Freaking out!!! HELP

[Fishbowl87]

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So I just took a practice test on OAT Achiever and did HORRRIBLE!!!
TS: 290 and AA: 270 i've been studying for almost a month and my exam is in two weeks... what can i do to improve??? i've been studying with Kaplan Material and taking practice exams.... is there any hope for me?🙁

 

[Arctic]

All you can do to prepare is to keep studying, and to make sure your test-taking strategy is solid. If you absolutely have to, don't be afraid to push back your test date.

Also, post your individual section scores if you want more specific advice (as was already suggested to you in the other thread).

 

[Fishbowl87]

QR 220
RC 220
BIO 230
Gen Chem 310
Orgo 290
Phys 330

The only problem with this bio section that i took was that there were lots of stuff and animal and bacterial kingdom... like kingdom is this organism from...and it was things that i have never seen before even in Kaplan books... so i don't know and for the RC and the QR there is not much that i can do to prepare but just do practice i guess.. but my exam is next week so i don't know what i should do considering the fact that i'm already taking the exam late as in to get into optometry school for fall 2010... so what do u think???

 

[Arctic]

If you aren't ready for the test, your best option is to push the test back a bit. There is SO much material in biology; yes, one of the things you need to know is taxonomy. I agree you are taking your test late, but again IF you are just going to do badly anyway (and then put yourself into a very weak position) your best alternative is just to delay the test. Those Bio, RC, and QR scores are all terrible, as you are aware. Plus, both of your chemistry scores are weak.

 

[Fishbowl87]

I guess i'm just gonna base my judgment of taking the test or not on the next practice exam this wend... so hopefully that'll go well...

 

[Chrispyswt]

I also used OAT acheiver. I took my oat back in mid September. I studied for about 4 months and took practice tests 3,2, and 1 week prior to the actual oat. Each time trying to simulate actual test day. My scores sucked like what you're experiencing. I do beleive they make the test considerably tougher to make you study harder. I don't know. But on actual test day my scores were AA 340 and TS 360. If you keep studying hard you should be fine. You may have the same outcome as me

 

[Arctic]

My concern with that reasoning, Chrispyswt, is that you studied for four months to get those scores. Fishbowl87's exam is within just a couple of weeks, and yes some of the practice tests are tougher than the actual OAT, but I don't think unwarranted optimism (which is quite prevalent on here) is going to help.

My advice, is to take the opted practice OAT (or the DAT works too, obviously ignoring perceptual ability) and if you do well enough on that then fine, you may in fact do well on your actual exam. But if you really struggle with that, I doubt there's much of a chance you'll be successful on test day.

 

[Fishbowl87]

Well I actually took the opted one and I did much better I believe all my sciences were above a 300 and the only ones that were bad were the QR and RC which were a little below 300 like 280 and 290 I believe ... that's why it was such a shocker for me to see the OAT achiever exam scores...

Thank you both actually for all your help though I really appreciate it

 

[Arctic]

Well, I'd put far more stock in your opted scores than anything else. If you do well on opted, you should be confident the exam will be close to that (except for RC). Opted is worthless for RC, absolutely worthless. They may as well just not even have one!

Just remember that the opted practice test uses the OLD scoring scale, so your score will likely be higher on that than on your actual exam (if your scores are around 300). So if you are getting a 300 in everything on opted, just as an example, you're probably not going to do all that great on the actual exam, but if you're getting above 300 in most sections, you'll likely do alright in those sections on test day. Anyways, good luck!

 

[Chrispyswt]

You say that you put more faith in opted tests because it gives you a better score but isn't the objective to get the best score possible. Why would you not challenge yourself and do as many practice tests possible. Plus I've done the kaplan tests and they are rediculously easy.

 

[Fishbowl87]

welll obviously I have a week left so i'm gonna study my butt off and still take the oat achiever exams, which i have two left.. so i'll do those and study the material and make sure i know it in and out and hope for the best on exam day i guess... and i am studyin with Kaplan, but some of the tests are actually really hard and questions that involve tooo many calculations which i don't think will be on the real exam at least i don't hope so...

 

[Arctic]

You say that you put more faith in opted tests because it gives you a better score but isn't the objective to get the best score possible. Why would you not challenge yourself and do as many practice tests possible. Plus I've done the kaplan tests and they are rediculously easy.

I'm not saying I put more faith in opted practice scores because they are higher....... I'm saying I have more faith in them as an indicator than OAT Achiever simply because opted is very similar to the OAT and, most importantly, students scores on the opted practice test simply tend to be far closer to their actual OAT scores than their OAT Achiever scores are. Am I saying people shouldn't study with OAT Achiever??? No, however it is so clear to me that if someone wants to gauge their expected performance, that the opted test is far better than the OAT Achiever (as always I exclude the opted RC section). You yourself admitted that you were performing horribly on the OAT Achiever tests, yet did FAR better than that on your actual exam. I'm going to assume you took the opted practice test, right? Tell me if that score (assuming you took it relatively close to test day) didn't give a much more accurate indication as to what your actual scores are???

Secondly, I did many practice Kaplan tests to help prepare for my OAT. Were they ridiculously (not spelled rediculously) easy? I thought they were decent (not great, but decent) indicators of the actual OAT. They were close enough that if you think Kaplan is "ridiculously easy" than you should think the actual OAT is as well..... Would you honestly say the OAT is "ridiculously easy"? I was thoroughly prepared for my OAT and I didn't find it challenging as a result, but I'd never call it "ridiculously easy". I spent so much time learning that material in undergrad, and so much time studying it again in preparation for my OAT, that I understand how much total effort it takes to do well on that exam. I'll let my own scores speak for themselves.

