Hello everyone!
I thought I’d write a breakdown of how I got the DAT score that I did since the user laffytaffy19 (studentdoctornetwork) wrote a similar breakdown and really helped me understand what I needed to do to get a good grade on the DAT. I highly recommend reading over their score breakdown! I liked their breakdown so much because we were very similar in the fact that I only truly studied for about ~5 weeks (my winter break).
Scores:
TS – 30
Bio – 27
OC – 30
GC – 30
PAT – 21
RC – 21
QR – 23
AA – 26
Background:
Currently a senior (graduating in 3 years) with a 4.0 GPA
Materials Used:
I would like to break this section up in terms of usefulness, but I don’t think I should. I used to DATBooster and Anki. But, I used them together. Using just one without the other would have been meaningless, but I’ll explain how I used both individually.
Anki – Anki was so important for me to drill the information into my head. It’s one thing to read how the circulatory system works, and it’s another thing making flashcards and forcing yourself to repeatedly recall that information in great detail. I believe that if you are going to use anki then you should make your own flashcards. Making your own flashcards forces you to determine what information is valuable and what isn’t, and you can modify these flashcards if they lack detail as you continue studying. For me, my final flashcards (which came out to be ~1300 flashcards) were heavily modified from the original flashcards I created when I first read through Feralis’s Biology notes. I updated my flashcards after I completed bio bits questions and practice exams, and drilled in the details that I was missing to ensure I never made the same mistake again.
DATBooster – All I can say is it was $500 well spent. DATBooster provides you with the whole package. All the questions from biology to math were incredibly representative of what the actual DAT tested. It isn’t only that DATBooster prepared me by expanding my knowledge in all the tested fields. But, for sections like QR and RC, I knew exactly what types of questions could be asked and wasn’t caught off guard in any of the sections. That was a little bit of a lie though because for my RC section, I had 3 linked questions that used an unexpected figure, but other than that, I was totally prepared for all question types, and the figure questions weren’t incredibly difficult either.
Study Timeline:
I personally tried to follow DATBooster’s 12-week study plan, but I definitely did not stick to it 100% of the way through, especially toward the end. Now, I know this kind of contradicts what I said at the beginning where I said I only studied for about 5 weeks, and I will elaborate on that. I think DATBooster does a great job with how it breaks down studying into 3 phases though I’d modify the wording of them for how I studied. My studying schedule had 3 phases: familiarization, practice questions/review, and practice tests/review
Familiarization (Early September – Late December) – This is where I feel it’s a bit gray on if I truly only studied for 5 weeks. I paid for DATBooster in August 2023 (6-month plan), and sort of followed the learning phase instructions for my entire Fall semester at my college. However, I skipped out on all the practice questions, and I made very surface-level flashcards for each section as I learned about what was going to be tested on the DAT. This studying only amounted to maybe 1, maybe 2 hours per day with very little brainwork and no reinforcement of material. I took a 2-week break between the end of this phase and the next phase due to finals week and wanting to focus on school.
Practice questions/review (Late December – Mid-January) – This is where I believe I truly started studying. I began studying at the end of December (around the 21st). I came into this section after about 3 months of making flashcards (very slowly) and hadn’t reviewed any of those flashcards until this point. In other words, I had none of the information memorized, especially information relating to Biology which was my weakest subject at this point. During this phase, I would spend about ~8 hours/day doing PAT practice, QR practice, RC practice, reviewing Biology flashcards and doing Bio bits questions (+ modifying existing flashcards depending on areas I was weak in), and reviewing GC and OC flashcards/questions. One of the biggest factors that made my cramming successful is that I cut myself off from everything else. I stopped playing video games (one of my favorite hobbies), avoided hanging out with friends, and tried to avoid family events/meet-ups. I dedicated myself almost entirely to DAT studying.
Practice tests/review (Mid-January – January 27th) – This phase is very similar to the last phase, but instead of ~8 hours/day I bumped it up to ~12 hours/day. For the last 2 weeks of studying, it honestly felt like all I did was wake up, study, go to sleep, repeat. I’d usually wake up at ~7-8 am. The first thing I’d do is take a practice exam. After that, I’d take a shower and have a big lunch (1 meal for the day). Then, I studied for the rest of the day until I went to sleep. I focused heavily on reviewing as many flashcards/day as I could, and I would continue updating those flashcards depending on questions I got wrong in practice tests. Doing a practice exam at the same time as when my actual exam would be for 2 weeks straight really prepared me mentally for when I actually took the DAT as I was simply going through the motions by the time I entered the testing center on the 27th.
Day of the Exam:
Bio (27) - I will attribute this score to a combination of luck and the endless studying I did for the Biology section. It’s very important to read questions carefully for this section as missing one word for a question as you read it can change the answer. Biology was definitely the section I spent the most time studying because the section covers so many branches of Biology, and it’s impossible to guess what the DAT will test. Highly recommend Feralis notes. This section was extremely similar to the questions I saw on DATBooster’s practice exams.
