Hello, I just wanted to share a breakdown of how I got to my Academic Average Score of 23 on the DAT with you all, and hopefully answer some questions you may have had. I took the DAT two times, the first was on September 1st, 2021, and the second time was September 6th, 2022. Here is the breakdown of my scores:
Album — Postimages
First Attempt QR - 21
RC - 23
Bio - 15
GC - 17
OC - 14
PAT- 14
TS - 16
AA - 18
Second Attempts QR - 25
RC - 26
Bio - 18
GC - 20
OC - 25
PAT- 22
TS - 20
AA - 23
Background Info:
Currently a senior with a ~3.65 GPA. I’m going to be honest, the first time I was taking the DAT, I did not study a single minute for it (I know, worst decision of my life!). At that time, I was sure I wanted to do dentistry, but so many things in my real life prevented me from studying for the DAT, most of it being a lack of motivation. So, I walked into that testing center and gave it my all, which at the time resulted in me getting an AA of 18. I was devastated and that brought my confidence down a lot. What changed to increase my motivation and confidence from last year to this year?
Two main things helped me get motivated and feeling confident. The first thing that helped me with this was I started working with a dentist who I had come to hold a lot of respect for. My first day at the office, we were getting along very well, and he was teaching me things I didn’t know before and socialized with me a lot. Over time, I had come to admire him because regardless of what happened, he always made sure that everyone was taken care of and that everyone in his care felt good and safe. This really solidified my confidence and helped me get really motivated so I can work on getting into dental school, but there was still the problem that I was not ready for science, especially Organic Chemistry. So, what did I do? Even though it wasn’t required for my degree, nor do any of the dental schools I was interested in requiring it, but I said to myself, if I really want to get into dental school, I must challenge myself.
Organic Chemistry (and OChem 2) are some of the many classes at my school meant to weed out students who are not particularly strong in the field of science, so I thought that it would be perfect. I put myself under a heavy burden by taking 21 credit hours in Spring of 2022, 4 of them coming for Ochem 2. The teacher had a reputation for being rude, terrible, and the worst teacher possible. This could not have been farther from the truth. Organic Chemistry is a very complex subject, so it’s no surprise that the class is super difficult. But this teacher was different, she showed that she really cared more about the students learning rather than grades, and she put so much time into giving the best lecture that while I didn’t get an A in Ochem 1 or Ochem Lab, I got a high A in OChem 2. Getting an A in this class was honestly the spark in me that boosted my motivation even more than before.
The only things I needed to do at this point was find a program to help me study for the DAT, and to sign up for the DAT. I am by no means rich, so money was a huge factor in my decision. I compared different testing programs but the main four I found were: DAT Destroyer, DATBootCamp, Kaplan, and DATBooster. The cheapest option was DATBooster, which was 300 bucks for 3 months of studying (I got it even cheaper with their promo code). So, what did I do? I did further research. The other options were way more expensive and then we have this one for only $300. I was super skeptical, kept looking around at reviews for them. The most common reviews I found was to get Bootcamp and Booster if you have money, but if not, just get Booster as its worth it. So finally, I caved in and bought Booster.
That was in April. I was still taking classes and realized that I am probably not going to start studying for the DAT yet, so I decided to pause my subscription until May 29th (so that it would end August 29th, and I could take the DAT on my 1-year anniversary with my 1st attempt, but as seen, this didn’t work out). So, May 29th comes, and I’m not in the states because I’m overseas visiting my family, and I was there until the end of June. Every single day, I told myself this, “I will just study tomorrow, I’m tired or having a good time right now.” This happened the whole time until I get back to the states. When I came back, I was super tired from the trip and started going back to work, so I kept delaying my studies until July 15th.
