1. The length of time that you study for each day will largely depend on your other obligations. Are you taking classes as you prepare for the DAT? Assuming you aren't, I would start by trying to put in at least 6 hours of studying for the first couple weeks, moving up to 8 hours a day and eventually up to 10 hours. Obviously, you will want to take breaks. Personally, I studied for 6.5 weeks for the DAT, but I think two months (8 weeks) would have been even better. Some people will say it's crazy to study for 10 hours in a day, but personally I think it's very doable if this is your primary focus. Make sure to take lots of short breaks, and don't be hard on yourself if one day you can't put in as many hours. Studying for the DAT is very difficult and stressful, but try to remember how important your score is to motivate you.
2. It's hard to say what exactly is considered "overkill", but I think a good starting schedule would be something like this:
8am-9am Destroyer GC #1-25
9-10am Destroyer OC #1-25
10-11am Cliff's Cells Chapter
11am-12pm DAT QVault GC #1 & OC #1
Lunch break
1pm-3pm Kaplan MCAT Biology Endocrinology
Note that the above is just an example. You may need more or less than 1 hour to get through 25 Destroyer problems, for example. The materials I personally used and found to be super helpful were:
1) DAT Bootcamp (obviously)
2) DAT QVault (great for extra realistic practice problems)
3) DAT Destroyer & Math Destroyer (not exactly similar to the real DAT, but great for improving knowledge)
4) Cliff's AP Biology (found it boring, but it is useful)
5) Kaplan MCAT Biology Review (just borrowed it from the library, excellent resource for biology, particularly physiology, helped me improve my Bootcamp biology practice scores)
6) Crack DAT RC (I found this to be excellent extra practice for RC, which I was personally weak on, and it's also great for extra PAT according to many students, though I personally didn't use it for PAT)
3. Some tips for memorizing...
-Use funny mnemonics (can help you memorize orders of pathways, hormones, ect.)
-Take some handwritten notes (I filled a notebook with handwritten biology notes, went through and highlighted them and tried to memorize them, and then read them through again and it helped increase my biology knowledge significantly - the notes were based on YouTube videos, Bootcamp explanations, DAT QVault explanations, and Kaplan MCAT Biology Review chapters)
-Review, review, review! Don't expect to memorize something you've seen once. For the last ~3 weeks before my exam, I would make sure to spend a couple hours each day reviewing my biology notebook to try to memorize info I'd seen before.
-Try notecards - For some students, making notecards can be very helpful
-Use Destroyer roadmaps for OC - They can help you memorize reagents
-Don't memorize isolated facts - Try to understand the big picture! Rather than just memorizing from where one random hormone is secreted, make sure you expand your knowledge to learn what it's function is, how it's regulated, what organs it acts on, and how that affects that particular system of the body
-Not really a tip for memorizing, but just a huge tip that I cannot emphasize enough, I highly recommend taking one full length Bootcamp practice test every Saturday. Use it as a way to assess your knowledge, identify weaknesses, and after you take it spend Sunday reviewing the biology explanations thoroughly for every question. Take notes! Also, look at every other section and study the questions you missed. Also, note that Bootcamp tests #1-5 are the same as the five full length tests. So you can use Bootcamp tests #6-10 and DAT QVault tests to practice each subject individually, but make sure to save Bootcamp #1-5 as your full length practice tests!
4. It may be enough time, but definitely reschedule if you don't feel ready. You'll never feel 100% ready, but if your practice scores are still consistently lower than where you want them to be, you should probably change your test date.
Good luck!!
