.

  1. Spend about one hour each on assessment and diagnosis and on ethical, legal and professional issues, the two heaviest areas in ASPPB's table, and about 55 minutes on treatment, intervention, prevention and supervision.
  2. Spend about 40 minutes each on the four areas in the middle of ASPPB's table.
  3. Spend about 25 minutes on research methods and statistics, the lightest area in ASPPB's table.
  4. Then shift 20 to 30 minutes from your strongest area to your weakest, as your last practice exam shows them.

Rotate which area leads each week, so that no area goes more than two or three weeks without a block.

When should practice exams start?

Start earlier than feels comfortable. ASPPB says its practice exams are similar in test specifications, formatting and functionality to the operational EPPPs, so a practice exam shows you how the real format feels. Check ASPPB's practice exam page for what each practice exam includes and costs before you buy.

A workable schedule for a postdoc:

  • Weeks 1 and 2: take a first practice exam as a baseline. Do not judge the result. Use it to sort your misses by content area.
  • The middle weeks: study by content area, using your baseline to decide which areas lead. Do short sets of practice questions from the area you studied that week.
  • Every three or four weeks: take another full practice exam under test conditions, seated and timed, in one sitting if you can protect the time.
  • After each practice exam: write down every miss, name its content area and note why you missed it, whether the content, the wording or the clock.

Count your misses by content area, not by date or by test. If one area keeps showing up, it moves to the front of next week's blocks.

What should the last weeks look like?

The final two or three weeks are for consolidation, not for new material. Keep your fixed blocks and change what you do inside them.

  • Take one last full practice exam about ten days before your test date, then spend the next days on its misses only.
  • In the final week, drop to short review blocks and stop adding resources.
  • Plan your supervised schedule around the test date as early as you can. Talk to your supervisor about the day itself and the day before it, so that you are not carrying a full caseload into the exam.
  • Check the logistics once: your board's authorization, your appointment and the identification you need. Details such as these are set by ASPPB and your board, so confirm them with both.

Sleep and rest matter in this stretch. That is the extent of the health advice here.

What if the first attempt does not go to plan?

Build the possibility into your plan, so that a second attempt means adjusting your blocks and not starting over. According to ASPPB's retake process page, you may not take the exam more than four times in any rolling 12-month period. ASPPB also says that licensing authorities may add their own restrictions, so ask your board about its own rules before you book a second attempt.

If you do sit again, keep your practice exam log. It already shows which areas to put first.

Exam dates, fees and rules change. Confirm the current details with the official exam body before you act on them.

Sources

PrepGen's EPPP practice tests show your results by topic and difficulty and build a study plan from your weak areas and exam date.

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