Some background info, I tore my ACL and meniscus in the middle of March, and I need surgery for ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair, which I had scheduled for July 15. I thought I was going to leave the hospital and be so pumped up full of meds that I won’t feel pain and can use the time off from work to study for the DAT. Boy was I wrong. I was in max pain for over a week, and I was in no condition to study. So come August 2nd, I’m super bored (I was barely getting out of bed because of the surgery, unable to walk without crutches), so I was like okay, let’s start DAT studying. I went to ADA to apply for a test date, realized September 1st was too early and picked September 6th (next date was September 19th which would have been way too far). then started studying. This was my 2nd time taking the DAT, so I knew all my weak areas, so instead of starting with those, I started with my areas of strength. Reminder that my DATBooster subscription timer kept going, so I had less than a month left to get fully prepared for the DAT. Here is my full study schedule for the DAT and the methods I used to help me:
August 2nd- -August 4th: Took a cumulative practice test, got a 16 on it. Didn’t give it too much thought and went straight to Reading Comprehension, my highest score on the 1st DAT. For this section, all I did was watch the videos provided by DATBooster, and it really helped me pick a new method for this section: rather than just do search and destroy, I started some of their methods on top of search and destroy. I only spent 2 days on this, including taking all their practice tests (averaged 23 on them), which helped me increase my score of 23à26. The format from their practice tests compared to the actual test is super similar so that also helped me a lot.
August 4th-August 7th: Next up is Quantitative Reasoning. Math is my specialty; I am good at it. But for the DAT, while I did recognize I had almost no time, I realized that this is an area I can easily get a huge boost in. So, what I did for this is I went to the videos they provide, and I watched every single video, regardless of if I was 100% solid of it, and I took down notes so my brain can store it even better. I was able to watch the video once for most of the subjects, but I never took a statistics class, so I took my time with those subjects and made sure I was solid. I did all of these within 2 days, and I spent all of August 7th taking practice tests. My scores on initial attempts ranged from 21-26, but I looked at the feedback for those questions and was able to increase my average on them from a 22 to a 26 the 2nd time I took them. I usually only had a couple of minutes to spare so I can recheck my work, but this helped me with the DAT because it had a lot of these types of questions. It was a bit more difficult than the DAT, but it was majorly representative of it, so I would say if you studied it rigorously, you’ve got more than a decent chance at getting a super high grade.
August 8th-August 15th: The next subject I started to study was Perceptual Ability. My original score on the exam was horrible, I got a 14, so I went to my doctor and asked him for help in this field. He told me that this section is like math: the more you practice it, the better you will get at it. I didn’t want to believe it because I felt demotivated after getting a 14, but I said OKAY, I’m going to try it. I watched the videos provided by DATBooster for this section, and the 2 people who made those videos were amazing. They really made it look easy and gave the best techniques and advice possible for each section. I took some practice tests before starting these videos, I spent a whole day taking them and my highest score was a 16. I watched the videos and really listened to what they were saying, without the need for notetaking. It took me 3 days to get through the videos because I was also busy with other things in real life, so I finished them up and started to take practice tests. The real kicker is that DATbooster doesn’t just provide tests, but they also provide a PAT question generator where you can pick any specific type of question on the PAT (Key-Hole, Top-Front-End, etc etc.) and it will generate an unlimited amount of questions for you to practice. So, I didn’t need to keep retaking tests and using excess time on things I am good at/getting good at, I can just specifically go for the type of questions I didn’t feel comfortable with. On some questions, I set the time to 20 seconds because I saw myself only needing that much, and others I set it to 1 minute because I felt like I would need that much time on them. I kept using the generator until August 14th, and I started taking the practice tests. My average across them after practicing and watching the videos became a 20. I was average 20 on what I thought to be super impossible! Come test day, as can be seen from my score, I ended up doing well. My score went from a 14 all the way up to a 22. I was super happy with this. Some advice on this section though would be to seriously practice as much as you can. With the nature of these types of question, it is literally possible to create infinite questions, so you likely won’t encounter the same exact question, but since you’ve practiced, you can just work through it like a puzzle.
After this, I was just seriously lazy and asked the DATBooster customer support to pause my subscription for a couple of days (they paused it until August 21st, so my new subscription end date was September 5th, a day before my exam).