GC (30) - This section was almost identical to the types of questions I saw on DATBooster. I don’t have too much to say for GC. I didn’t study anywhere near as hard for GC as I did for Biology as I was already very good with chemistry thanks to how rigorous my college’s Chemistry courses are. I studied for this section the same way as Biology, just with a lot less time invested (make flashcards and update them for questions you get wrong when you practice).
OC (30) - This is another section that I was very prepared for thanks to my college and studied very little for this section compared to Biology. All I can say is to make sure you have a strong understanding of stereochemistry (3D shapes of molecules), all the reagents, and the names of reactions.
PAT (21) - This section is a pain in the a**. However, DATBooster was great with really getting my brain acclimated to these types of questions, but I feel like I hit a brick wall once I started getting 21-23 scores on practice exams. I just couldn’t get higher than that range, and the actual exam followed that trend. I will say that the top-front-end, keyhole, and angle ranking questions on the actual PAT felt much easier than the ones I had to deal with on DATBooster’s practice exams. However, my score didn’t increase, so maybe everyone did better on my version, and the distribution kept me at 21.
RC (21) - I utilized a sort of partial reading strategy. I would read half the passage carefully, answer as many questions as I could, read the second half of the passage, and then return to the first question I marked and answer the remaining questions. This score was lower than I was expecting. Normally on practice tests, I tended to get 22-25s fairly consistently, and I felt as if I did pretty well coming out of the RC section. Regardless, I’m still happy with a 21.
QR (23) - I really fumbled the ball here. QR was always my strongest subject, and I let that get to my head when going through this section. I thought I would have time to double-check questions as I went through this section, and I ran out of time for the last 3 questions and had to guess on them. Normally I scored 25-30 on QR. DATBooster provides you with everything you need to do well in this section. Memorize all the strategies they teach and you’ll get through this section easily, just don’t stall like I did and this should be an easy boost to your academic average.
Ending advice:
I can’t emphasize enough how useful DATBooster and Anki were to me in getting the science scores I did. And, the other scores were still good but noticeably lower, and that was solely my fault for not focusing on those subjects more. Regardless I hope this helps someone better understand how they are going to study for the DAT, and I wish you all the best of luck!
I thought I’d write a breakdown of how I got the DAT score that I did since the user laffytaffy19 (studentdoctornetwork) wrote a similar breakdown and really helped me understand what I needed to do to get a good grade on the DAT. I highly recommend reading over their score breakdown! I liked their breakdown so much because we were very similar in the fact that I only truly studied for about ~5 weeks (my winter break).
Scores:
TS – 30
Bio – 27
OC – 30
GC – 30
PAT – 21
RC – 21
QR – 23
AA – 26
Background:
Currently a senior (graduating in 3 years) with a 4.0 GPA
Materials Used:
I would like to break this section up in terms of usefulness, but I don’t think I should. I used to DATBooster and Anki. But, I used them together. Using just one without the other would have been meaningless, but I’ll explain how I used both individually.
Anki – Anki was so important for me to drill the information into my head. It’s one thing to read how the circulatory system works, and it’s another thing making flashcards and forcing yourself to repeatedly recall that information in great detail. I believe that if you are going to use anki then you should make your own flashcards. Making your own flashcards forces you to determine what information is valuable and what isn’t, and you can modify these flashcards if they lack detail as you continue studying. For me, my final flashcards (which came out to be ~1300 flashcards) were heavily modified from the original flashcards I created when I first read through Feralis’s Biology notes. I updated my flashcards after I completed bio bits questions and practice exams, and drilled in the details that I was missing to ensure I never made the same mistake again.
DATBooster – All I can say is it was $500 well spent. DATBooster provides you with the whole package. All the questions from biology to math were incredibly representative of what the actual DAT tested. It isn’t only that DATBooster prepared me by expanding my knowledge in all the tested fields. But, for sections like QR and RC, I knew exactly what types of questions could be asked and wasn’t caught off guard in any of the sections. That was a little bit of a lie though because for my RC section, I had 3 linked questions that used an unexpected figure, but other than that, I was totally prepared for all question types, and the figure questions weren’t incredibly difficult either.
