stephnwin247
New Member
- Joined
- Jan 29, 2022
- Messages
- 1
- Reaction score
- 3
DAT Breakdown: 24 AA - 24 TS (First Take)
Hey y’all!! I just took the DAT last Friday (Jan 21) and just wanted to share my experience with you guys! (I honestly only expected a 20 and couldn’t believe that I somehow got a 24 😭)
First off, here are my scores:
PAT - 19
QR - 24
RC - 22
BIO - 23
GC - 25
OC - 24
TS - 24
AA - 24
I started studying for the DAT last summer using DAT Bootcamp, but I ended up feeling too overwhelmed when school started again and decided to postpone my test to after winter break. During the fall semester (late Aug - mid Dec), I only focused on doing well in classes and didn’t touch any of the DAT materials at all 😐 So when winter break began, I basically had to study everything all over again because I barely remembered anything. I only had roughly a month (34 days to be exact) to study for the DAT so undoubtedly, it was very stressful as I didn’t think I would have enough time to go through all the materials as well as take all the practice tests. But welp, I didn’t have a choice but to really push myself everyday as I usually get burned out and distracted really quickly 😢. Also, I decided to try out DAT Booster this time as I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about it. Plus, it’s so much cheaper!! Anyway, here’s my breakdown!
IN GENERAL: I spent the first 1.5 week on QR, GC, and some PAT/RC, 1 week on OC, and the last 1.5 week on just Bio! I spent roughly 6-8 hours to study everyday, and 8-10 hours for Bio. Since I’ve always had a hard time retaining bio information, I wanted to study it last so that the materials were still somewhat fresh in my mind by the time I had to take the test. I decided to start with QR and GC because I was the most confident in these two sections. For this reason, I thought it would be fine for me to start these 2 sections early and review them a few days before the test day without risking forgetting about some stuff. So in brief, I started with the sections I was most confident in, then medium confident in, and lastly least confident in lol 😂 Two days before the actual test, I went through all of the practice questions and materials again to make sure that I have everything fresh in my mind.
PAT (19): I honestly didn’t do a lot of practice for this section just because I was so short on time. As for me, I usually do decently well on cube counting, angle ranking, and hole punching, so on the actual test, I made sure to ace these in order to make up for the sections that I was not confident in (Keyhole, TFE). I think it’s better to make sure that you get all of the questions whose section you are confident in right than spending so much time trying to figure out the answers for the sections that you struggle with. Also if you have time to practice PAT, I highly encourage you to watch the videos of every practice question in order to see how they approach the problems! I found this to be super helpful because a hard-looking question could actually be super simple if you know how to properly approach it!
QR (24 - Average Booster: 23.9): Math has always been my strong suit so it didn’t really give me too much of a hard time. After quickly going through the booster formula cheat sheets, I decided to jump straight into the practice tests. I marked the ones that I got wrong/took a while to figure out/not certain about and went back to them a few days before the exam day. I also made flashcards of all the geometric formulas and conversion factors and went through them everyday (in the beginning) and every other day (towards the end). The way that I went about taking the test was that after spending about 5-10 sec to read the problem, if it seemed a bit complicated or if I couldn’t figure out immediately how to tackle it, I marked, skipped, and went back to it later. I definitely think this is a very good strategy to make sure that you get through all the easy questions without wasting time and feeling anxious as you spend a bit too much time on one hard question. I also encourage watching the videos for medium/hard questions to see different approaches to solving a problem.
RC (22): Just like the PAT section, I didn’t really do a lot of practice for this section. I read through all of the strategies posted on Booster as well as other websites and decided which ones I wanted to try. Then, I applied those strategies on the practice tests to see which one worked best for me. As for me, I just went with the most traditional strategy ever. To begin, I read the first question (stay if it’s an informational question, move to the next question if it’s an application question), then start reading the whole passage and highlight what I think it’s important, then answer the question when I see the answer, and keep doing this for the rest of the informational questions. I then go back to the application questions and quickly skim through the passage again if needed (usually at this point, you already have a good idea of what the passage is about). I tried this strategy on 2 practice tests and felt like it worked for me so I just decided to go with it.
BIO (23 - Average Booster: 18.6): Guys, please get DAT Booster because I swear I saw several similar if not identical actual test questions to the practice tests. I kinda always doubted when people said this until I experienced it myself 😭 I would say the actual test was certainly easier than the Booster practice tests (as you could see how I jumped from a 19 to a 23). I did have a few taxonomy questions but those were just mostly the basic concepts, not anything too detailed. In my opinion, the whole exam was breadth over depth so despite feeling like I already forgot about half of the stuff just a day before the actual exam, I still didn’t do too bad on it 😂 So as I said, I spent the last 1.5 week to study for Bio. I started by reading all of the notes and making sure that I understood what I just read. For each chapter, I spent an entire day to read and study for that chapter (except for the chapter about the body systems because it’s super long and took me 2 days to finish it). After I was done with that, I started binge taking all the practice tests, and then went back to reviewing the stuff that I already forgot about. I had my exam at 8am, and actually woke up extra early just to skim through all the bio practice test questions again so keep them fresh in my mind 😂 so glad that I did that!
