July 2019 Experience

[EyeSee20]

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Hi everyone!

I just recently took my OAT and I wanted to share my feedback on it and my advice on sections. I have benefitted from all the wonderful advice that I received here so I wanted to give my 2 cents!

Natural Sciences
Biology

• I used the DAT Bootcamp Biology Notes primarily to study. Every day I would cover one chapter by reading, rewriting the notes, and making flashcards. After that I would go over the flashcards and notes from previous chapters for retention. This gave me the general basic knowledge I needed for the OAT. This section is kind of a wildcard in that they could ask just about everything. Your knowledge should encompass a little information about everything. The biology notes are quite extensive and more than you'll ever have to know so I found me skimming through extensive sections

Gen Chem

• I used Coursesaver for content and their quizzes which I believe should be enough for your studies. Coursesaver will definitely teach you more than you need. DAT Bootcamp also has a free Gen Chem exam that is also good and is similar in difficulty.
• I made flashcards once again for important concepts, trends, formulas
• Kaplan questions and their online practice exams were so much more difficult than the real thing

Organic Chem

• I was an organic chem TA for several years so I really did not study very much on this section. I skimmed through the DAT Bootcamp Reaction manual. Familiarize with the basics, SN1/SN2/E1/E2 reactions, ortho/meta/para directors, acidity, recognition of nucleophiles/electrophiles, Zaitsez vs Hoffman, etc. You don't have to know every detail of a reaction just be able to recognize and go through the process of elimination
• I've heard that Course saver is also useful for this

Reading Comprehension

• If you're not great at this section, I would practice reading a scientific article every other day! The DAT Bootcamp site actually has daily reading articles for you to try out.
• At the beginning of my practice tests, I used to do an outline but for me, it started to take to much time. I did a combination of search and destroy and skimming. I highlighted definitions, specific examples, quotes, and sources so they were easy for me to find and reference.

Physics

• Physics and Gen chem were my worst sections during practice exams. With Kaplan, I barely broke the 300's and it concerned me a lot but the real exam is a lot more straightforward and tests on the fundamental principals from your Physics 1. Try to understand the concepts more than being able to do the math, a lot of the times this will make answering questions easier and sometimes save you the time from actually doing the math.
• I used Coursesaver's videos and quizzes, DAT Bootcamp physics question bank is free and representative of the difficulty of the real exam.

Quantitative Reasoning

• I didn't do too much prepping for this section because my scores were consistent. I did go back and review probability and statistics because I struggled with those a little more. The Kaplan section is a little more representative of this part of the test
• I think this is the only section where timing could be a difficulty, it's very easy to be caught up on a simple math question that you can't figure out. Take your losses with some question and move on to other questions you are capable of. If time permits, you can try to come back.

Other resources used:

• Kaplan Live Online OAT Class: I was fortunate to have won this class on a scholarship. I didn't like the format of the class. You basically read chapters before your online session and they go over the material and give you tips. I found the amount of reading they assigned me was overwhelming and I'm not a great learner from just reading. The only huge perks about this were that I had access to live online practice exams (7 total) that were similar to the format of the actual exam. However, the difficulty varied greatly compared to the actual test. The reading, QR, and Biology are probably the most similar in difficulty and even then I would say Kaplan is a tad harder. The Gen Chem and Physics sections were discouraging and I struggled a lot with timing. The QBank was also nice in that I could target specific sections, like reading casually.
• OAT Destroyer: The only realistic sections were the QR. Every other section was more difficult and quite discouraging and so I gave up the questions halfway through.

Scores:
Kaplan Diagnostic/FL1/FL2/FL3/FL4/FL5/FL6/ADA/OAT
AA: 300/320/340/320/320/340/340/380/390
TS: 290/330/360/310/320/360/350/380/400


Bio: 280/350/340/330/290/330/340/380/390
Chem: 250/290/390/270/310/350/370/350/390
Organic: 320/340/340/340/340/370/340/380/380
Physics: 290/290/310/290/320/330/310/380/390

Reading: 350/340/320/380/330/340/380/400/380
QR: 320/330/320/330/330/340/320/400/400

 

[teyes14]

Hey congrats on the amazing scores! I am wondering for the DAT Bootcamp Biology Notes are you referring to the 121 pg document? If so did you feel like it covered mostly everything for the exam or did you also go through the big kaplan books biology

 

[EyeSee20]

Hey congrats on the amazing scores! I am wondering for the DAT Bootcamp Biology Notes are you referring to the 121 pg document? If so did you feel like it covered mostly everything for the exam or did you also go through the big kaplan books biology

Yes, I feel like that doc encompassed just about everything. I preferred that to the Kaplan books because it was more concise and colorful

 

[teyes14]

Yes, I feel like that doc encompassed just about everything. I preferred that to the Kaplan books because it was more concise and colorful

So for biology, you only studied off the 121 bootcamp document right not any other resources? Also how reflective were the course saver quizzes to the actual test? When you say course saver quizzes are you referring to the ones found after each video or the bulk found under the quiz section?

 

[EyeSee20]

So for biology, you only studied off the 121 bootcamp document right not any other resources? Also how reflective were the course saver quizzes to the actual test? When you say course saver quizzes are you referring to the ones found after each video or the bulk found under the quiz section?

The Kaplan Live Online class I was in went through bio stuff but it wasn't super helpful. I think the difficulty of the coursesaver quizzes are pretty similar to the difficulty of the test. I would watch the videos, take notes, take the quiz associated with the video to reinforce. After I went through the videos, I went under the quiz tab and created 20-30 question quizzes on one subject to cover a bunch of topics at once. You might end up redoing some questions because i believe it is all one question bank but I wanted to practice having different concepts at once. They also have 2 practice exams for gen chem and organic that i did use.