August 21st- August 28th: The next section I wanted to start studying was General Chemistry. I got a 17 on my 1st exam and thought hey, I was good at gen chem, I just need a review. I seriously forgot just how big of a subject general chemistry was, but luckily, DATBooster had all the videos I needed in order to understand and remember general chemistry (shoutout to Dave for both Gen chem and Ochem!). So, the way I did this was I took 1 single practice test and got a 14 on it, and I was just surprised at how poorly I did. So, I realized that I’m probably going to take a lot of time on this subject. After all, the videos for these sections covered every single topic in general chemistry, ranging from atomic mass to acid-base chemistry to laboratory equipment. They covered every single topic and did so good enough. Over the course of the next few days, I just kept watching the videos provided, taking notes, and answering the study notes questions provided with each video and seeing if I understand the subject good enough. I then started taking practice tests thinking I was ready, and I was constantly getting around 20. This was good enough for me and I stopped taking tests. Overall, many of the topics I encountered on the practice tests were on my test, but I definitely underestimated gen chem and wound up getting 20, even though it’s still up from 17 on my first DAT.
So, for general chemistry, this score was good enough for me, but I know I didn’t spend enough time practicing it which led to a low score. My reasoning for not spending this time is that I realized I still have to do organic chemistry and biology (which I know I was in for a tough ride for). So, I cut my studying short for Gen chem and said whatever, I’m good with getting a 20.
August 29th-September 1st: I spent these days studying organic chemistry. I know organic chemistry is super difficult and I should have spent longer, but I took Orgo 2 and was super solid on orgo 2 stuff but was still super shaky about most of orgo 1. So, I studied orgo the same exact way I studied for gen chem: started taking practice exams (averaged 20 on them), then took notes while watching the videos provided, and by September 1st, I was done. I took some more practice tests and kept getting around 21-22. By this time, I was starting to stress hard because I realized I had 4 days left and I needed to complete biology, so I just left it at that and said I’m good with that score. The questions on these practice tests were SUPER like that of DATBooster and were very representative of it. So, studying this orgo chem helped resolidify most of my orgo 2 stuff, but more importantly, Dave helped me fully understand orgo 1, the basics. I had a hard time understanding nucleophiles and electrophiles, acidity, and boiling points. So yeah, all in all, I think their organic chemistry is solid and super useful, boosted me from a 14 to a 25.
September 2nd-September 5th: Biology is the last thing I studied for, until the night of the test. I knew I was screwed because I had such little time, so what I did was I watched all the videos (the videos do not cover everything on the DAT, they are still adding more videos to cover it, hopefully soon because this could have really helped me even more) and skimmed over Feralis Notes and their “Cheat Sheets.” The videos that were available were very good at explaining what they needed to, but they are still releasing more videos to cover everything on the DAT, so for this section, I mainly used the Feralis Notes. I didn’t have so much time so what I did was I went throughout the notes, reading quickly and just highlighting things I thought would be important to remember, writing and memorizing acronyms and their “DAT-Pro-Tips.” Again, I only had 3 days until my test was coming, so I was just speeding through the Feralis notes and taking practice tests. My highest practice test was a 16, but I ended up getting an 18 on the real DAT. I read from other posts that the real DAT had some questions that came word for word from the DATBooster, and I can tell you that this was the case. I was in shock when I was taking the exam and thinking that some of these questions came straight from DATBooster’s practice tests. Overall, if you take the time to study the biology section (like 2-3 weeks), watch the videos and really go through all the Feralis notes, you’ll do much better than I did. I didn’t even utilize their Anki Decks or Quizlets because I was short on time, but I know they are very helpful according to almost everyone I know who has used them.
TLDR: Took the DAT 2 times, didn’t study for the first attempt but used DATBooster for the 2nd attempt, pushed my minimum score from a 14 to above an 18, and boosted my average from an 18 to a 23. Useful if you really want to utilize the full 3 months, I did it for just over a month and got a pretty good grade. Now I’m not saying that using a different program or method will not get you a good score, but if you are serious and looking to give the DAT your all, I’m confident that the DATBooster can really give you that boost and motivation that you need, all for a lower price. Thanks for reading!
