stressed_elephant
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Hi everyone! I took my DAT a few days ago and wanted to post a breakdown, as they’ve been so helpful for me over the past few months. I received a 26AA / 26TS / 20 PAT and I studied for 2.5 months during the summer using primarily DAT Booster and Anki!
Timeline:
I studied for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week during my summer break. I found that I didn’t really have the stamina to treat studying like a 9-5 job, so I just tried to make sure those 5 hours were being used wisely. I followed the Booster study schedule closely for all content review, but after I’d reviewed all the content (took about 7 weeks) I changed my studying schedule. I had access to my friend’s Bootcamp account, so I took a practice test every day/once every two days for the last 3 weeks to make sure I would complete all 20 practice exams.
ANKI- My general Anki tips are as follows:
BIO (26)- I used Booster and Bootcamp for bio because I wanted to do as much practice as possible given the huge amount of content in this section. I skimmed each Feralis chapter and used Anki to commit the information to memory, especially for chapters I hadn’t learned in college yet. I do feel like the Booster flashcards were much more detailed than necessary for the exam, but if you have the time to go through them that is great because you’re unlikely to find anything on the test that isn’t on those flashcards.
I also completed all the Booster questions and Bootcamp question banks, and I would definitely recommend Booster for this section– I think that if you’re able to answer their questions, the actual exam will seem simple in comparison. I had several questions on the exam that were almost identical to Booster questions!
CHEM (24)- I used Booster for all my content review and practice questions from this section. Because my gen chem classes were pretty rigorous, I only skimmed the study notes and made a list of concepts I wasn’t as comfortable with to prepare. I think doing practice questions helped me the most on this section, and like bio I made flashcards with formulas I needed to memorize or concepts I struggled with on the practice exams.
OCHEM (30)- I didn’t do so well in my college organic chemistry class, so I really wanted to get a high score on this section– I was very pleasantly surprised by my score on this section and I credit it to practice questions. I’d just finished my organic chemistry sequence so a lot of the content was fresh on my mind, so personally the Booster and Bootcamp videos weren’t very helpful for me because I thought that they were a bit too surface-level. I did all the Booster questions and Bootcamp question banks, and I tried to review all of the Booster Anki deck as well.
For this section, making sure to learn why the incorrect answers were incorrect helped me a lot, as well as actually drawing out the reactions and learning the general mechanisms for SN1/SN2/E1/E2 and the carboxylic acid derivative reactions. If you do enough practice on this section, you’ll start noticing patterns and learn the questions that tend to show up on the exam!
RC (22)- I didn’t really study for RC– I did all the individual article practices during content review but as you can see from my practice scores, sometimes I would skip the reading section if I was short on time as I’ve always been pretty good at reading comprehension and I didn’t have issues with timing. I used the search and destroy method. My scores fluctuated a lot during practice exams, so I was a bit disappointed by my score here but also not that surprised at the same time.
QR (27)- I think this section is mostly practice as well– I didn’t watch any of the videos, and I felt that completing the Booster practice questions for each topic was sufficient to make sure I knew how to solve each type of question. For formulas I didn’t have memorized, I made my own Anki flashcards. My biggest issue with this section was timing at first, so I had to learn to force myself to move on if I was getting stuck.
PAT (20)- I didn’t study for PAT as much as I probably should have, so I would definitely agree with other people’s recommendation to practice PAT every single day. I used Booster for initial learning, and supplemented with Bootcamp videos for TFE and pattern-folding, which I struggled with the most.
I started with angle ranking while my eyes were fresh, and I worked to the end of the test and then went back to keyhole and TFE. Keyhole was a bit weird on the exam for me– sometimes I would go through each answer and end up eliminating all of them which is definitely… not right. I thought Booster and Bootcamp’s questions were generally representative of the exam, but Bootcamp’s hole-punching and angle ranking may have been a bit more difficult than the exam.
EXAM:
My exam started at 8 am, so I started waking up at 6:30 am two weeks before my exam to get my brain used to functioning early in the morning. I was so nervous that I thought I was going to throw up so I wasn’t able to eat very much for breakfast, but I brought a big lunch with a lot of options so that I would be able to eat whatever my stomach could handle during the break. My mouth was also so dry that I kept drinking water before checking in at the testing center, so I had to take a bathroom break during my science section and reading section. I don’t really have advice for how to deal with this, but if you feel like you might have similar issues you should take into account the extra time for the bathroom and going through security again when you’re practicing! It sounds cheesy, but breathing exercises also helped me a lot, especially when I was sitting in the waiting room to check in to the testing center.
Overall, Booster was extremely representative of every section with the exception of bio, which was easier than I’d expected! For the price, I think that Booster and Anki together are a really great and thorough resource for DAT prep, and that’s the combination I’ll be recommending to my friends who are taking the exam in the future. If you have the money, having more practice questions from Bootcamp can’t hurt, but it’s definitely not necessary to do well on the DAT!
As you can see, my exam scores were generally higher than my practice scores. Sometimes I would get a lower practice score and would panic, but I really believe that if you focus on reviewing each question instead of your score during your studying, you will be much better prepared for the exam.
Good luck everyone!! Please feel free to ask me any questions below
Timeline:
I studied for 5 hours a day, 6 days a week during my summer break. I found that I didn’t really have the stamina to treat studying like a 9-5 job, so I just tried to make sure those 5 hours were being used wisely. I followed the Booster study schedule closely for all content review, but after I’d reviewed all the content (took about 7 weeks) I changed my studying schedule. I had access to my friend’s Bootcamp account, so I took a practice test every day/once every two days for the last 3 weeks to make sure I would complete all 20 practice exams.
