anthony5810
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Hi everyone, I just recently took the DAT for the first time and wanted to share some methods that helped me get my score!
Background:
Just finished undergrad with a 3.88~ GPA.
Hours studied: Probably between 300-350
Two Most Helpful Resources:
Study Timeline + Methods:
Day of Exam
Ending/Overall Advice:
1. DONT. WASTE. TIME. Had I been more efficient with my time I know there is at least one more question that I for sure would’ve gotten correct. When you’re going for an elite score, 1-2 questions is the difference between one score and the next.
2. Trust your gut. Another question I got wrong was in bio and it wasn’t even hard. I initially put one answer and then overthought and changed it to what I'm very confident was the wrong answer. I’ve realized in my 4 years at college that your gut feeling is almost always right. In my opinion, don’t change an answer unless you are absolutely certain you know the right one.
3. Give yourself time. I personally don’t like long study sessions. If I get burnt out and lose interest in studying I’ll be less efficient and more unhappy. So what I did with virtually every single assignment in college and in my prep for the DAT was small increments over a large amount of time. In the beginning of my DAT prep I was only studying ~1 hour a day and built over time. I should’ve done a little more but the point is I didn’t overdo it. I would often use my free time to study, and the little commitments amount to big results. I think I amassed 200 hours of studying in this way before starting lengthier study sessions with full-length practice tests.
4. Don’t stress. My hobby is fighting as an amateur in Muay Thai. One thing I've realized in my two fights is that when you’ve got adrenaline going or are nervous you don’t perform how you usually perform in practice. I think this is the same with test taking. Anxiety on and before test day is only going to do one thing: hurt your score. Definitely easier said than done, but don’t overthink things. The test-taking center you’ll be testing at is lowkey designed to give you anxiety. You get patted down before the test to ensure you’re not cheating. You’re in a little cubby in a quiet room with a bunch of other people who are likely nervous for whatever test they’re taking that day. But at the end of the day, even though the DAT is a big deal, it's not the end of the world if you don’t score how you hope to. This brings me to my biggest piece of advice not just for the DAT but life in general that I’d be remiss not to mention.
5. Pray constantly. Jesus Christ saved my life 6 years ago during quarantine and I’ve been walking with Him ever since. He is well and truly the main reason that I was able to score high on this exam. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is recorded as saying this, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” - Matthew 6:26-33
Elsewhere it’s written that we should surrender our anxiety to God because He cares about us. And in the Psalms, David is recorded as saying this:
13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” - Psalm 139:13-18
You are fearfully and wonderfully made by the God of the universe who loves you dearly; why should you worry? I can assure you one thing: if God wants you to become a dentist, so long as you put in the work and put Him first, He will absolutely get you there. May God bless you and all your loved ones, and may He be by your side in all your preparation and lives. Amen!
Background:
Just finished undergrad with a 3.88~ GPA.
Hours studied: Probably between 300-350
Two Most Helpful Resources:
- DAT Booster - The DAT felt very much like a variation of the practice tests on Booster. I heard a lot of students get repeat questions on their actual DAT, I probably got ~2. But it was an awesome program overall and I loved how I could watch videos/do practice questions on the mobile app. I prepped for/took the test during senior year, so any free time I had at work or in class I would try to use to do PAT practice questions or watch the videos on Booster. It's basically the only resource I used to prepare.
- Undergraduate coursework - This one may seem redundant to include but most of the dental school prerequisite course topics can be tested on the DAT. My biggest advice is to make an effort to understand these concepts while taking the classes as opposed to just memorizing and forgetting after exam days. For example, having a good grasp on cell bio/biochemistry made it so that I didn’t have to spend a large amount of time reviewing it on Booster before the DAT. Essentially, what I’m saying is that for those who are able to take the dental school pre-reqs prior to taking the DAT, the more time put into learning while taking the classes will save you time in the future. Hypothetically, had I been more dedicated to actually learning my early bio and gen chem material, most of my studying would’ve consisted of review instead of relearning a bunch of topics.
