Access Application before onCreate() is called during androidTest

Question

MyApplication class (extends Application), when it starts up, will launch a service to check a SharedPreference value. If the value is false, then some data gets initialized.

For testing purposes, I would like to modify this SharedPreference to be true so the data initialization does not happen. However when I do this, a race condition happens and the MyApplication.onCreate() is called before I have a chance to modify the preference.

How can I modify the preference before MyApplication.onCreate() is called? Is something like this even possible?

MyApplication.java

public class MyApplication extends Application {
    public static AppComponent component;

    public MyApplication() {
    }

    @Override
    public void onCreate() {
        injectDependencies();

        super.onCreate();
        initializeDatabase();
    }

    private void injectDependencies() {
        if (component == null)
            component = DaggerAppComponent.builder()
                    .appModule(new AppModule(this))
                    .build();

        component.inject(this);
    }

    @VisibleForTesting
    public static void setComponent(AppComponent component) {
        MyApplication.component = component;
    }

    private void initializeDatabase() {
        Intent intent = DataInitializationService.createIntent(this, null);
        startService(intent);
    }
}

SearchFragmentTest.java (in src/androidTest flavor)

public class SearchScreenFragmentTest {
    @Rule
    public ActivityTestRule activityRule = new ActivityTestRule<>(
            SearchActivity.class,
            true,    // initialTouchMode
            false);  // launchActivity. False to set intent per method

    public SearchScreenFragmentTest() {
    }

    @Before
    public void setUp() throws Exception {
        //gets run AFTER `MyApplication.onCreate()`. I want this to be called BEFORE.
        new TestUtils.TestDataInitter(InstrumentationRegistry.getTargetContext())
                .clearPrefs(true)
                .acceptIntro(true)
                .initDatabaseFake(true)
                .init();
    }

    @After
    public void tearDown() throws Exception {
        new TestUtils.TestDataInitter(InstrumentationRegistry.getTargetContext())
                .clearPrefs(true)
                .acceptIntro(true)
                .initDatabaseFake(false)
                .init();
    }

}