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Hi everyone! DAT breakdowns were a huge influence on my studying and keeping me motivated, so I wanted to post my own on here.
PAT: 24 | QR: 30 | RC: 23 | BIO: 30 | GC: 30 | OC: 29 | TS: 30 | AA: 28
I'll give my study strategy, then resource breakdown, then how things went on test day.
Study Strategy:
Overall, I studied for about 3 1/2 months, ranging from 3-12 hours per day. I'd say most days I got at least 4-5 hours in. Right after my finals (mid-May), I took the free Kaplan test on their site for diagnostic purposes. A diagnostic test is where you take a test (usually a free one online) to figure out right off the bat where you need to focus your studying. I got a 21AA, with a 15 Bio and 15 PAT, so I knew that's where I needed to work.
From mid-May to beginning of June, over ~2.5 weeks, I read Bio Academy from Bootcamp's website. I did at least 1 or 2 chapters per day, plus some review. This is where I first tried Anki, and I did NOT like it. To solidify information, I made summary sheets, and started Bio Bites once my Bootcamp subscription started. Bio Bites was what really solidified the information on my first run through. If I could go back, I'd ditch doing handwritten notes and start doing Anki consistently after doing all of the Bio Bites once.
In June, I started using Chad's Prep practice tests (which was free at the time) and tons of DAT Destroyer. I also had some really outdated DAT practice tests that I went through, but those weren't really that helpful. I kept reviewing Bio and did a ton of Bio Bites, and I watched Chad's Videos for GC review. My OC was still doing pretty good, especially after going through the entire Destroyer. I also did all of the Bio in Destroyer, but didn't get a chance to finish GC. At this point, I was just getting myself ready for practice tests.
July is when I started practice tests. I only took them as full length tests. I went a little bit too heavy on the practice tests at first, and burned through the first half of the Booster and Bootcamp tests within 3 weeks. I then took a couple weeks to review all of the concepts I had to work on. I started putting every question that I struggled with into an Anki deck--this was the MOST helpful thing for solidifying difficult biology concepts. I also went through Bio Bites completely over a couple weeks, and put any details that I had missed into the same deck. Anki takes a bit to get used to, but it's totally worth (which I'll talk about more later).
In August, I started taking the rest of the practice tests, spacing them out so I'd finish them the week of my test date. I went all in with Anki and had made 2600 cards by the time of my test date. I would do 100 new cards and unlimited reviews every day, and I only missed one day. This peaked out at ~1000 cards in one day. It took about 1-2 hours every day but it was worth it, because I got every little detail mastered. Probably 98% of my cards were about Biology, and the rest were a mix of OC and GC concepts/reactions. Most of my studying at this point was either taking practice tests or studying the details of new concepts (that I hadn't learned from Bio Academy) and putting them into flashcards. I also started redoing the DAT Destroyer biology.
The last week or so was heavily focused on PAT. I wish I would've started this waaaaay earlier, though I'm happy with my score. Especially with the improvement that I saw after a week or so of doing multiple PAT tests every couple days, I could've been a lot more prepared by test day if I had done a little bit every day. This is particularly true with angle ranking. There's definitely improvement with repetition, but don't try to fit all of that into one week like I did. This was my biggest regret of my study schedule (but it turned okay in the end).
Resource Breakdown:
Since I started with reading biology notes, I'll start by comparing those. Bio Academy is more than sufficient for everything in Bio. If you need to build a bio foundation from the ground up, start there. Dynamite Bio from Dr. Romano is also really good in terms of content, and puts things in understandable terms. Bootcamp Condensed and Ferralis-Booster are basically the same. I don't like either because they don't really explain concepts in detail, just what you may want to memorize for the test.
Bootcamp and Booster are amazing resources, and either will be sufficient to get a good score. Booster is overkill for PAT, at least in my case, and definitely is better than Bootcamp for this section. For QR, they are both overkill, but Booster is a bit harder IMO. Booster is probably a little better in that regard. For RC, to be honest, I felt like Booster's answers were just wrong in a lot of cases. They'd have more subjective questions about tone or implied message, and I thought their answers were just poorly worded or chosen. Bootcamp on the other hand was a bit too easy for the first 5 passages, as seen in my practice scores. Bootcamp is still much better for RC in my opinion. When it comes to sciences, I feel like Booster just yoinked some questions straight from BC. I mean some of them were nearly word-for-word. Because of that, I'd definitely say you don't need both.
