Hey everybody I just took my DAT July 24th and I thought I’d post a breakdown since I couldn’t find many breakdowns with a successful short study timeline (<5 weeks). If you have any questions feel free to reach out
Scores:
QR - 22
RC - 19
BIO - 24
GC - 24
OC - 30
TS - 25
PAT - 21
AA - 24
Background:
Currently an incoming senior human bio major with a 3.89 cGPA 3.94 sGPA.
Study Resources Used:
DAT Booster
I was considering between this and Bootcamp and I chose Booster and I am pretty happy with my decision. I used DAT Booster mostly for practice tests. I think the biggest difference between Booster and bootcamp was the accuracy of the biology tests. Both bootcamp and booster have just as accurate Gen chem and ochem but the bio is a bit different between the two sites. On my bio tests there were so many repeats maybe around 10. There was only one question that I was unprepared for everything else was covered and familiar. However, even tho booster has a better bio question bank the bootcamp gen chem and ochem videos by Dr. Mike are great to understand the material and are much better than the booster videos.
DAT Bootcamp
I used my friend’s left over bootcamp for the last 8 or 9 days leading up to my DAT and I just used it for the practice tests. Like I said earlier all tests are pretty similar to the DAT except booster just beats them on bio. I still really like the resource and think it was really important in my score. With the extra practice tests I was able to take an extra gen chem, ochem, and bio test every day leading up to my test so it just kept everything really fresh.
Youtube: Chad’s Prep, Leah4sci, Organic Chemistry Tutor
I used youtube for most of my learning except bio. I watched all of Chad’s prep’s 2021 gen chem series for gen chem. I watched a mix of chad’s prep, leah4sci, and organic chemistry tutor for ochem to refresh on certain reactions I forgot or just didn’t learn in school. Usually chad’s prep>leah>ochem tutor but on certain videos/ochem topics the ranking changes.
Time Management:
Since I had a short timeline (a bit less than 5 weeks) time management was extremely important. I took a single test for each section before I studied just to gauge what were my strong points and weak points. If you are going to study in a short period of time you have to focus on what you are weak on, you really can’t follow a cookie cutter study timeline. It doesn’t make sense to evenly spread your time on a section you are averaging 22s on and a section you are scoring 13s on, like in my case lol. I notice a lot of people like to spend a lot of time studying what they are good at and avoid what they’re bad at to make themselves feel better/more confident and this can be hard to notice in yourself sometimes so I recommend studying with a partner that can hold you accountable. Personally, I had done decent on my diagnostics except Gen Chem and bio (I got a 15 or 16 on my first gen chem test and a 13 on my first bio test- i got a 30% which I think should be lower than a 13 but 13 is as low as it goes lol) so I knew that’s what I had to focus on. I initially studied around 8 hours a day for the first two weeks but it was pretty inconsistent like 4-6 days a week, then I studied more consistently 8 or 10 hours a day in week 3, and after my friend took his test and I was alone I was studying 12 hours a day during the weekdays and around 8 hours a day on the weekends. I was really lucky to not have many responsibilities, I think if you have a short timeline you really can’t have a lot of responsibilities for this test lol at least if you want to score pretty high. Even though I studied for 5 weeks if you have less time or the same time and responsibilities I still wouldn’t worry too much I think it would be possible to score a 20 or 21 in either cases if you were really focused. Another thing is anybody can do this if you put in the time, study smart and study a lot. If you spam practice questions and put in the time to understand what you got wrong, why, and why all the answer options are wrong it’s almost impossible to not do well lol. Especially with the DAT being so similar to a lot of the practice material out there.
The way I studied for most sections was quickly binging through the material of each section one at a time then focusing the majority of my time on practice tests and problems. I think the biggest thing for most standardized tests is spamming practice problems, there’s only so much they can ask you on the test and most of it is extremely surface level.