ANKI- My general Anki tips are as follows:
- Watch videos to adjust your settings! Anki is really confusing at first, but because you’re likely studying for several months it’s helpful to know how to adjust settings like daily limits, display order, and lapses.
- Flag cards! The Booster deck has thousands of cards, and I don’t think it’s a good use of time to try and study and review every single card– I would flag cards as I reviewed the deck, and after I moved into my practice test phase I would only review the cards I’d flagged. Even if you know the answer quickly, it still takes a lot of time to click through so many cards that you already know. For bio, getting exposed to all the content is much more important than memorizing every tiny detail that is present in the Anki decks.
- Make your own cards for practice exams! For the sciences, I made Anki cards for all the questions I didn’t fully understand and made sure to read all the question explanations even if I’d answered the questions correctly and added flashcards with information from the explanations as well.
BIO (26)- I used Booster and Bootcamp for bio because I wanted to do as much practice as possible given the huge amount of content in this section. I skimmed each Feralis chapter and used Anki to commit the information to memory, especially for chapters I hadn’t learned in college yet. I do feel like the Booster flashcards were much more detailed than necessary for the exam, but if you have the time to go through them that is great because you’re unlikely to find anything on the test that isn’t on those flashcards.
I also completed all the Booster questions and Bootcamp question banks, and I would definitely recommend Booster for this section– I think that if you’re able to answer their questions, the actual exam will seem simple in comparison. I had several questions on the exam that were almost identical to Booster questions!
CHEM (24)- I used Booster for all my content review and practice questions from this section. Because my gen chem classes were pretty rigorous, I only skimmed the study notes and made a list of concepts I wasn’t as comfortable with to prepare. I think doing practice questions helped me the most on this section, and like bio I made flashcards with formulas I needed to memorize or concepts I struggled with on the practice exams.
OCHEM (30)- I didn’t do so well in my college organic chemistry class, so I really wanted to get a high score on this section– I was very pleasantly surprised by my score on this section and I credit it to practice questions. I’d just finished my organic chemistry sequence so a lot of the content was fresh on my mind, so personally the Booster and Bootcamp videos weren’t very helpful for me because I thought that they were a bit too surface-level. I did all the Booster questions and Bootcamp question banks, and I tried to review all of the Booster Anki deck as well.
For this section, making sure to learn why the incorrect answers were incorrect helped me a lot, as well as actually drawing out the reactions and learning the general mechanisms for SN1/SN2/E1/E2 and the carboxylic acid derivative reactions. If you do enough practice on this section, you’ll start noticing patterns and learn the questions that tend to show up on the exam!
RC (22)- I didn’t really study for RC– I did all the individual article practices during content review but as you can see from my practice scores, sometimes I would skip the reading section if I was short on time as I’ve always been pretty good at reading comprehension and I didn’t have issues with timing. I used the search and destroy method. My scores fluctuated a lot during practice exams, so I was a bit disappointed by my score here but also not that surprised at the same time.
QR (27)- I think this section is mostly practice as well– I didn’t watch any of the videos, and I felt that completing the Booster practice questions for each topic was sufficient to make sure I knew how to solve each type of question. For formulas I didn’t have memorized, I made my own Anki flashcards. My biggest issue with this section was timing at first, so I had to learn to force myself to move on if I was getting stuck.
PAT (20)- I didn’t study for PAT as much as I probably should have, so I would definitely agree with other people’s recommendation to practice PAT every single day. I used Booster for initial learning, and supplemented with Bootcamp videos for TFE and pattern-folding, which I struggled with the most.
I started with angle ranking while my eyes were fresh, and I worked to the end of the test and then went back to keyhole and TFE. Keyhole was a bit weird on the exam for me– sometimes I would go through each answer and end up eliminating all of them which is definitely… not right. I thought Booster and Bootcamp’s questions were generally representative of the exam, but Bootcamp’s hole-punching and angle ranking may have been a bit more difficult than the exam.
EXAM:
My exam started at 8 am, so I started waking up at 6:30 am two weeks before my exam to get my brain used to functioning early in the morning. I was so nervous that I thought I was going to throw up so I wasn’t able to eat very much for breakfast, but I brought a big lunch with a lot of options so that I would be able to eat whatever my stomach could handle during the break. My mouth was also so dry that I kept drinking water before checking in at the testing center, so I had to take a bathroom break during my science section and reading section. I don’t really have advice for how to deal with this, but if you feel like you might have similar issues you should take into account the extra time for the bathroom and going through security again when you’re practicing! It sounds cheesy, but breathing exercises also helped me a lot, especially when I was sitting in the waiting room to check in to the testing center.
Overall, Booster was extremely representative of every section with the exception of bio, which was easier than I’d expected! For the price, I think that Booster and Anki together are a really great and thorough resource for DAT prep, and that’s the combination I’ll be recommending to my friends who are taking the exam in the future. If you have the money, having more practice questions from Bootcamp can’t hurt, but it’s definitely not necessary to do well on the DAT!
As you can see, my exam scores were generally higher than my practice scores. Sometimes I would get a lower practice score and would panic, but I really believe that if you focus on reviewing each question instead of your score during your studying, you will be much better prepared for the exam.
Good luck everyone!! Please feel free to ask me any questions below