Album — Postimages
First Attempt QR - 21
RC - 23
Bio - 15
GC - 17
OC - 14
PAT- 14
TS - 16
AA - 18
Second Attempts QR - 25
RC - 26
Bio - 18
GC - 20
OC - 25
PAT- 22
TS - 20
AA - 23
Background Info:
Currently a senior with a ~3.65 GPA. I’m going to be honest, the first time I was taking the DAT, I did not study a single minute for it (I know, worst decision of my life!). At that time, I was sure I wanted to do dentistry, but so many things in my real life prevented me from studying for the DAT, most of it being a lack of motivation. So, I walked into that testing center and gave it my all, which at the time resulted in me getting an AA of 18. I was devastated and that brought my confidence down a lot. What changed to increase my motivation and confidence from last year to this year?
Two main things helped me get motivated and feeling confident. The first thing that helped me with this was I started working with a dentist who I had come to hold a lot of respect for. My first day at the office, we were getting along very well, and he was teaching me things I didn’t know before and socialized with me a lot. Over time, I had come to admire him because regardless of what happened, he always made sure that everyone was taken care of and that everyone in his care felt good and safe. This really solidified my confidence and helped me get really motivated so I can work on getting into dental school, but there was still the problem that I was not ready for science, especially Organic Chemistry. So, what did I do? Even though it wasn’t required for my degree, nor do any of the dental schools I was interested in requiring it, but I said to myself, if I really want to get into dental school, I must challenge myself.
Organic Chemistry (and OChem 2) are some of the many classes at my school meant to weed out students who are not particularly strong in the field of science, so I thought that it would be perfect. I put myself under a heavy burden by taking 21 credit hours in Spring of 2022, 4 of them coming for Ochem 2. The teacher had a reputation for being rude, terrible, and the worst teacher possible. This could not have been farther from the truth. Organic Chemistry is a very complex subject, so it’s no surprise that the class is super difficult. But this teacher was different, she showed that she really cared more about the students learning rather than grades, and she put so much time into giving the best lecture that while I didn’t get an A in Ochem 1 or Ochem Lab, I got a high A in OChem 2. Getting an A in this class was honestly the spark in me that boosted my motivation even more than before.
The only things I needed to do at this point was find a program to help me study for the DAT, and to sign up for the DAT. I am by no means rich, so money was a huge factor in my decision. I compared different testing programs but the main four I found were: DAT Destroyer, DATBootCamp, Kaplan, and DATBooster. The cheapest option was DATBooster, which was 300 bucks for 3 months of studying (I got it even cheaper with their promo code). So, what did I do? I did further research. The other options were way more expensive and then we have this one for only $300. I was super skeptical, kept looking around at reviews for them. The most common reviews I found was to get Bootcamp and Booster if you have money, but if not, just get Booster as its worth it. So finally, I caved in and bought Booster.
That was in April. I was still taking classes and realized that I am probably not going to start studying for the DAT yet, so I decided to pause my subscription until May 29th (so that it would end August 29th, and I could take the DAT on my 1-year anniversary with my 1st attempt, but as seen, this didn’t work out). So, May 29th comes, and I’m not in the states because I’m overseas visiting my family, and I was there until the end of June. Every single day, I told myself this, “I will just study tomorrow, I’m tired or having a good time right now.” This happened the whole time until I get back to the states. When I came back, I was super tired from the trip and started going back to work, so I kept delaying my studies until July 15th.
