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Hi everyone! I was able to score well on my DAT, so I thought I could give back to the community and share my breakdown.
Resources: DAT Booster (the 6-month plan) + the 1 free exam on DAT Bootcamp (as my diagnostic)
Background:
I prepped throughout winter break and all the way till mid-April.
I was taking 12 credit hours during the spring semester (including some harder biology classes), and I would not recommend doing this. My weekdays were productive as I mostly studied 4-5 hours a day after finishing school stuff. When there were midterms or school got busy, I could only study 1-2 hours a day. On weekends (and the entire spring break), I mostly slacked off and didn’t review anything. This whole process was really tiring and stressful, so if you can take it during the summer, please do!
Aside from the required classes, I also took anatomy and physiology, genetics, ecology, and biochemistry. Having taken anatomy and physiology (especially physiology) was super helpful. Booster’s biology notes were more than enough to cover what’s needed on the test, but having a stronger background and already remembering a portion of the content was really helpful. So if you’re still deciding on whether to take physiology or not, take it!
One of the best ways to prep for the DAT is to do well in your classes and grasp the METHODS of learning each section. This way, even if you forget most of the content (like me), you can still pick things up quickly!
Biology: This section is super content-heavy and requires daily memorization. I did well in all my biology classes, but I have bad long-term memory, so I started my prep by watching all the biology notes and annotating the Booster notes while watching. After the videos were completed, I started reading the Booster notes over and over again until the day of the exam, so repetition is key. With each round of reading the notes, I made sure to highlight the parts I didn’t grasp. I also did all the questions in Bio Bits, marking all the ones I got wrong and the ones I wasn’t sure about. Towards the last month, I only did the marked questions until I was familiar with the content. I tried to use Anki, but my computer had issues downloading it, and I just found Anki to be too complicated lol. Biology is my lowest score on the actual test, so maybe Anki could have helped.
On the actual test, the knowledge was definitely a lot shallower than the notes, and what gets tested is really based on luck (I only got 1 physiology question!). Booster covered all the major things you need to know, with maybe 1 or 2 questions that ask for something really detailed.
Gen Chem: I had a strong foundation in this section, and I also tutored this subject. For prep, I skipped the videos and just read the notes and finished the question banks (marking the ones I was unsure about for later review). I then added extra content from the notes to the cheat sheets and only used the cheat sheet for later review. I read over all the cheat sheets once a week.
On my real test, it was really calculation-heavy, but I didn’t see any new content. I was really unsure on a couple of questions, so I don’t know how I managed a 600.
O Chem: I did well in class, but I didn’t remember 10% of the things when I started prep. I watched all the videos while annotating the notes. With the new changes made, possibly focusing on mechanisms more, I would try to understand how the arrows work. I made my own cheat sheet in the end and just memorized those.
On the test, no new content showed up, and I think I had only 1 or 2 arrow-pushing questions. There were at least 3 acidity questions tho, so make sure you got that down!
Math: I was only unfamiliar with the probability question types, so I only watched those videos. Later on, I only reviewed using the cheat sheets.
My actual math section was also calculation-heavy, with 1 or 2 question types I haven’t seen before.
Reading: I was honestly most worried about this section because I was a slow reader. I also realized that I commonly just skim the passage without actually taking in what I’m reading, so I ended up wasting time by reading the passage from the beginning over and over again with each question. I solved this issue by reading the first question before reading the passage, so I actually paid attention to what I was reading. Then, if the following questions asked for content that I had already read, I can quickly find which paragraph it was in. I also trained my timing by doing all the practice passages on Booster and even redoing a few that I scored really badly on.
The actual test was pretty similar to Booster.
PAT: I watched the videos and remembered the strategies. Then it was just TIMED daily practice until my practice tests had decent scores. Since this section isn’t included in the AA, I didn’t focus too much on it and only did extra practice questions occasionally. Something that helped with timing for me is skipping to angle ranking first, and then going back to keyholes after the pattern folding questions were finished.
The real PAT was a lot easier except for keyholes, which were on par with Booster’s practice tests.
In General: I did all 15 practice tests on Booster, 1 per week. I only did the last 2 as full lengths, so most of the tests were done as individual sections. After all 15 tests were done, I had an average of 505 AA, so Booster reflected the actual test well. Do ALL the questions in the question banks for each section (you never know where you’ll have content gaps), and mark the ones you got wrong or are unsure about! It’s important to filter out the content you already know so you can focus on unfamiliar content.
Test Day: If conditions allow, visit the testing center once before test day so you’ll feel more relaxed. I got lucky as my testing center only had a 2-second lag on all the sections, but I know some people had it a lot worse. I only slept 4 hours max the night before, and I was recovering from the flu during the test, so being overprepared is what made me do so well. I actually walked out feeling kinda discouraged because I must have marked 1/3 of the questions in the science sections with no time to check them. The DAT is scaled to reflect your level (maybe that’s why it took so long for the scores to come out this time, lol), so if you’ve been scoring well on practice tests, trust yourself and don’t stress over it too much.
Feel free to ask me anything, and good luck studying!