The Exam:
I would recommend some light studying the day before the exam if you are studying on a short timeline and not studying on a long timeline. The worst thing that can happen is you are super prepared for the test but you get fatigued from studying hard the day before and you have a slow day the day of the exam. The day before I reviewed problems I had missed on older tests, went over the super specific info you just have to memorize and cant understand, and did some light studying. The biggest thing is timing, not just going too slow but going too fast also. For me I was initially going too slow, then as I understood the material well I started speeding up with around 15 minutes extra on some sections but my score wasn’t improving even with the extra time to review. I noticed I was making so many more dumb mistakes and these would be on questions I didn’t mark and I thought were easy so they were hard to catch after I finished my test, so the biggest thing for me was not going too fast where I finished 15 minutes early but trying to finish at a medium pace and making sure I am reading the answer options and question every word of the question.
Bio (24): This section was the most similar to booster, with at least 10 repeats and only one that was completely new to me. Bio was initially my worst section, I scored a 13 on my first test and didn’t remember anything from my bio classes so I spent the majority of my time on this section. I spent around 7-10 days reading over all of the chapter notes and doing some question bank questions. Also I took the bio crash course, it was super convenient for me because it was the day after I finished reading all my notes. I couldn’t recommend it enough honestly, I think it was the most responsible for me doing decent on this section. If you have the money to take it, take it. He covers everything high yield, goes over tons of practice questions similar to the test, and he just connected all the dots for me after reading what seemed like gibberish while learning. After briefly going over the material I spent all of my time on practice tests, more time than I spent learning. I finished learning bio and started taking practice tests 7 days before my exam lol. I took 3-4 bio tests everyday and 1 the day before my DAT. I tried to take as many bootcamp and booster tests I could with the week I had. My score started from an 18 on the first day after review to averaging 24-25 and getting a high of 26 by the end of the week. After each practice test I reviewed every question I wasn’t at least 80% confident on and understood every answer choice. If I still wasn’t confident on the topic I’d find a short video on it <10min to better understand it.
GC(24): I’m not sure what happened here GC was actually my highest scoring section, higher than ochem. I probably just wasn’t careful enough and made some dumb mistakes. This was about the same difficulty as booster/bootcamp. To study I finished Chad’s prep gen chem quickly to learn then spent most of my time on practice tests, reviewing every answer and answer choice. Here bootcamp beats booster just because of Dr. Mike’s review of questions on practice tests. The key to this section is just spam questions. If you just understand the material well its good enough for maybe a 21 or 22 but you need to spam questions for a really high score so you expose yourself to all of the strangely specific or weird conceptual questions that might show up. If you want more practice for specific/weird questions the end of the question bank on booster usually has some. Specifically, I binged Chad’s videos for gc in less than a week then spammed tests, in the beginning it was 1-2 a day then spacing it out by a few days while I was studying other sections, scoring around 20. The week before the test I took one everyday to finish the bootcamp tests and ended up scoring 26-30.
OC(30): I felt pretty good on this section except for one that was actually pretty hard but I’m happy I got it right. I felt pretty good about ochem overall before the DAT just from school so I didn’t spend too much time on it. I had the core principles down and most reactions so I just had to learn the chemical test sheet (Jones test, Lucas, etc.) and learned some reactions, using chad’s prep, that I wasn’t confident on or didn’t learn in school. The biggest thing for this section is understanding everything, I never used any mnemonic or any other shortcuts, I recommend just watching chad’s prep and understanding why everything happens the way it happens and after that it’s easier to piece together the how. If you are crunched on time try to at least understand the principles for Substitution/Elimination rxns and those aldol and claisen reactions. Also make sure you know your IUPAC, prepare for the toughest questions you can get.
PAT(21): This section was much easier than bootcamp or booster. I was scoring around 19 on booster and bootcamp. I recommend just trying to not fall behind on time. To study, just make sure you focus on what you are weak on and take the practice tests, they’re more representative than the generators or question banks.
Break: Take the break lol. Even if you feel good now RC really tires you out and you gotta be sharp for QR.