I will conclude by saying that I do fully agree with you that students should try to challenge themselves when studying, so I have no problem with students wanting to use OAT Achiever, but again, with respect to accurately gauging expected exam performance, I feel that OAT Achiever isn't the best.

 

[Fishbowl87]

Arctic what would you suggest is the best exam to take considering the fact that i only have this week left and a the first couple of days of next week????? I did some Kaplan exams the BIO was much more easier than the OAT achiever, the physics though was very hard, and some of the subject tests for Orgo were hard and the QR the problems were very long winded.... any advice is much appreciated... thank you again

 

[Arctic]

The best advice I can give you normally would be to just study as much as possible. However, with your exam coming up so soon (if you aren't going to postpone it) then you have to make sure to not 'burn yourself out' so to speak. I honestly don't know if OAT Achiever at this point will help you, it may in fact do more harm than good. Again if you had more time you'd have far more options, but here's a link to a very good practice test: http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/testing/dat/dat_test_sampleitems.pdf

Remember, the OAT is run by the American Dental Association, and that the DAT and OAT exams definitely share the same question bank, so studying for the DAT is fine (obviously ignoring Perceptual Ability, and figuring out another way to study Physics which isn't on the DAT).

Any topics that you're having trouble with on that test is what I'd suggest you focus on studying. I'd go so far as to say you shouldn't take the two more full length OAT Achiever tests with so little time before your test. Any questions you have, feel free to post them here, and I'll try and respond as quickly as possible. Good luck!

 

[Fishbowl87]

Thank you so much Arctic, I'm just hoping for the best and I think if i postpone my exam then the likelyhood of schools sending invitations for interviews will decrease, so i'm just gonna give the exam my all

 

[Arctic]

I do understand that you have to weigh that, and it may in fact be your best (i.e. least bad) option to give the exam your all and hope for the best, as postponing it may just not work out for applying this cycle. Good luck!

 

[Meesha22]

So I just took a practice test on OAT Achiever and did HORRRIBLE!!!
TS: 290 and AA: 270 i've been studying for almost a month and my exam is in two weeks... what can i do to improve??? i've been studying with Kaplan Material and taking practice exams.... is there any hope for me?🙁

I took my OATs twice. Once in July and once just this past Monday. For the July OAT, I used the Kaplan material by reading through the book, doing the online exercises and taking the practice tests. My OAT actual OAT scores were not that great. Honestly, Kaplan has great material, but the actual OAT is much more simple that that. I was so focused on complex problems and intricate formulas, that I didn't focus on the more simple things, things that were actually on my OAT. MY OAT score was ok, but because my GPA sucks, I needed to get an amazing score.

So for the test I took on Monday, I didn't use any of the Kaplan material except for the online workshops in each subject, EXCEPT for the RC. Then I bought the OAT Destroyer (that book was a LOT cheaper than the Kaplan class I paid for) and did all the problems and read over the solutions TWICE for each section. The Destroyer questions were very similar conceptually to the actual OAT and my score skyrocketed. Here are my scores to show you the differences:
Score w/Kaplan Score w/Kap + Destroyer
QR 320 350
RC 310 300 <--a bit lower 🙁
Bio 330 350
Gen Chem 340 360
O Chem 330 400 😀
Physics 300 340
TS 330 370
AA 320 350

So as you can see overall, my scores went up, way up. So if you have time, get the destroyer and try those problems out. There's no timer or anything, but after doing the problems and reading over the solutions it really helped.

However, if you want more practice test you can either take the practice test from opted.org or you can get the Top Score program which includes 3 full length practice tests written by past pre-opt students, current opto students and optometrists 🙂 Good luck!

Hope that helps 🙂

 

[optmania]

How long did u study using the destroyer?

 

[blysssful]

I'm not saying I put more faith in opted practice scores because they are higher....... I'm saying I have more faith in them as an indicator than OAT Achiever simply because opted is very similar to the OAT and, most importantly, students scores on the opted practice test simply tend to be far closer to their actual OAT scores than their OAT Achiever scores are. Am I saying people shouldn't study with OAT Achiever??? No, however it is so clear to me that if someone wants to gauge their expected performance, that the opted test is far better than the OAT Achiever (as always I exclude the opted RC section). You yourself admitted that you were performing horribly on the OAT Achiever tests, yet did FAR better than that on your actual exam. I'm going to assume you took the opted practice test, right? Tell me if that score (assuming you took it relatively close to test day) didn't give a much more accurate indication as to what your actual scores are???

Secondly, I did many practice Kaplan tests to help prepare for my OAT. Were they ridiculously (not spelled rediculously) easy? I thought they were decent (not great, but decent) indicators of the actual OAT. They were close enough that if you think Kaplan is "ridiculously easy" than you should think the actual OAT is as well..... Would you honestly say the OAT is "ridiculously easy"? I was thoroughly prepared for my OAT and I didn't find it challenging as a result, but I'd never call it "ridiculously easy". I spent so much time learning that material in undergrad, and so much time studying it again in preparation for my OAT, that I understand how much total effort it takes to do well on that exam. I'll let my own scores speak for themselves.

I will conclude by saying that I do fully agree with you that students should try to challenge themselves when studying, so I have no problem with students wanting to use OAT Achiever, but again, with respect to accurately gauging expected exam performance, I feel that OAT Achiever isn't the best.

Awesome post 👍