The reason I'd recommend Bootcamp over Booster is because Bootcamp is superior for content review and accessibility. Bio Bites coupled with Bio Academy is the best way to learn Bio for someone with a poor biology background like myself, in my opinion. Bootcamp just looks better and is easier to use overall. Plus, their team is super helpful and Dr. Mike's videos are pretty great! However, if money is tight, Booster is totally sufficient and significantly cheaper. Couple it with Bio Academy (which is free) and Chad's Videos (also free), and it's basically the same as Bootcamp.
Destroyer is another top-notch resource. If you want true mastery of the sciences, Destroyer is the way to go. I think that Booster and Bootcamp are more focused on memorizing what you need to know for the majority of DATs, whereas Destroyer is focused on making sure you have mastery of the subjects so that you're not caught off guard by anything. A lot of people say it's too much overkill, but it'll get you some 30's if you commit to it. Plus it's not overpriced and it doesn't expire. Math Destroyer is really good for a ton of extra QR practice, and highly worth it. Whether or not you get these resources, absolutely 100% join the study group on FB for extra practice questions/reading sections daily! Dr. Romano truly cares about his students and wants them to succeed--the man is a legend and definitely someone you'll want to learn from.
Now I know this is talked about all the time, but Anki is truly one of the best weapons in the studying arsenal. It's definitely worth it to commit to doing a bit of Anki every day early on. It doesn't look fancy, it's not the most fun thing in the world, and it's quite tedious, but if you use it faithfully, it'll be worth it. Overall, you don't need all the resources in the world. I had the privilege of being able to utilize a lot of them, but I could easily see a situation where someone could literally just use Anki, Bio Academy, free practice tests, and their old chemistry tests/books and get a great DAT score. Just find what works best for you and use it to its fullest!
Test Day:
Biology went great. I saw at least a dozen questions that were extremely similar to questions from a variety of sources. A couple from Destroyer, one or two from Chad's Prep, and a ton from BC/Booster. Yes, breadth over depth, but you still need to know details of key concepts as well (glycolysis, for example.) Not a ton of microscopy/lab techniques and taxonomy, but definitely enough to make mastery of that material worth it. Biology is a wildcard though. My test is totally different from what others will be, so just be prepared for anything! GC was pretty simple. Nothing crazy, but a few calculations that could've easily tripped me up if I didn't have extra time left. Know general concepts and be really, really proficient at dimensional analysis and it'll go alright. OC is my favorite course ever, so I'm surprised I got a bit lower in it. I'm still trying to figure out which ones I could've gotten wrong. Still, no curveballs here. Overall, I finished SNS with about 55 minutes or so to spare. I used pretty much every minute to double or triple check every problem, and used up the last 3 minutes to rest my eyes before PAT.
PAT was easier than Bootcamp or Booster. I skipped to 31 immediately and nothing was really all that tricky (cube counting was a little rough, but not bad). Thank God I had no rock keyholes at all!!! Not much else to say here besides it was easier than expected. Finished with about 5 minutes to spare, and rechecked keyhole questions.
RC was a little odd. First off, my wheel scroller wasn't working, so I had to manually drag the slider (I think this is a normal thing?), which sucked because it kept glitching and autoscrolling all the way down to the bottom/top. Definitely slowed me down a bit. My passages were 17/14/5 paragraphs (but the 5 paragraphs were quite big). Nothing crazy, it's just that the questions seemed a little weirdly worded or that I couldn't tell what they were looking for. Finished with about 20 minutes to spare and was able to recheck most of my answers again.
QR was easy-peasy compared to Bootcamp/Booster. Quantitative comparison was super simple. The applied mathematics problems were a little tricky though. My test was heavy on permutations/probability, as well. Finished with about 20 minutes to spare and used all of it to double check things.
Finally, huge thanks to Dr. Romano, Professor Denis, Nancy, and Allie from Romano Scientific, as well as Dr. Mike and Dr. Joel from Bootcamp for all that they do for their students!
