2022 DAT Breakdown (26AA/24TS/23PAT)

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Clark Morgan

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I have soaked up posts like these for the last three months, and I could not be happier to be writing my own today.
Before I jump in, you should know that I scored multiple 13’s on Biology practice tests and had lots of unsatisfactory practice test results leading up to my successful test day. I have had to work, coach a baseball team, play on a baseball team, and shadow while also studying. It was not until these last two weeks that I solely studied. It is possible to succeed with an abnormal study schedule!

Background:
I am about to start my junior year as a Biology major, Chem minor, with a 4.0 GPA. This was my first attempt at the DAT. I knew I could take it again after junior year, but I also knew this was my best opportunity since I just finished taking Bio 2 and OChem 1-2, and took Gen Chem 1-2 Freshman year.

Materials:
Booster!
I used DATBooster starting in late May (about one week after my sophomore year ended). I originally used the 8 week schedule, but I modified the second half because of how burnt out I felt after finishing the learning phase. I am so glad I chose Booster. There’s more below on their strengths and why I chose it.

Bootcamp’s Question of the Day
I did not pay for Bootcamp, but I subscribed to their daily email question. It was nice to see other prep company’s questions for some peace of mind. I was between Booster and Bootcamp, but I chose Booster because of the price difference.

March2Success
This website is hosted by the US Army and provides two free practice tests. I found the questions to be incredibly simple, and possibly more basic than the real exam. However, I encourage using multiple sources for questions to ensure as much exposure as possible.

ANKI
I really wanted to use ANKI for Biology, but it was incredibly daunting seeing how many flashcards the pre-built Booster decks had. I would recommend this as long as you can be consistent with it. I used it scarcely; however, it is worth mentioning because the cards I did get through are still ingrained in my brain!

Study Timeline:
I originally began studying the week after finals. I am a college baseball player, and my team made it to the D2 World Series this year, so I was traveling and playing a lot until the middle of June. I would cram a ton of studying into our off-days, but I still was not gaining much at this time. Once I was back home, it was mid-June, and I had 8 weeks to study, so I essentially restarted.

June 15th-July 15th: I followed Booster’s schedule rather closely, except on certain days I was busier than others and would push off that studying until the following day. I think I went way too far into details of content that would never be valuable for the exam. Everyone always hears “breadth over depth,” but it’s hard to truly know what that means until you see how basic and straightforward the exam questions are.

July 15th-August 15th: I did not feel great about myself after finishing the learning phase. I was tired of staring into details I could not retain. I had so many other priorities in work, coaching, my car breaking down repeatedly, and shadowing that my study hours were minimal. I decided to just try and do as many questions as possible (SNS and PAT primarily). Redoing the extra questions bank was useful (especially when writing notes based off of them), but I still was scoring in the upper teens or a 20 at best. The turn-around came when I began to spend the bulk of my time on practice tests and reviewing marked questions that I either missed or marked for their quality explanations. I attended the Biology Crash Courses in the last couple weeks, and they were incredible. In my last two weeks of studying, I averaged 6-8 hours a day and did not take days off. Before that, I probably spent 6 hours a day studying about 5 days a week.

Day of Exam:
The night before, I was in bed for nine hours but hardly slept. I woke up at 4:30am trying to cram all of the information in again. I left for the test at 6:00am, and I did get sick on the way there. The nerves were incredibly high!

Biology (30)
Practice Tests: 13, 13, 15, 13, 16, 18, 20, 19, 18, 20
As you can see, I was struggling hard when I started. The turning point was certainly attending the Biology Crash Courses. They provided more practice tests (scores were 19-22 on practice tests 11-15), the handouts were the perfect amount of content so I could easily re-read them, and the practice questions were incredibly high-yield. I ended up going to all three courses after the first one was so beneficial. Truly, the content on the exam was straightforward, and I felt that all of the topics were adequately covered either in the Crash Courses or the final few practice tests.

Gen Chem (25)
Practice Tests: 16, 20, 19, 21, 20, 21, 22, 20, 21, 20
I had a great experience with general chemistry freshman year. Most of it stuck, so I only needed to remind myself of minute details for this section. The bulk of my improvement came from marking all challenging questions and then going through those daily before the test. The exam itself consisted of simple ideal gas law calculations, molarity and molality questions, Le Chandlier’s Principle reaction changes, and acid/base trends. Booster’s practice exams were very representative of the real exam.

Org Chem (21)
Practice Tests: 20 ,18, 22, 19, 20, 22, 19, 19, 18, 20
Since I had just finished organic this past school year, it felt fresh and I did not do much other than review my missed questions. I regret not spending more time on it, but nonetheless I am happy with the result. The exam did have about 3 questions on topics I had zero idea how to approach. Beyond that, it was reaction heavy and also NMR heavy. I wish I would have solidified my learning about proton NMR spectra, because I was shaky on a few of those questions.

PAT (23)
Practice Tests: 20, 20, 21, 19, 19, 19, 21, 19, 20
Booster’s generators were a staple of my daily studying leading up to the exam. I think that the difficulty of the angle ranking, hole punching, cube counting, pattern folding, and keyhole on the exam were all very similar to the generators. TFE was never easy for me, so I wish Booster had more practice problems for this. The video guides for these problems were the only way I learned to approach them. I started with question 31 (angle ranking), went until question 90, then jumped back to keyhole and TFE. My goal was always 20 seconds per question for angles, hole punching, and cube counting. Then about 30 seconds for pattern folding, finally with about 45 seconds for keyhole and TFE. I had a few minutes to spare once I had answered all questions, but I did not want to change any answers, so I just skimmed through to make sure I did not make any blatant mistakes.

RC (28)
Practice Tests: 23, 19, 19, 20, 20, 26, 24
I never put much effort into RC. Search and destroy was all I needed for 47/50 questions on my real exam. It was great. I did not bother to do every RC practice test, but I will say the real exam felt much easier than Booster’s.

QR (26)
Practice Tests: 25, 26, 22, 23, 23, 25, 25
I also did not do any studying for QR other than reviewing my missed problems. I have had some great calculus and physics professors, so this section always felt simple. The real exam was incredibly similar to the last few practice tests, and there were no problems that were completely new to me.

Words of Encouragement:
My original dream was to have every score make it into the 20s. When I started studying, I doubted myself heavily and took lots of breaks. Giving myself time to recoup and strategize to attack my weaknesses made all of the difference in these last few weeks. Please do not let this one test define who you are. We are all so much more than any number.

My Best Tip:
Marking questions that you do not understand, even if you got them correct, is the best way to make future studying material. I had about 80 organic chem questions marked, 70 for general chemistry, and over 200 for biology. I went through all of them multiple times and then was able to retake practice exams and score somewhere from 25-30.

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