Study Timeline + Methods:
- November 2025: Made account with DAT Booster, very minimal studying with the sample material. Getting my feet wet essentially.
- December 2025 - February 2026: Purchased DAT Booster membership in December, began to study ~30 minutes to 1 hr a day. Had I done a little more, ~2 hours, this would have benefited me a lot in the long run. Main thing was watching the videos on Booster and doing practice problems. I finished all of the videos on Booster before doing full-length practice tests (except a few QR videos). At this point I was doing the individual subject practice tests though which are the same ones that make up the full-length practice tests.
- March - April 2026: Studying closer to 5-6 hours a day. Spending a day to do each full-length exam of the 10 provided with my Booster membership. Additional time was used to iron out any subjects I was iffy about/flagged on my practice tests.
Day of Exam
- Bio (500): Much like I’d seen people talk about prior to taking the exam, the questions were not very in depth. I mostly remember very surface level recall questions and a few questions that could be solved with logic. I recall one question very well because I had selected what I think was the correct answer in hindsight and changed it because I was unsure. This was a huge mistake I’ll elaborate on in my final recommendations.
- GC (480): This was my toughest section both to study for and on the actual exam. I flagged maybe 10 questions out of the 30 that were given, most of which pertained to equations. The crazy thing is that although I felt like I had a good grasp on most of the equations on Booster, some of the questions I got on the DAT felt extremely foreign. This was likely a result of me not fully understanding which equations to apply to the word problems I got.
- OC (510): This section gave me the least problems because I tutored OCHEM for two semesters at my college. However, the subjects actually tested on the DAT were very, very surface level questions. A strong understanding of basic OCHEM concepts like arrow pushing, resonance, basic reaction mechanisms (dehydration + SN2/SN1/E2/E1 which sounds scary but simply is just knowing when you form a double bond to replace a leaving group versus replacing the leaving group with another compound/element and when you rearrange to form a more stable product [E1/SN1]), and probably acidity and basicity but I can’t recall if acidity/basicity was even on my DAT. I don’t recall seeing IR spectroscopy, CNMR, or HNMR on my test.
- PAT (500): Of all my scores this one was the one that really surprised me. I had maybe 12 shapes in the keyhole section that looked like the strange shapes in pattern-folding that were weird to visualize and different to what I had been seeing on Booster. I learned after the test that there’s usually 15 experimental questions in the PAT, which, in my understanding, don’t hurt your score if you get them wrong, so I imagine the questions that gave me significant problems were experimental. Don’t waste time on this section! Like seriously, don’t stress, if you don’t know the answer trust your gut and move on. However, it’s important to practice consistently so you can have a strong baseline that allows you to make educated guesses quickly when a question isn’t straightforward. If you can narrow a question down to 2 options quickly, you’re significantly more likely to get the question right then if you’re just blindly guessing out of 5 options. For this section I don’t think I reviewed anything, I only had enough time to answer every question with maybe 40 seconds leftover.
- RC (510): I used the search and destroy method which is reading the question then scanning the text for the answer. I didn’t use the highlight feature because I didn’t practice with it and realized it would take more time for me. I’m not discouraging the highlight feature though, Booster actually highly encourages it, but it just wasn’t something I ever did. One word of advice, if you’re using search and destroy and you glance through the passage and can’t find the answer but you do read something in a paragraph that SOUNDS like it pertains to the question, read that paragraph again a little more carefully (but still relatively quick), because odds are the answer to your question is there OR in the previous/next paragraph. If it’s not there either, check the first and last paragraph of the whole passage. Now obviously that won’t always work, but when on a time crunch this can be helpful. Also, for tone questions (even though I didn’t get any on the DAT) any answer that’s extreme is almost definitely wrong. Example, the author is a little pessimistic in his writing, if you see answer choices like somber or depressed, they’re almost always wrong. Because they’re usually academic articles, the tone is more neutral because people usually don’t write extremely biased academic papers. So, for my hypothetical question the answer might be something like “thoughtful” or “pensive”. Again, biggest advice for this section, if you can’t find an answer, flag it and move on!