RC(19): This was much harder than the booster or bootcamp tests for me. I was scoring between 21-24 on practice tests and even 26-28 on some of those question banks. Since I was scoring good I didn’t spend much time on it which I regret now obviously lol. For RC, just pray you dont get hard articles lol. I think the best way to study is to take every question bank for RC without answering them, record all of the averages, and take the RC sections with the lowest averages just to develop your strategy and time management in case you do encounter a hard article. Since most of the time any strategy will work for easier articles and time management is unimportant for easier articles. Suffer while you’re practicing, not on the test like me lol. That's for strategy but for reading comprehension skills in general that should just come overtime from reading or you can read science daily articles.
QR(22): Here I think I rushed this section a bit. I had gotten pretty consistent 25s on the practice tests and I heard it was going to be easier on the real test so I thought I was good lol. I have an issue that I noticed on one test and tried to correct it but my issue here was once I was taking timed tests I was going too fast since I was so worried about time that I would make dumb mistakes and during this test I finished around 12 minutes early which is too fast for me so I knew I messed up somewhere. To study for this section I recommend taking untimed practice tests in the beginning and taking your time on every question trying to figure out and understand every question you’re going through. Also same for this section try to understand everything and memorize the least you can. To go over your tests the videos were pretty decent but a lot of the time they just gave a formula to memorize so I would use bing AI and give the question and ask to explain how to understand this question intuitively and it would explain it well and how to solve questions by understanding it without a formula, so I didn’t memorize any probability formulas, area/volume formulas, etc. because of this.
At the end of the day, just work hard and study as much as you can and that’s all that you can do. The rest is out of your control. It seems like a lot and I didnt think I’d be able to study as much as I did but take it one step at a time and you’ll get in rhythm: put on your shoes, pack a laptop, head to the library, study for just an hour then if you end up studying more then even better. Focus on your weaknesses, don’t go too fast or too slow, and try to understand and not memorize. It’s not easy but if you study and get confident on your practice tests you won’t have anything to worry about on test day, it’s the same thing you’ve been doing over and over and over again. I hope this breakdown helps you in your studies. You got this!
Scores:
QR - 22
RC - 19
BIO - 24
GC - 24
OC - 30
TS - 25
PAT - 21
AA - 24
Background:
Currently an incoming senior human bio major with a 3.89 cGPA 3.94 sGPA.
Study Resources Used:
DAT Booster
I was considering between this and Bootcamp and I chose Booster and I am pretty happy with my decision. I used DAT Booster mostly for practice tests. I think the biggest difference between Booster and bootcamp was the accuracy of the biology tests. Both bootcamp and booster have just as accurate Gen chem and ochem but the bio is a bit different between the two sites. On my bio tests there were so many repeats maybe around 10. There was only one question that I was unprepared for everything else was covered and familiar. However, even tho booster has a better bio question bank the bootcamp gen chem and ochem videos by Dr. Mike are great to understand the material and are much better than the booster videos.
DAT Bootcamp
I used my friend’s left over bootcamp for the last 8 or 9 days leading up to my DAT and I just used it for the practice tests. Like I said earlier all tests are pretty similar to the DAT except booster just beats them on bio. I still really like the resource and think it was really important in my score. With the extra practice tests I was able to take an extra gen chem, ochem, and bio test every day leading up to my test so it just kept everything really fresh.
Youtube: Chad’s Prep, Leah4sci, Organic Chemistry Tutor
I used youtube for most of my learning except bio. I watched all of Chad’s prep’s 2021 gen chem series for gen chem. I watched a mix of chad’s prep, leah4sci, and organic chemistry tutor for ochem to refresh on certain reactions I forgot or just didn’t learn in school. Usually chad’s prep>leah>ochem tutor but on certain videos/ochem topics the ranking changes.
