HOW TO CLEAR THE IHBAS DELHI ENTRANCE EXAMINATION

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The Institute of Human Behaviour and Allied Sciences (IHBAS), formerly known as Hospital for Mental Diseases, Shahdara, is a mental health and neurosciences research institute based in Shahdara, New Delhi, India. The institution is affiliated with the University of Delhi.

Seats = 11 (OM=5, SC=2 ST=1 OBC=2 EWS=1) 

Stipend = 25000/Month. 

How tough is the IHBAS MPhil Clinical Psychology Entrance examination? 

IHBAS entrance exam has a bad reputation among clinical psychology students. The exam is considered very tough than most other exams. However, nothing is tough as there are students who qualify for the exam every year and grab their seats.

Entrance Examination Pattern 

IHBAS entrance exam is more leaned towards the factual side. However, they ask a lot of conceptual questions too. Since you have to submit the question paper along with your OMR sheet so we can't copy-paste the answers here. Please note that every MPhil Clinical Psychology exam has a different style and every exam is different from the other one.

How should we prepare for the IHBAS entrance examination?

One should focus on 5 domains of Psychology 1. Statistics 2. Research Methodology 3. Social Psychology 4. Clinical psychology 5. Personality and Developmental Psychology

• Please remember this is not an examination of DSM-5 (and most MPhil Clinical Psychology entrance exams don't ask any questions from DSM). Most students think that the MPhil Clinical Psychology exam will have all the questions from DSM-5 but when you will see the paper, it would be exactly the opposite of your expectations. Rarely there would be any questions from DSM-5, however, there may be some questions about DSM (development and history).
• From the cognitive part, IHBAS mostly asks questions from learning and perception chapters but this keeps on changing. Most questions are factual and information-based.
• IHBAS asks a lot of questions from the history of Psychology especially about the concepts (terms) and books written by those psychologists so one should prepare a list of these books and try to remember the important ones.
• MPhil Clinical Psychology exams are more about research and statistics rather than disorders. IHBAS question paper is mainly based on questions from statistics and research methodology. All questions are factual. So you should know about the advantages and disadvantages of sampling methods and data processing.
• The clinical psychology part has mostly factual questions about the therapies and mostly they ask who developed which therapy (and believe me the list is very long). Sometimes they ask about some specific terms about the therapies or the abbreviation they use (for example the use of FEAR in Acceptance and commitment therapy et cetera).
• They ask questions about Indian Psychology, the past and the present. The history of Indian Psychology is very important and so are the new developments (last year they asked two questions about Mental Health Act, 2017).
• In the Abnormal psychology part, they mostly ask about disorders that aren't present in DSM. They mostly ask in-depth questions and mostly factual information about different disorders. The old terminology used by Psychiatrists has been asked to create confusion among the students. However, no questions are being asked from DSM-5 itself. They may ask something about the development and history of DSM but nothing from inside the DSM. For example, for schizophrenia, you should know about its different types and symptoms (positive and negative) and not just the diagnostic criteria.
• From developmental psychology, one should masters different stages from different theories of developmental psychology. Mostly factual data is being asked. You should master different theories of personality and the tests that have been developed from them.
• Physiological Psychology mostly ask questions about hormones and the neurochemical processes.

September 2020 IHBAS Entrance Exam Update

The entrance examination for IHBAS MPhil Clinical Psychology was conducted on 20th September (Sunday). Previous years trend was continued and questions were asked from the same topics/domains. Questions were asked about theories/therapies and their authors. Questions were also asked about famous Indian Psychologists and their work (research and books).

Expected Entrance Exam date for 2022: February 2023.