PAT: 24 | QR: 30 | RC: 23 | BIO: 30 | GC: 30 | OC: 29 | TS: 30 | AA: 28
I'll give my study strategy, then resource breakdown, then how things went on test day.
Study Strategy:
Overall, I studied for about 3 1/2 months, ranging from 3-12 hours per day. I'd say most days I got at least 4-5 hours in. Right after my finals (mid-May), I took the free Kaplan test on their site for diagnostic purposes. A diagnostic test is where you take a test (usually a free one online) to figure out right off the bat where you need to focus your studying. I got a 21AA, with a 15 Bio and 15 PAT, so I knew that's where I needed to work.
From mid-May to beginning of June, over ~2.5 weeks, I read Bio Academy from Bootcamp's website. I did at least 1 or 2 chapters per day, plus some review. This is where I first tried Anki, and I did NOT like it. To solidify information, I made summary sheets, and started Bio Bites once my Bootcamp subscription started. Bio Bites was what really solidified the information on my first run through. If I could go back, I'd ditch doing handwritten notes and start doing Anki consistently after doing all of the Bio Bites once.
In June, I started using Chad's Prep practice tests (which was free at the time) and tons of DAT Destroyer. I also had some really outdated DAT practice tests that I went through, but those weren't really that helpful. I kept reviewing Bio and did a ton of Bio Bites, and I watched Chad's Videos for GC review. My OC was still doing pretty good, especially after going through the entire Destroyer. I also did all of the Bio in Destroyer, but didn't get a chance to finish GC. At this point, I was just getting myself ready for practice tests.
July is when I started practice tests. I only took them as full length tests. I went a little bit too heavy on the practice tests at first, and burned through the first half of the Booster and Bootcamp tests within 3 weeks. I then took a couple weeks to review all of the concepts I had to work on. I started putting every question that I struggled with into an Anki deck--this was the MOST helpful thing for solidifying difficult biology concepts. I also went through Bio Bites completely over a couple weeks, and put any details that I had missed into the same deck. Anki takes a bit to get used to, but it's totally worth (which I'll talk about more later).
In August, I started taking the rest of the practice tests, spacing them out so I'd finish them the week of my test date. I went all in with Anki and had made 2600 cards by the time of my test date. I would do 100 new cards and unlimited reviews every day, and I only missed one day. This peaked out at ~1000 cards in one day. It took about 1-2 hours every day but it was worth it, because I got every little detail mastered. Probably 98% of my cards were about Biology, and the rest were a mix of OC and GC concepts/reactions. Most of my studying at this point was either taking practice tests or studying the details of new concepts (that I hadn't learned from Bio Academy) and putting them into flashcards. I also started redoing the DAT Destroyer biology.
The last week or so was heavily focused on PAT. I wish I would've started this waaaaay earlier, though I'm happy with my score. Especially with the improvement that I saw after a week or so of doing multiple PAT tests every couple days, I could've been a lot more prepared by test day if I had done a little bit every day. This is particularly true with angle ranking. There's definitely improvement with repetition, but don't try to fit all of that into one week like I did. This was my biggest regret of my study schedule (but it turned okay in the end).
Resource Breakdown:
Since I started with reading biology notes, I'll start by comparing those. Bio Academy is more than sufficient for everything in Bio. If you need to build a bio foundation from the ground up, start there. Dynamite Bio from Dr. Romano is also really good in terms of content, and puts things in understandable terms. Bootcamp Condensed and Ferralis-Booster are basically the same. I don't like either because they don't really explain concepts in detail, just what you may want to memorize for the test.
Bootcamp and Booster are amazing resources, and either will be sufficient to get a good score. Booster is overkill for PAT, at least in my case, and definitely is better than Bootcamp for this section. For QR, they are both overkill, but Booster is a bit harder IMO. Booster is probably a little better in that regard. For RC, to be honest, I felt like Booster's answers were just wrong in a lot of cases. They'd have more subjective questions about tone or implied message, and I thought their answers were just poorly worded or chosen. Bootcamp on the other hand was a bit too easy for the first 5 passages, as seen in my practice scores. Bootcamp is still much better for RC in my opinion. When it comes to sciences, I feel like Booster just yoinked some questions straight from BC. I mean some of them were nearly word-for-word. Because of that, I'd definitely say you don't need both.