Some background info, I tore my ACL and meniscus in the middle of March, and I need surgery for ACL reconstruction and meniscus repair, which I had scheduled for July 15. I thought I was going to leave the hospital and be so pumped up full of meds that I won’t feel pain and can use the time off from work to study for the DAT. Boy was I wrong. I was in max pain for over a week, and I was in no condition to study. So come August 2nd, I’m super bored (I was barely getting out of bed because of the surgery, unable to walk without crutches), so I was like okay, let’s start DAT studying. I went to ADA to apply for a test date, realized September 1st was too early and picked September 6th (next date was September 19th which would have been way too far). then started studying. This was my 2nd time taking the DAT, so I knew all my weak areas, so instead of starting with those, I started with my areas of strength. Reminder that my DATBooster subscription timer kept going, so I had less than a month left to get fully prepared for the DAT. Here is my full study schedule for the DAT and the methods I used to help me:
August 2nd- -August 4th: Took a cumulative practice test, got a 16 on it. Didn’t give it too much thought and went straight to Reading Comprehension, my highest score on the 1st DAT. For this section, all I did was watch the videos provided by DATBooster, and it really helped me pick a new method for this section: rather than just do search and destroy, I started some of their methods on top of search and destroy. I only spent 2 days on this, including taking all their practice tests (averaged 23 on them), which helped me increase my score of 23à26. The format from their practice tests compared to the actual test is super similar so that also helped me a lot.
August 4th-August 7th: Next up is Quantitative Reasoning. Math is my specialty; I am good at it. But for the DAT, while I did recognize I had almost no time, I realized that this is an area I can easily get a huge boost in. So, what I did for this is I went to the videos they provide, and I watched every single video, regardless of if I was 100% solid of it, and I took down notes so my brain can store it even better. I was able to watch the video once for most of the subjects, but I never took a statistics class, so I took my time with those subjects and made sure I was solid. I did all of these within 2 days, and I spent all of August 7th taking practice tests. My scores on initial attempts ranged from 21-26, but I looked at the feedback for those questions and was able to increase my average on them from a 22 to a 26 the 2nd time I took them. I usually only had a couple of minutes to spare so I can recheck my work, but this helped me with the DAT because it had a lot of these types of questions. It was a bit more difficult than the DAT, but it was majorly representative of it, so I would say if you studied it rigorously, you’ve got more than a decent chance at getting a super high grade.
August 8th-August 15th: The next subject I started to study was Perceptual Ability. My original score on the exam was horrible, I got a 14, so I went to my doctor and asked him for help in this field. He told me that this section is like math: the more you practice it, the better you will get at it. I didn’t want to believe it because I felt demotivated after getting a 14, but I said OKAY, I’m going to try it. I watched the videos provided by DATBooster for this section, and the 2 people who made those videos were amazing. They really made it look easy and gave the best techniques and advice possible for each section. I took some practice tests before starting these videos, I spent a whole day taking them and my highest score was a 16. I watched the videos and really listened to what they were saying, without the need for notetaking. It took me 3 days to get through the videos because I was also busy with other things in real life, so I finished them up and started to take practice tests. The real kicker is that DATbooster doesn’t just provide tests, but they also provide a PAT question generator where you can pick any specific type of question on the PAT (Key-Hole, Top-Front-End, etc etc.) and it will generate an unlimited amount of questions for you to practice. So, I didn’t need to keep retaking tests and using excess time on things I am good at/getting good at, I can just specifically go for the type of questions I didn’t feel comfortable with. On some questions, I set the time to 20 seconds because I saw myself only needing that much, and others I set it to 1 minute because I felt like I would need that much time on them. I kept using the generator until August 14th, and I started taking the practice tests. My average across them after practicing and watching the videos became a 20. I was average 20 on what I thought to be super impossible! Come test day, as can be seen from my score, I ended up doing well. My score went from a 14 all the way up to a 22. I was super happy with this. Some advice on this section though would be to seriously practice as much as you can. With the nature of these types of question, it is literally possible to create infinite questions, so you likely won’t encounter the same exact question, but since you’ve practiced, you can just work through it like a puzzle.
After this, I was just seriously lazy and asked the DATBooster customer support to pause my subscription for a couple of days (they paused it until August 21st, so my new subscription end date was September 5th, a day before my exam).