GC (25 - Average Booster: 22): Since I was quite confident in this section, I only spent 2 days to review all the materials before taking the practice tests. I then marked and reviewed some questions that I struggled with a few days before the test day. I also made a few flashcards for the neutral anions/cations and soluble/insoluble ions and went through them everyday (in the beginning) and every other day (towards the end) to remember them. As for the formulas, I kinda already remembered them by heart so I didn’t make any flashcards for them. The actual exam was once again easier in my opinion and had a few similar formats to the booster practice tests.
OC (24 - Average Booster: 20.7): I did pretty badly in Orgo 1/2 so this section certainly gave me a lot of anxiety. I spent a week studying for OC (studied and reviewed the materials for the first 2 days, then started taking practice tests and kept reviewing the materials/reactions everyday for a week). I also made flashcards of different spectroscopies, OC lab tests, weak/strong nucleophiles/bases, and meta/ortho/para directors (weak/strong). After I was done with OC and started studying for bio, I still kept reviewing the reactions and flashcards everyday to not forget them. Also, there’s one strategy that I used for a lot of reaction questions. Sometimes the way a compound looks structurally might intimidate and confuse you, so I recommend identifying the reactant/product (ex: as an alcohol, a ketone, etc.) and trying to figure out what kind of reagent(s) could, for example, turn an alcohol into a ketone. In other words, look for the key part instead of the molecule as a whole.
CONCLUSION: I definitely think Booster has prepared me super well for the DAT. It was super representative of the actual test and after taking all of its practice tests, the actual test felt so much easier!! I only had a month to prepare for it so I honestly just kinda made my own schedule and tried to stick with it. In my opinion, if you feel like you’re having a hard time following the booster/bootcamp schedule, you should just trust yourself and do what you think it’s right and needed for you. Don’t feel the need to stick to a specific schedule just because everyone else’s also using it. Remember, we move at our own pace!! I did it. You guys got this too!!! 🙌🏻
Feel free to message me/ask me anything! 😊
Hey y’all!! I just took the DAT last Friday (Jan 21) and just wanted to share my experience with you guys! (I honestly only expected a 20 and couldn’t believe that I somehow got a 24 😭)
First off, here are my scores:
PAT - 19
QR - 24
RC - 22
BIO - 23
GC - 25
OC - 24
TS - 24
AA - 24
I started studying for the DAT last summer using DAT Bootcamp, but I ended up feeling too overwhelmed when school started again and decided to postpone my test to after winter break. During the fall semester (late Aug - mid Dec), I only focused on doing well in classes and didn’t touch any of the DAT materials at all 😐 So when winter break began, I basically had to study everything all over again because I barely remembered anything. I only had roughly a month (34 days to be exact) to study for the DAT so undoubtedly, it was very stressful as I didn’t think I would have enough time to go through all the materials as well as take all the practice tests. But welp, I didn’t have a choice but to really push myself everyday as I usually get burned out and distracted really quickly 😢. Also, I decided to try out DAT Booster this time as I’ve heard a lot of good reviews about it. Plus, it’s so much cheaper!! Anyway, here’s my breakdown!
IN GENERAL: I spent the first 1.5 week on QR, GC, and some PAT/RC, 1 week on OC, and the last 1.5 week on just Bio! I spent roughly 6-8 hours to study everyday, and 8-10 hours for Bio. Since I’ve always had a hard time retaining bio information, I wanted to study it last so that the materials were still somewhat fresh in my mind by the time I had to take the test. I decided to start with QR and GC because I was the most confident in these two sections. For this reason, I thought it would be fine for me to start these 2 sections early and review them a few days before the test day without risking forgetting about some stuff. So in brief, I started with the sections I was most confident in, then medium confident in, and lastly least confident in lol 😂 Two days before the actual test, I went through all of the practice questions and materials again to make sure that I have everything fresh in my mind.
PAT (19): I honestly didn’t do a lot of practice for this section just because I was so short on time. As for me, I usually do decently well on cube counting, angle ranking, and hole punching, so on the actual test, I made sure to ace these in order to make up for the sections that I was not confident in (Keyhole, TFE). I think it’s better to make sure that you get all of the questions whose section you are confident in right than spending so much time trying to figure out the answers for the sections that you struggle with. Also if you have time to practice PAT, I highly encourage you to watch the videos of every practice question in order to see how they approach the problems! I found this to be super helpful because a hard-looking question could actually be super simple if you know how to properly approach it!
