DAT Study Breakdown

[kgoy]

I’m currently going into my 4th year of undergraduate at USC and just took the DAT this summer (so summer after junior year going into senior year).
Here’s a breakdown of what I used to study and the timeline that helped me study effectively.

Scores:
RC - 27
PA - 27
QR - 26
Bio - 23
GC - 24
OC - 25
TS - 24
AA - 25

Background:
Going to be a senior with a 3.86 GPA & ~3.7 science GPA

Timeline:
Used DAT Bootcamp for the first 4-5 weeks to learn all the new material & followed their 2.5 month study schedule. Used DAT Booster for the next 5-6 weeks to master the material & take all of my full length tests.

Materials / methods used:

1. DAT Booster
   1. Booster was great for its price, its practice questions and practice tests I thought were the most similar to the actual DAT compared to Bootcamp. I ended up strictly taking my Full Lengths on DAT Booster especially after reading on Reddit how their practice tests were very representative of the real thing. Not only is the format more similar to that of the actual DAT, but the content I felt focused more on concepts I saw on the actual test than the practice I had done on Bootcamp.
   2. The cheat sheets / study notes were very beneficial for reviewing material. The diagrams helped concepts stick and helped reinforce my understanding of challenging concepts as well.
   3. The perceptual ability training in DAT Booster, chef’s kiss. I used the tiered questions and timed generators almost every day, and definitely enjoyed playing around with the analyzers. The most important part about perceptual ability came down to time management and testing speed since it’s 90 questions in 60 minutes. As far as preparing effectively for it, I highly, highly recommend Booster’s resources and also spending as many days as possible practicing. Doesn’t even matter if it’s as few as 20 minutes a day, just get that repetition in. I started with scoring below 20 on PAT (and also got very discouraged) then by the time the exam rolled around I was scoring ~25-26’s.
   4. Lastly, when I was taking my full lengths my range of scores was 23-26. Never higher, never lower, so going into the test I felt very confident that it wouldn’t slip below that range.
2. DAT Bootcamp
   1. Mike’s videos are amazing. It was such a great resource for the science explanations, and I didn’t need to spend too much time re-learning all the new material for the science sections.
   2. Overall, as far as getting a solid grasp of the main concepts on the DAT, Bootcamp was great for its explanations and simplifying those more challenging ideas. Comparably, I did enjoy Bootcamp’s biology questions and explanations better than Booster’s because they were more comprehensive and focused on the main ideas, while Booster had a great deal of questions that focused on very minor details, none of which appeared on my DAT.
   3. The reading comprehension section I thought was a bit overkill. For RC, they recommended testing like 8 different methods for how to tackle questions and figuring out which method works the best for you. I didn’t do this just because I didn’t feel like I had the time or patience for it and stuck with just the vanilla method of reading the whole passage and highlighting important information, and going through each question as they came. On the actual test this ended up being super effective for me because most of the questions were pretty straightforward and asking about information that was explicitly stated somewhere in the passage.
3. Quizlet
   1. I honestly love Quizlet, I’ve always used it, will always use it for studying, and for the DAT it’s a great supplement for those concepts that just aren’t sticking. Everyone always talks about how great Anki is, and I definitely believe it, I just have such a hard time having the patience to go through all of those flashcards. As soon as I see the number of “due” flashcards add up, I end up just avoiding it like the plague. I leaned towards using Quizlet because I could make my own flashcards for the topics I really needed to nail or work on, and I also just like the visual format better than Anki, personal preference.
4. Screenshotting important / hard concepts
   1. This isn’t necessarily a material but sometimes writing down every single thing that you don’t feel confident about or a challenging concept took me too long, especially when you’re losing patience and wanna just get through as much content as you can. I resorted to screenshotting high-yield diagrams to reinforce my understanding (visual learning also helps me a great deal), and would also screenshot word explanations that were high-yield or content I hadn’t seen before and thought were important.
   2. I filed each of these screenshots by section then would review them at the end of each day, and eventually trash the ones that I was 100% confident on.

Things I could’ve done better on:

1. I definitely feel like I could’ve studied in a more sterile environment to maintain my focus and effort levels. I was studying at home for the summer and would have a difficult time getting into focus mode when it came to starting up my studies every day. I think being in the “home” mindset when I studied ultimately prevented me from really thinking through each question because I would get lazy. Thus, a lot of the questions on practice tests I would get wrong were simply because I didn’t read the question right or made a careless mistake from a wrong calculation. Part of this probably also stems from me exhausting my focus and not taking sufficient breaks.
2. Setting a hard limit for the time you start studying and the time you end is so vital because otherwise you get burnt out way quicker. Take it from me, I would start sitting at my desk at 9AM some days and feel fully finished by 8PM and then the next day would just dread having to start studying. Having the structure of a strict schedule would’ve definitely helped my study mindset and focus.

Overall, I definitely was very intimidated by this test, especially having spent 2.5 months studying for it, you definitely feel the pressure in the weeks leading up to it. Just remind yourself it is still just a test and that’s not the only thing that defines your application. As long as you put in the work and keep pushing until the end, you will do great!

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