- QR (470): Time management is what helped me on the PAT and RC sections, and what hurt me on the QR section. I know for sure that I guessed the last question wrong because when the test ended I could still see the question around the “times up” box. It wasn’t even difficult, I just ran out of time. For perspective, ~20-30 more seconds would have been enough to get the right answer. Obviously, you don’t want to guess every question just for the sake of finishing on time, but if a question is taking you close to a minute give it your best guess and if you have time you can come back. You want to maximize the easier points and then you can think about fixing the iffy questions with leftover time. I didn’t do this, in fact, I don’t even think I had time to review a single question. I was busy wracking my brain over some interesting algebra questions that I didn’t have the answer to, but the reality is those questions and the one I missed at the end because of time are worth the same points, not worth it!
Ending/Overall Advice:
1. DONT. WASTE. TIME. Had I been more efficient with my time I know there is at least one more question that I for sure would’ve gotten correct. When you’re going for an elite score, 1-2 questions is the difference between one score and the next.
2. Trust your gut. Another question I got wrong was in bio and it wasn’t even hard. I initially put one answer and then overthought and changed it to what I'm very confident was the wrong answer. I’ve realized in my 4 years at college that your gut feeling is almost always right. In my opinion, don’t change an answer unless you are absolutely certain you know the right one.
3. Give yourself time. I personally don’t like long study sessions. If I get burnt out and lose interest in studying I’ll be less efficient and more unhappy. So what I did with virtually every single assignment in college and in my prep for the DAT was small increments over a large amount of time. In the beginning of my DAT prep I was only studying ~1 hour a day and built over time. I should’ve done a little more but the point is I didn’t overdo it. I would often use my free time to study, and the little commitments amount to big results. I think I amassed 200 hours of studying in this way before starting lengthier study sessions with full-length practice tests.
4. Don’t stress. My hobby is fighting as an amateur in Muay Thai. One thing I've realized in my two fights is that when you’ve got adrenaline going or are nervous you don’t perform how you usually perform in practice. I think this is the same with test taking. Anxiety on and before test day is only going to do one thing: hurt your score. Definitely easier said than done, but don’t overthink things. The test-taking center you’ll be testing at is lowkey designed to give you anxiety. You get patted down before the test to ensure you’re not cheating. You’re in a little cubby in a quiet room with a bunch of other people who are likely nervous for whatever test they’re taking that day. But at the end of the day, even though the DAT is a big deal, it's not the end of the world if you don’t score how you hope to. This brings me to my biggest piece of advice not just for the DAT but life in general that I’d be remiss not to mention.
5. Pray constantly. Jesus Christ saved my life 6 years ago during quarantine and I’ve been walking with Him ever since. He is well and truly the main reason that I was able to score high on this exam. In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus is recorded as saying this, “Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? Which of you by worrying can add one cubit to his stature?
“So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin; and yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not arrayed like one of these. Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?
“Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What shall we eat?’ or ‘What shall we drink?’ or ‘What shall we wear?’ For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things. But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.” - Matthew 6:26-33
Elsewhere it’s written that we should surrender our anxiety to God because He cares about us. And in the Psalms, David is recorded as saying this:
13 For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother’s womb. 14 I will praise You, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made; Marvelous are Your works, And that my soul knows very well. 15 My frame was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth. 16 Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them.” - Psalm 139:13-18
You are fearfully and wonderfully made by the God of the universe who loves you dearly; why should you worry? I can assure you one thing: if God wants you to become a dentist, so long as you put in the work and put Him first, He will absolutely get you there. May God bless you and all your loved ones, and may He be by your side in all your preparation and lives. Amen!