The reason I'd recommend Bootcamp over Booster is because Bootcamp is superior for content review and accessibility. Bio Bites coupled with Bio Academy is the best way to learn Bio for someone with a poor biology background like myself, in my opinion. Bootcamp just looks better and is easier to use overall. Plus, their team is super helpful and Dr. Mike's videos are pretty great! However, if money is tight, Booster is totally sufficient and significantly cheaper. Couple it with Bio Academy (which is free) and Chad's Videos (also free), and it's basically the same as Bootcamp.
Destroyer is another top-notch resource. If you want true mastery of the sciences, Destroyer is the way to go. I think that Booster and Bootcamp are more focused on memorizing what you need to know for the majority of DATs, whereas Destroyer is focused on making sure you have mastery of the subjects so that you're not caught off guard by anything. A lot of people say it's too much overkill, but it'll get you some 30's if you commit to it. Plus it's not overpriced and it doesn't expire. Math Destroyer is really good for a ton of extra QR practice, and highly worth it. Whether or not you get these resources, absolutely 100% join the study group on FB for extra practice questions/reading sections daily! Dr. Romano truly cares about his students and wants them to succeed--the man is a legend and definitely someone you'll want to learn from.
Now I know this is talked about all the time, but Anki is truly one of the best weapons in the studying arsenal. It's definitely worth it to commit to doing a bit of Anki every day early on. It doesn't look fancy, it's not the most fun thing in the world, and it's quite tedious, but if you use it faithfully, it'll be worth it. Overall, you don't need all the resources in the world. I had the privilege of being able to utilize a lot of them, but I could easily see a situation where someone could literally just use Anki, Bio Academy, free practice tests, and their old chemistry tests/books and get a great DAT score. Just find what works best for you and use it to its fullest!
Test Day:
Biology went great. I saw at least a dozen questions that were extremely similar to questions from a variety of sources. A couple from Destroyer, one or two from Chad's Prep, and a ton from BC/Booster. Yes, breadth over depth, but you still need to know details of key concepts as well (glycolysis, for example.) Not a ton of microscopy/lab techniques and taxonomy, but definitely enough to make mastery of that material worth it. Biology is a wildcard though. My test is totally different from what others will be, so just be prepared for anything! GC was pretty simple. Nothing crazy, but a few calculations that could've easily tripped me up if I didn't have extra time left. Know general concepts and be really, really proficient at dimensional analysis and it'll go alright. OC is my favorite course ever, so I'm surprised I got a bit lower in it. I'm still trying to figure out which ones I could've gotten wrong. Still, no curveballs here. Overall, I finished SNS with about 55 minutes or so to spare. I used pretty much every minute to double or triple check every problem, and used up the last 3 minutes to rest my eyes before PAT.
PAT was easier than Bootcamp or Booster. I skipped to 31 immediately and nothing was really all that tricky (cube counting was a little rough, but not bad). Thank God I had no rock keyholes at all!!! Not much else to say here besides it was easier than expected. Finished with about 5 minutes to spare, and rechecked keyhole questions.
RC was a little odd. First off, my wheel scroller wasn't working, so I had to manually drag the slider (I think this is a normal thing?), which sucked because it kept glitching and autoscrolling all the way down to the bottom/top. Definitely slowed me down a bit. My passages were 17/14/5 paragraphs (but the 5 paragraphs were quite big). Nothing crazy, it's just that the questions seemed a little weirdly worded or that I couldn't tell what they were looking for. Finished with about 20 minutes to spare and was able to recheck most of my answers again.
QR was easy-peasy compared to Bootcamp/Booster. Quantitative comparison was super simple. The applied mathematics problems were a little tricky though. My test was heavy on permutations/probability, as well. Finished with about 20 minutes to spare and used all of it to double check things.
Finally, huge thanks to Dr. Romano, Professor Denis, Nancy, and Allie from Romano Scientific, as well as Dr. Mike and Dr. Joel from Bootcamp for all that they do for their students!
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