I'm planning on taking the Kaplan online course to study for the OAT for ~3 months this summer and taking the exam right before school starts again at the end of September. I wanted to work full time while doing so since the Kaplan course is so expensive and I want to make some money back because of it. I definitely need to take the course, otherwise I will not have any motivation to study. This means I will be working 40 hours/week Monday-Friday. The only time I have to study will be during the evening and weekends. Is this a good idea or should I just stay at home to study for the summer? How stressful and time-crunched do you think this is? How long do people usually spend per day or week studying if they only have 3 months until the test? Money isn't a big issue, but it just pains me and my bank account to drop so much $$$ on the course. I won't be working part-time since I will only be making enough to pay for rent/utilities so it will be kind of pointless.
Is it a good idea to study for the OAT while working full time during summer vacation?
- Thread starter eera1213
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People usually study about 3 months ( thats how long I studied for). The first month I studied about 5 hours a day and worked 3x a week but then I quit my job during month 2 and month 3 and that was more intense studying about 8-10 hours a day 6 days a week. ( 2 weeks before the exam I studied about 12 hours a day 7 days a week it was intense!). I also bought the kaplan course but found it to be a huge waste of money! What I used instead was Chad's videos to review gen chem, organic chem, and physics and then OAT destroyer for practice prep. This book is AWESOME! Since I was weak in physics I also bought the Princeton OAT book which is a book dedicated to physics it really helped me too by babying concepts I didn't understand too well even in undergrad ...I ended up doing really well on my OAT so although studying for the exam was a pain and I said goodbye to any social life the last 2 months but it was well worth it since I was accepted to my dream school. Best of luck!
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I also watched Bozeman science videos for biology ( which are free)
I think I was on the same boat as you when I was studying the past summer. I only had two and a half months and I was working around 22 hours a week but still ended up doing okay (AA350/TS360). Since you think you cannot self-motivate yourself with studying, I can see why you're inclined to take the Kaplan course. I, however, don't think it would be a good idea to work full time while studying. I am self-motivated so I was able to just get myself to study but even so, it was hard to only either work or study for those two months. I ended up taking more days off and only working 2-3 days a week (cutting down to 15 hours) because I wanted to put studying first. WIth that said, I am not sure if you would even be motivated enough to study with Kaplan after long days of work. As the poster above mentioned, Kaplan may not be enough for you to achieve a high score. I had the big Kaplan book and it was not enough for me, specifically for the ochem, gchem, and physics sections. I highly recommend the study materials mentioned above (OAT destroyer, Chad's videos, and Princeton Review for physics). Bottom line, I think it's better to take time off work or work less days to devote more time to study, whether you decide to use the online Kaplan course or not. You don't want to end up running out of time and scoring poorly, having to retake which would mean wasting even more time and money.
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I'm taking the OAT this summer (Either end of June or beginning of July). I need to get it out of the way before i leave for 2 weeks in July to go to Spain and there is no way that I would want to study in Spain to take the exam when coming back lol. And I also don't want to waste my whole summer studying for this exam. I recently took all the courses in university that will be on the OAT so hopefully it won't be so hard to study. I'm going to start studying in the beginning of May (probably second week) and this will give me about 2 months more or less to study for the exam.
I also considered taking the Kaplan course and I was so dead set on taking the course and for some reason I was convinced that if I didn't take the course, I wouldn't get a good mark. This is wrong and this forum has convinced me otherwise. Don't waste money on the course, just get the book from someone who already took the course or buy the book of amazon and buy chad's videos (i think about $50 for a month)
Anyways, I'll have just less than 2 months to study and I'm going to study for about 4-5 hours a day.
I also considered taking the Kaplan course and I was so dead set on taking the course and for some reason I was convinced that if I didn't take the course, I wouldn't get a good mark. This is wrong and this forum has convinced me otherwise. Don't waste money on the course, just get the book from someone who already took the course or buy the book of amazon and buy chad's videos (i think about $50 for a month)
Anyways, I'll have just less than 2 months to study and I'm going to study for about 4-5 hours a day.