QR (24 - Average Booster: 23.9): Math has always been my strong suit so it didn’t really give me too much of a hard time. After quickly going through the booster formula cheat sheets, I decided to jump straight into the practice tests. I marked the ones that I got wrong/took a while to figure out/not certain about and went back to them a few days before the exam day. I also made flashcards of all the geometric formulas and conversion factors and went through them everyday (in the beginning) and every other day (towards the end). The way that I went about taking the test was that after spending about 5-10 sec to read the problem, if it seemed a bit complicated or if I couldn’t figure out immediately how to tackle it, I marked, skipped, and went back to it later. I definitely think this is a very good strategy to make sure that you get through all the easy questions without wasting time and feeling anxious as you spend a bit too much time on one hard question. I also encourage watching the videos for medium/hard questions to see different approaches to solving a problem.
RC (22): Just like the PAT section, I didn’t really do a lot of practice for this section. I read through all of the strategies posted on Booster as well as other websites and decided which ones I wanted to try. Then, I applied those strategies on the practice tests to see which one worked best for me. As for me, I just went with the most traditional strategy ever. To begin, I read the first question (stay if it’s an informational question, move to the next question if it’s an application question), then start reading the whole passage and highlight what I think it’s important, then answer the question when I see the answer, and keep doing this for the rest of the informational questions. I then go back to the application questions and quickly skim through the passage again if needed (usually at this point, you already have a good idea of what the passage is about). I tried this strategy on 2 practice tests and felt like it worked for me so I just decided to go with it.
BIO (23 - Average Booster: 18.6): Guys, please get DAT Booster because I swear I saw several similar if not identical actual test questions to the practice tests. I kinda always doubted when people said this until I experienced it myself 😭 I would say the actual test was certainly easier than the Booster practice tests (as you could see how I jumped from a 19 to a 23). I did have a few taxonomy questions but those were just mostly the basic concepts, not anything too detailed. In my opinion, the whole exam was breadth over depth so despite feeling like I already forgot about half of the stuff just a day before the actual exam, I still didn’t do too bad on it 😂 So as I said, I spent the last 1.5 week to study for Bio. I started by reading all of the notes and making sure that I understood what I just read. For each chapter, I spent an entire day to read and study for that chapter (except for the chapter about the body systems because it’s super long and took me 2 days to finish it). After I was done with that, I started binge taking all the practice tests, and then went back to reviewing the stuff that I already forgot about. I had my exam at 8am, and actually woke up extra early just to skim through all the bio practice test questions again so keep them fresh in my mind 😂 so glad that I did that!
GC (25 - Average Booster: 22): Since I was quite confident in this section, I only spent 2 days to review all the materials before taking the practice tests. I then marked and reviewed some questions that I struggled with a few days before the test day. I also made a few flashcards for the neutral anions/cations and soluble/insoluble ions and went through them everyday (in the beginning) and every other day (towards the end) to remember them. As for the formulas, I kinda already remembered them by heart so I didn’t make any flashcards for them. The actual exam was once again easier in my opinion and had a few similar formats to the booster practice tests.
OC (24 - Average Booster: 20.7): I did pretty badly in Orgo 1/2 so this section certainly gave me a lot of anxiety. I spent a week studying for OC (studied and reviewed the materials for the first 2 days, then started taking practice tests and kept reviewing the materials/reactions everyday for a week). I also made flashcards of different spectroscopies, OC lab tests, weak/strong nucleophiles/bases, and meta/ortho/para directors (weak/strong). After I was done with OC and started studying for bio, I still kept reviewing the reactions and flashcards everyday to not forget them. Also, there’s one strategy that I used for a lot of reaction questions. Sometimes the way a compound looks structurally might intimidate and confuse you, so I recommend identifying the reactant/product (ex: as an alcohol, a ketone, etc.) and trying to figure out what kind of reagent(s) could, for example, turn an alcohol into a ketone. In other words, look for the key part instead of the molecule as a whole.
CONCLUSION: I definitely think Booster has prepared me super well for the DAT. It was super representative of the actual test and after taking all of its practice tests, the actual test felt so much easier!! I only had a month to prepare for it so I honestly just kinda made my own schedule and tried to stick with it. In my opinion, if you feel like you’re having a hard time following the booster/bootcamp schedule, you should just trust yourself and do what you think it’s right and needed for you. Don’t feel the need to stick to a specific schedule just because everyone else’s also using it. Remember, we move at our own pace!! I did it. You guys got this too!!! 🙌🏻
Feel free to message me/ask me anything! 😊
