<p>Thoughts from someone in a psych PhD program (I never actually took intro–AP’d out of it–though I did TA it):</p>
<p>-Intro psych classes are very, very broad–psych is a MUCH broader field than most people think (encompassing everything from MRI studies of neurological features to linguistics to development to mental illness to psychotherapy to advertising to political opinions to test development to sensation and perception to reading acquisition to brain injury to animal training and so on and so forth). As a result, the information in intro psych classes can seem (and be) very, very scattered. There many be five different, seemingly unrelated areas to study for a test, and not all professors test every area equally. So, you could know areas A, B, C very well, but if the professor did his dissertation in area D, 50%+ of the questions could well come from that area because that’s what the professor best knows.</p>
<p>-Intro classes are often front-loaded with what is usually considered the most “boring,” difficult stuff (brain structure, etc), so that could have been an issue.</p>