Time Management:
Since I had a short timeline (a bit less than 5 weeks) time management was extremely important. I took a single test for each section before I studied just to gauge what were my strong points and weak points. If you are going to study in a short period of time you have to focus on what you are weak on, you really can’t follow a cookie cutter study timeline. It doesn’t make sense to evenly spread your time on a section you are averaging 22s on and a section you are scoring 13s on, like in my case lol. I notice a lot of people like to spend a lot of time studying what they are good at and avoid what they’re bad at to make themselves feel better/more confident and this can be hard to notice in yourself sometimes so I recommend studying with a partner that can hold you accountable. Personally, I had done decent on my diagnostics except Gen Chem and bio (I got a 15 or 16 on my first gen chem test and a 13 on my first bio test- i got a 30% which I think should be lower than a 13 but 13 is as low as it goes lol) so I knew that’s what I had to focus on. I initially studied around 8 hours a day for the first two weeks but it was pretty inconsistent like 4-6 days a week, then I studied more consistently 8 or 10 hours a day in week 3, and after my friend took his test and I was alone I was studying 12 hours a day during the weekdays and around 8 hours a day on the weekends. I was really lucky to not have many responsibilities, I think if you have a short timeline you really can’t have a lot of responsibilities for this test lol at least if you want to score pretty high. Even though I studied for 5 weeks if you have less time or the same time and responsibilities I still wouldn’t worry too much I think it would be possible to score a 20 or 21 in either cases if you were really focused. Another thing is anybody can do this if you put in the time, study smart and study a lot. If you spam practice questions and put in the time to understand what you got wrong, why, and why all the answer options are wrong it’s almost impossible to not do well lol. Especially with the DAT being so similar to a lot of the practice material out there.
The way I studied for most sections was quickly binging through the material of each section one at a time then focusing the majority of my time on practice tests and problems. I think the biggest thing for most standardized tests is spamming practice problems, there’s only so much they can ask you on the test and most of it is extremely surface level.
The Exam:
I would recommend some light studying the day before the exam if you are studying on a short timeline and not studying on a long timeline. The worst thing that can happen is you are super prepared for the test but you get fatigued from studying hard the day before and you have a slow day the day of the exam. The day before I reviewed problems I had missed on older tests, went over the super specific info you just have to memorize and cant understand, and did some light studying. The biggest thing is timing, not just going too slow but going too fast also. For me I was initially going too slow, then as I understood the material well I started speeding up with around 15 minutes extra on some sections but my score wasn’t improving even with the extra time to review. I noticed I was making so many more dumb mistakes and these would be on questions I didn’t mark and I thought were easy so they were hard to catch after I finished my test, so the biggest thing for me was not going too fast where I finished 15 minutes early but trying to finish at a medium pace and making sure I am reading the answer options and question every word of the question.
Bio (24): This section was the most similar to booster, with at least 10 repeats and only one that was completely new to me. Bio was initially my worst section, I scored a 13 on my first test and didn’t remember anything from my bio classes so I spent the majority of my time on this section. I spent around 7-10 days reading over all of the chapter notes and doing some question bank questions. Also I took the bio crash course, it was super convenient for me because it was the day after I finished reading all my notes. I couldn’t recommend it enough honestly, I think it was the most responsible for me doing decent on this section. If you have the money to take it, take it. He covers everything high yield, goes over tons of practice questions similar to the test, and he just connected all the dots for me after reading what seemed like gibberish while learning. After briefly going over the material I spent all of my time on practice tests, more time than I spent learning. I finished learning bio and started taking practice tests 7 days before my exam lol. I took 3-4 bio tests everyday and 1 the day before my DAT. I tried to take as many bootcamp and booster tests I could with the week I had. My score started from an 18 on the first day after review to averaging 24-25 and getting a high of 26 by the end of the week. After each practice test I reviewed every question I wasn’t at least 80% confident on and understood every answer choice. If I still wasn’t confident on the topic I’d find a short video on it <10min to better understand it.