Study Timeline:
I personally tried to follow DATBooster’s 12-week study plan, but I definitely did not stick to it 100% of the way through, especially toward the end. Now, I know this kind of contradicts what I said at the beginning where I said I only studied for about 5 weeks, and I will elaborate on that. I think DATBooster does a great job with how it breaks down studying into 3 phases though I’d modify the wording of them for how I studied. My studying schedule had 3 phases: familiarization, practice questions/review, and practice tests/review
Familiarization (Early September – Late December) – This is where I feel it’s a bit gray on if I truly only studied for 5 weeks. I paid for DATBooster in August 2023 (6-month plan), and sort of followed the learning phase instructions for my entire Fall semester at my college. However, I skipped out on all the practice questions, and I made very surface-level flashcards for each section as I learned about what was going to be tested on the DAT. This studying only amounted to maybe 1, maybe 2 hours per day with very little brainwork and no reinforcement of material. I took a 2-week break between the end of this phase and the next phase due to finals week and wanting to focus on school.
Practice questions/review (Late December – Mid-January) – This is where I believe I truly started studying. I began studying at the end of December (around the 21st). I came into this section after about 3 months of making flashcards (very slowly) and hadn’t reviewed any of those flashcards until this point. In other words, I had none of the information memorized, especially information relating to Biology which was my weakest subject at this point. During this phase, I would spend about ~8 hours/day doing PAT practice, QR practice, RC practice, reviewing Biology flashcards and doing Bio bits questions (+ modifying existing flashcards depending on areas I was weak in), and reviewing GC and OC flashcards/questions. One of the biggest factors that made my cramming successful is that I cut myself off from everything else. I stopped playing video games (one of my favorite hobbies), avoided hanging out with friends, and tried to avoid family events/meet-ups. I dedicated myself almost entirely to DAT studying.
Practice tests/review (Mid-January – January 27th) – This phase is very similar to the last phase, but instead of ~8 hours/day I bumped it up to ~12 hours/day. For the last 2 weeks of studying, it honestly felt like all I did was wake up, study, go to sleep, repeat. I’d usually wake up at ~7-8 am. The first thing I’d do is take a practice exam. After that, I’d take a shower and have a big lunch (1 meal for the day). Then, I studied for the rest of the day until I went to sleep. I focused heavily on reviewing as many flashcards/day as I could, and I would continue updating those flashcards depending on questions I got wrong in practice tests. Doing a practice exam at the same time as when my actual exam would be for 2 weeks straight really prepared me mentally for when I actually took the DAT as I was simply going through the motions by the time I entered the testing center on the 27th.
Day of the Exam:
Bio (27) - I will attribute this score to a combination of luck and the endless studying I did for the Biology section. It’s very important to read questions carefully for this section as missing one word for a question as you read it can change the answer. Biology was definitely the section I spent the most time studying because the section covers so many branches of Biology, and it’s impossible to guess what the DAT will test. Highly recommend Feralis notes. This section was extremely similar to the questions I saw on DATBooster’s practice exams.
GC (30) - This section was almost identical to the types of questions I saw on DATBooster. I don’t have too much to say for GC. I didn’t study anywhere near as hard for GC as I did for Biology as I was already very good with chemistry thanks to how rigorous my college’s Chemistry courses are. I studied for this section the same way as Biology, just with a lot less time invested (make flashcards and update them for questions you get wrong when you practice).
OC (30) - This is another section that I was very prepared for thanks to my college and studied very little for this section compared to Biology. All I can say is to make sure you have a strong understanding of stereochemistry (3D shapes of molecules), all the reagents, and the names of reactions.
PAT (21) - This section is a pain in the a**. However, DATBooster was great with really getting my brain acclimated to these types of questions, but I feel like I hit a brick wall once I started getting 21-23 scores on practice exams. I just couldn’t get higher than that range, and the actual exam followed that trend. I will say that the top-front-end, keyhole, and angle ranking questions on the actual PAT felt much easier than the ones I had to deal with on DATBooster’s practice exams. However, my score didn’t increase, so maybe everyone did better on my version, and the distribution kept me at 21.
RC (21) - I utilized a sort of partial reading strategy. I would read half the passage carefully, answer as many questions as I could, read the second half of the passage, and then return to the first question I marked and answer the remaining questions. This score was lower than I was expecting. Normally on practice tests, I tended to get 22-25s fairly consistently, and I felt as if I did pretty well coming out of the RC section. Regardless, I’m still happy with a 21.
QR (23) - I really fumbled the ball here. QR was always my strongest subject, and I let that get to my head when going through this section. I thought I would have time to double-check questions as I went through this section, and I ran out of time for the last 3 questions and had to guess on them. Normally I scored 25-30 on QR. DATBooster provides you with everything you need to do well in this section. Memorize all the strategies they teach and you’ll get through this section easily, just don’t stall like I did and this should be an easy boost to your academic average.
Ending advice:
I can’t emphasize enough how useful DATBooster and Anki were to me in getting the science scores I did. And, the other scores were still good but noticeably lower, and that was solely my fault for not focusing on those subjects more. Regardless I hope this helps someone better understand how they are going to study for the DAT, and I wish you all the best of luck!