August 21st- August 28th: The next section I wanted to start studying was General Chemistry. I got a 17 on my 1st exam and thought hey, I was good at gen chem, I just need a review. I seriously forgot just how big of a subject general chemistry was, but luckily, DATBooster had all the videos I needed in order to understand and remember general chemistry (shoutout to Dave for both Gen chem and Ochem!). So, the way I did this was I took 1 single practice test and got a 14 on it, and I was just surprised at how poorly I did. So, I realized that I’m probably going to take a lot of time on this subject. After all, the videos for these sections covered every single topic in general chemistry, ranging from atomic mass to acid-base chemistry to laboratory equipment. They covered every single topic and did so good enough. Over the course of the next few days, I just kept watching the videos provided, taking notes, and answering the study notes questions provided with each video and seeing if I understand the subject good enough. I then started taking practice tests thinking I was ready, and I was constantly getting around 20. This was good enough for me and I stopped taking tests. Overall, many of the topics I encountered on the practice tests were on my test, but I definitely underestimated gen chem and wound up getting 20, even though it’s still up from 17 on my first DAT.
So, for general chemistry, this score was good enough for me, but I know I didn’t spend enough time practicing it which led to a low score. My reasoning for not spending this time is that I realized I still have to do organic chemistry and biology (which I know I was in for a tough ride for). So, I cut my studying short for Gen chem and said whatever, I’m good with getting a 20.
August 29th-September 1st: I spent these days studying organic chemistry. I know organic chemistry is super difficult and I should have spent longer, but I took Orgo 2 and was super solid on orgo 2 stuff but was still super shaky about most of orgo 1. So, I studied orgo the same exact way I studied for gen chem: started taking practice exams (averaged 20 on them), then took notes while watching the videos provided, and by September 1st, I was done. I took some more practice tests and kept getting around 21-22. By this time, I was starting to stress hard because I realized I had 4 days left and I needed to complete biology, so I just left it at that and said I’m good with that score. The questions on these practice tests were SUPER like that of DATBooster and were very representative of it. So, studying this orgo chem helped resolidify most of my orgo 2 stuff, but more importantly, Dave helped me fully understand orgo 1, the basics. I had a hard time understanding nucleophiles and electrophiles, acidity, and boiling points. So yeah, all in all, I think their organic chemistry is solid and super useful, boosted me from a 14 to a 25.
September 2nd-September 5th: Biology is the last thing I studied for, until the night of the test. I knew I was screwed because I had such little time, so what I did was I watched all the videos (the videos do not cover everything on the DAT, they are still adding more videos to cover it, hopefully soon because this could have really helped me even more) and skimmed over Feralis Notes and their “Cheat Sheets.” The videos that were available were very good at explaining what they needed to, but they are still releasing more videos to cover everything on the DAT, so for this section, I mainly used the Feralis Notes. I didn’t have so much time so what I did was I went throughout the notes, reading quickly and just highlighting things I thought would be important to remember, writing and memorizing acronyms and their “DAT-Pro-Tips.” Again, I only had 3 days until my test was coming, so I was just speeding through the Feralis notes and taking practice tests. My highest practice test was a 16, but I ended up getting an 18 on the real DAT. I read from other posts that the real DAT had some questions that came word for word from the DATBooster, and I can tell you that this was the case. I was in shock when I was taking the exam and thinking that some of these questions came straight from DATBooster’s practice tests. Overall, if you take the time to study the biology section (like 2-3 weeks), watch the videos and really go through all the Feralis notes, you’ll do much better than I did. I didn’t even utilize their Anki Decks or Quizlets because I was short on time, but I know they are very helpful according to almost everyone I know who has used them.
TLDR: Took the DAT 2 times, didn’t study for the first attempt but used DATBooster for the 2nd attempt, pushed my minimum score from a 14 to above an 18, and boosted my average from an 18 to a 23. Useful if you really want to utilize the full 3 months, I did it for just over a month and got a pretty good grade. Now I’m not saying that using a different program or method will not get you a good score, but if you are serious and looking to give the DAT your all, I’m confident that the DATBooster can really give you that boost and motivation that you need, all for a lower price. Thanks for reading!