GC(24): I’m not sure what happened here GC was actually my highest scoring section, higher than ochem. I probably just wasn’t careful enough and made some dumb mistakes. This was about the same difficulty as booster/bootcamp. To study I finished Chad’s prep gen chem quickly to learn then spent most of my time on practice tests, reviewing every answer and answer choice. Here bootcamp beats booster just because of Dr. Mike’s review of questions on practice tests. The key to this section is just spam questions. If you just understand the material well its good enough for maybe a 21 or 22 but you need to spam questions for a really high score so you expose yourself to all of the strangely specific or weird conceptual questions that might show up. If you want more practice for specific/weird questions the end of the question bank on booster usually has some. Specifically, I binged Chad’s videos for gc in less than a week then spammed tests, in the beginning it was 1-2 a day then spacing it out by a few days while I was studying other sections, scoring around 20. The week before the test I took one everyday to finish the bootcamp tests and ended up scoring 26-30.
OC(30): I felt pretty good on this section except for one that was actually pretty hard but I’m happy I got it right. I felt pretty good about ochem overall before the DAT just from school so I didn’t spend too much time on it. I had the core principles down and most reactions so I just had to learn the chemical test sheet (Jones test, Lucas, etc.) and learned some reactions, using chad’s prep, that I wasn’t confident on or didn’t learn in school. The biggest thing for this section is understanding everything, I never used any mnemonic or any other shortcuts, I recommend just watching chad’s prep and understanding why everything happens the way it happens and after that it’s easier to piece together the how. If you are crunched on time try to at least understand the principles for Substitution/Elimination rxns and those aldol and claisen reactions. Also make sure you know your IUPAC, prepare for the toughest questions you can get.
PAT(21): This section was much easier than bootcamp or booster. I was scoring around 19 on booster and bootcamp. I recommend just trying to not fall behind on time. To study, just make sure you focus on what you are weak on and take the practice tests, they’re more representative than the generators or question banks.
Break: Take the break lol. Even if you feel good now RC really tires you out and you gotta be sharp for QR.
RC(19): This was much harder than the booster or bootcamp tests for me. I was scoring between 21-24 on practice tests and even 26-28 on some of those question banks. Since I was scoring good I didn’t spend much time on it which I regret now obviously lol. For RC, just pray you dont get hard articles lol. I think the best way to study is to take every question bank for RC without answering them, record all of the averages, and take the RC sections with the lowest averages just to develop your strategy and time management in case you do encounter a hard article. Since most of the time any strategy will work for easier articles and time management is unimportant for easier articles. Suffer while you’re practicing, not on the test like me lol. That's for strategy but for reading comprehension skills in general that should just come overtime from reading or you can read science daily articles.
QR(22): Here I think I rushed this section a bit. I had gotten pretty consistent 25s on the practice tests and I heard it was going to be easier on the real test so I thought I was good lol. I have an issue that I noticed on one test and tried to correct it but my issue here was once I was taking timed tests I was going too fast since I was so worried about time that I would make dumb mistakes and during this test I finished around 12 minutes early which is too fast for me so I knew I messed up somewhere. To study for this section I recommend taking untimed practice tests in the beginning and taking your time on every question trying to figure out and understand every question you’re going through. Also same for this section try to understand everything and memorize the least you can. To go over your tests the videos were pretty decent but a lot of the time they just gave a formula to memorize so I would use bing AI and give the question and ask to explain how to understand this question intuitively and it would explain it well and how to solve questions by understanding it without a formula, so I didn’t memorize any probability formulas, area/volume formulas, etc. because of this.
At the end of the day, just work hard and study as much as you can and that’s all that you can do. The rest is out of your control. It seems like a lot and I didnt think I’d be able to study as much as I did but take it one step at a time and you’ll get in rhythm: put on your shoes, pack a laptop, head to the library, study for just an hour then if you end up studying more then even better. Focus on your weaknesses, don’t go too fast or too slow, and try to understand and not memorize. It’s not easy but if you study and get confident on your practice tests you won’t have anything to worry about on test day, it’s the same thing you’ve been doing over and over and over again. I hope this breakdown helps you in your studies. You got this!
