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My OAT experience:
Like most of you I've benefited a lot from this forum 🙂. I just took my OAT exam today and I'd like to share my experience with you.
Some of you may remember me stressing out about the exam on some posts previously. I was nervous because I only had 3 months to study (decided to go for Optometry in June) and I never took much biology/chemistry courses (I'm engineering). I also did so bad on all the OAT achiever tests. Also, I pretty much didn't sleep the night before due to my nervousness 🙁
However, to my big big surprise, my unofficial scores are a lot better than expected. I think I just got lucky with the guessing part. Here's a comparison of my achiever score to actual score (Achiever/Actual)
QR: 400/400
RC: 260/400 (HUGE difference ...)
BIO: 290/350 (huge difference ...)
GC: 340/370
OC: 330/380
PHY: 330/370
QR: Pretty similar to the achiever. Less probability/statistic problems so that's good. However, not being able to use your calculator makes a huge difference here. I ran out of time on 3 questions and had to guess the answers in the last 5 seconds. Not fun. I suggest doing some practice tests with the calculator program on Windows (the really primitive one) and review trig identities--It's important because the basic calculators don't have trig functions like sin, cos. So you can't just plug in some random angle and compare values to choose the right answer (which was what I did in achiever). You have to actually know how to simply the stuff. You must know: cos^2 + sin^2 = 1 and 1/sin = csc, 1/cos=sec, 1/tan = cot and sin/cos=tan. You also should know the formula for surface area of sphere and things like that.
RC: So much easier than achiever. The passages are about 40% shorter in length. Search-and-Destroy never worked for me. Since the passages are short, I had time to read it through and write some key words down for each paragraph. It worked very well. Third passage is definitely the hardest. Thanks to this forum, I was warned, so I knew to save more time for the final passage.
BIO: Fewer animal/plant classification questions than the achiever, so that's good. Otherwise, I think it's slightly easier than the achiever in general. Not much to say here. Most of you are probably from a bio-related major, so it's would be pretty straight-forward.
GC: A lot of random conceptual questions I wasn't expecting. I don't even remember what they are now coz it's just so random. But minus those unlucky random questions, the rest was pretty straightforward.
OC: Pretty straightforward except I forgot what CH3NH2 does. And that thing appeared like in 3 questions. I also didn't know the NMR very well. There was one question on the NMR given a graph and asking you what the compound would be, which I guessed.
PHY: I was very unlucky with this section. I remember vividly cursing while doing this section. Almost half of the questions I got were on waves (sound waves, light waves, sinusoidal waves, ugh.). 80% of all the questions I got were conceptual, which to me, were more challenging than plug-number-into-equation questions. Also this random question on what is the cause of magnetism. I chose Gruon or sth like that...I don't even remember. I'm sure I got it wrong because I just didn't know. Another question on things sinking in water. Given density of water, volume of water that spilled, find the mass of the object. I did that by guessing too.I ended up marking more than half of the questions. It turned out okay somehow so I'm content with my mark.
General experience: Be warned they will not allow you to bring anything with you when you go in. No calculators, no watches, no nothing. I wasn't expecting that. They provide you with two sheets of plastic papers and two black markers. You don't even get to use pens or pencils. Also, if you wish, you can start earlier than your appointment time I think. Just don't arrive late.
My background: currently final year in Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo. Took one general chem and one physics course 3 years ago. Studying for OAT was very challenging for me.
Materials used: Big Kaplan OAT book, OAT achiever, Wikipedia, iPhone review apps.
Final words: It's a lot easier than the Achiever in general. Don't freak out if your achiever marks are super low (I know I did). Sleep is more important than an additional 4 hours of cramming. I wish good luck to everyone
Cherry
Like most of you I've benefited a lot from this forum 🙂. I just took my OAT exam today and I'd like to share my experience with you.
Some of you may remember me stressing out about the exam on some posts previously. I was nervous because I only had 3 months to study (decided to go for Optometry in June) and I never took much biology/chemistry courses (I'm engineering). I also did so bad on all the OAT achiever tests. Also, I pretty much didn't sleep the night before due to my nervousness 🙁
However, to my big big surprise, my unofficial scores are a lot better than expected. I think I just got lucky with the guessing part. Here's a comparison of my achiever score to actual score (Achiever/Actual)
QR: 400/400
RC: 260/400 (HUGE difference ...)
BIO: 290/350 (huge difference ...)
GC: 340/370
OC: 330/380
PHY: 330/370
QR: Pretty similar to the achiever. Less probability/statistic problems so that's good. However, not being able to use your calculator makes a huge difference here. I ran out of time on 3 questions and had to guess the answers in the last 5 seconds. Not fun. I suggest doing some practice tests with the calculator program on Windows (the really primitive one) and review trig identities--It's important because the basic calculators don't have trig functions like sin, cos. So you can't just plug in some random angle and compare values to choose the right answer (which was what I did in achiever). You have to actually know how to simply the stuff. You must know: cos^2 + sin^2 = 1 and 1/sin = csc, 1/cos=sec, 1/tan = cot and sin/cos=tan. You also should know the formula for surface area of sphere and things like that.
RC: So much easier than achiever. The passages are about 40% shorter in length. Search-and-Destroy never worked for me. Since the passages are short, I had time to read it through and write some key words down for each paragraph. It worked very well. Third passage is definitely the hardest. Thanks to this forum, I was warned, so I knew to save more time for the final passage.
BIO: Fewer animal/plant classification questions than the achiever, so that's good. Otherwise, I think it's slightly easier than the achiever in general. Not much to say here. Most of you are probably from a bio-related major, so it's would be pretty straight-forward.
GC: A lot of random conceptual questions I wasn't expecting. I don't even remember what they are now coz it's just so random. But minus those unlucky random questions, the rest was pretty straightforward.
OC: Pretty straightforward except I forgot what CH3NH2 does. And that thing appeared like in 3 questions. I also didn't know the NMR very well. There was one question on the NMR given a graph and asking you what the compound would be, which I guessed.
PHY: I was very unlucky with this section. I remember vividly cursing while doing this section. Almost half of the questions I got were on waves (sound waves, light waves, sinusoidal waves, ugh.). 80% of all the questions I got were conceptual, which to me, were more challenging than plug-number-into-equation questions. Also this random question on what is the cause of magnetism. I chose Gruon or sth like that...I don't even remember. I'm sure I got it wrong because I just didn't know. Another question on things sinking in water. Given density of water, volume of water that spilled, find the mass of the object. I did that by guessing too.I ended up marking more than half of the questions. It turned out okay somehow so I'm content with my mark.
General experience: Be warned they will not allow you to bring anything with you when you go in. No calculators, no watches, no nothing. I wasn't expecting that. They provide you with two sheets of plastic papers and two black markers. You don't even get to use pens or pencils. Also, if you wish, you can start earlier than your appointment time I think. Just don't arrive late.
My background: currently final year in Systems Design Engineering at University of Waterloo. Took one general chem and one physics course 3 years ago. Studying for OAT was very challenging for me.
Materials used: Big Kaplan OAT book, OAT achiever, Wikipedia, iPhone review apps.
Final words: It's a lot easier than the Achiever in general. Don't freak out if your achiever marks are super low (I know I did). Sleep is more important than an additional 4 hours of cramming. I wish good luck to everyone
Cherry
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