2021 OAT Breakdown/Timeline/Experience (Score: 400 TS/390 AA)

snpat824

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I finally took the OAT today and I’m very happy, and a bit surprised, by my scores. I started studying in July when I bought the OAT Booster subscription. Overall, I studied from July-September, so 2 months.

Study Materials

OAT Booster (10/10)


Unlike many others on this sub, I essentially only used OAT Booster to study for the exam because I had heard positive things about it from a current optometry student. No Kaplan, no OAT Destroyer, no Quizlet. I split up my studying into two phases: content review, and practice problems/tests. For this, I followed the study schedule guide posted by Booster, where they outline what videos/extra practice problems students should aim to complete each day. Some days focused on watching videos of a particular subject more than the others, while other days were more spread out. I’ll go into more detail about each section, but the only major downside to Booster is they currently don’t have many videos for physics, only some on their YouTube channel. Personally, overall I would say that the actual OAT is much easier than practice resources, including Booster, as many have said on this sub before. I think I can say this about pretty much every section. The concepts are all representative, so it makes the real test seem much easier! So if you are scoring low on many of the practice tests, don’t worry, just keep studying and you’ll likely be pleasantly surprised when you get your actual score.

How I studied

Overall, I spent around 5 hours each day, 5-6 days a week for the most part, solely doing content review in the form of the videos, noted provided, and extra practice problems as outlined in the booster study schedule. This took a little over a month to complete and was much more draining than the practice phase because of the sheer content to absorb. After that, I solely did practice tests, which booster provides plenty of in timed and untimed formats, for each section on my own pace. Whenever I would take a practice test for a section, I would thoroughly review all the questions, including the ones I got correct, but especially the ones I got incorrect. THIS PART IS KEY! Each question has detailed explanations underneath the correct answer, which reinforces topics you are weak at so it sticks into memory. I went over all the explanations for each question before moving on to other sections. By the day before my exam, I had completed all of the practice tests on booster for each section, except for reading comprehension.

Section Studying/ Exam Experience

Biology


OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 340
Actual OAT Score: 390

This section has a huge wide range of topics, with questions that can be pretty general or very specific. The booster videos cover all the topics very well, and the Feralis Booster notes are very detailed, so it might be tough trying to get through that also, but I would suggest at least trying to skim it as it helps reinforce the concepts the videos cover. The only difference between Booster practice tests and the real OAT I saw was that the real OAT had a much greater amount of simpler, broad, easier questions than Booster, which had a lot more very specific, difficult questions, which could still show up on the OAT, just not as much.


General Chemistry

OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 380
Actual OAT Score: 400

My exam had a healthy mix of conceptual and calculation questions, but nothing too tricky or unexpected here. The Booster Practice Tests are very similar/representative of the difficult of the actual test.


Organic Chemistry

OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 340
Actual OAT Score: 400

Practice problems and repetition are key here. Pretty much most questions are about predicting the product of reactions and understanding concepts like stereochemistry, chirality, and mechanisms. Dave’s videos cover all the concepts, but to best study for this section after watching all the videos and in the middle of the practice phase is too constantly go over the Booster Reaction sheet for Ochem. If you can remember most of the reactions/reagents, this section will be a breeze. Everytime I felt like I was struggling to remember reactions, I would spend some time going over the reaction sheet top to bottom again and again, especially focusing on the important ones like aromatic reactions (EAS), alkene reactions, and aldehyde/ketone/carboxylic acid reactions.


Reading Comprehension

OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 370
Actual OAT Score: 400

I didn’t take many of the practice tests for this section, because honestly I felt like my time could be better spent studying elsewhere. Booster has a good mix of search and destroy questions and more inference questions (main idea/tone/reasoning) to prepare you for all the question types, though I will say on the real OAT, 90% of the questions are search and destroy, and can easily be found in the passage. This is why I prefer reading the passage first, because it becomes easy to locate where it mentioned the topic the question is referring to.


Physics

OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 300
Actual OAT Score: 360

I used my old college notes to study for this section, though looking back, I probably should’ve watched Chad’s Videos for this section. When I tried buying the individual package for these videos I had seen before, I learned that they removed this option and now only offer the whole subscription for OAT course. A big struggle for me for this section was having to remember all the formulas, so like ochem, I highly recommend going over the formula sheet for physics many times until you have them down. The actual test felt weird taking it because there were some questions that were very simple, both conceptual (like recognizing that constant speed = 0 acceleration, making the answer obvious) and calculation (plugging in values into kinematics equation, or even solving for density), while other questions I had no idea how to do at all and guessed on (complex torque questions, electrostatics, optics). Overall, the best strategy for physics would be to not only be comfortable with solving many types of problems, but also understanding the concepts behind it.


Quantitative Reasoning

OAT Booster Practice Test Average: 360
Actual OAT Score: 400

Nothing tricky here, about the same difficult of SAT/ACT math. Booster Practice problems have many that are more difficult, both they expose you to pretty much all the types of questions you’ll encounter, so nothing will surprise you and it’ll be straightforward to solve.


T.L.D.R – Scores (BIO/GC/OC/RC/PHY/QR/AA/TS)

2006 ADA Practice OAT (taken day before exam) – 360/380/340/400/350/400/370/360
Actual OAT – 390/400/400/400/360/400/390/400

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