My OAT experience-12 days of studying! (Aug 2018)

[ithsirs999]

Hi guys,

I promised myself I'd do one of these since they helped me a ton, and now that I have some time I figured I'd start! Some background: I wasn't planning on taking the OAT this year, but in the spur of the moment I decided I wanted to apply for the upcoming cycle. However, since I am Canadian, if I wanted to be eligible to apply to our one opto school, I was required to take the exam before August 31st. One problem though, I had a trip to Asia already booked starting on August 16th..so I had 12 days to get my **** together, essentially.

What I used:
-2017/2018 Kaplan OAT book. Only had time to read the Bio section, gen chem, and QR.
-OAT Destroyer. Only had time to do about 300 questions from Bio, 200 from both the chems, 150 from QR, and 8 from physics (LOL)
-CHAD. God bless this angel, seriously. I basically failed ochem in undergrad, but i watched all his ochem videos, PRINTED HIS REACTIONS SUMMARY SHEET, and only reviewed these. That's all. I got an 80 percentile just doing that. I suck at orgo, so deffs. use him.
-Princeton MCAT physics book, read the main concepts. I also used the DAT Bootcamp free formula sheets.

My official score was as follows:

TS: 360 (89%)
AA: 350 (88%)
BIO: 370 (90%)
GC: 370 (87%)
OC: 240 (80%)
PHYSICS: 340 (90%)
QR: 320 (64%)
RC: 360 (80%)


Obviously my scores aren't the greatest for Canada, but I'm hoping they're okay for the States. I think what helped me the most was Chad for orgo, and powering through the Destroyer questions, because the explanations honestly teach you SO much. I hope this helps someone, I know I was struggling when studying for this lol. I think the scariest part of this exam was that 10 second break between when you finish and your scores pop up haha. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions!!!

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[mar2018]

Wow congrats on your scores! Did you feel kaplan bio covered enough of the material? Did you already have a good background in bio? And for the physics section was it more conceptual or math based ? Those 2 sections have me a little worried

 

[R.R4742]

that is a very good score, congrats....
Did you see any physics question from Fluid dynamics (bernoulli's equation) and Magnetism in the test?
The guideline does not mention these 2 chapters, but I have seen questions in Kaplan!

 

[ithsirs999]

Wow congrats on your scores! Did you feel kaplan bio covered enough of the material? Did you already have a good background in bio? And for the physics section was it more conceptual or math based ? Those 2 sections have me a little worried

Hey, thank you! In regards to your question, I did not have a great bio background, especially the concrete biology stuff like plants, ecology and stuff I had never done before. I was comfortable with physiology though, so that might have helped a bit! I think Kaplan did a qood job, if you know everything they teach in the book, you should be good! However, I think consulting another source, whether this be in the form of doing other practice questions, etc, really helped drive home the Kaplan material. It was kind of hard to retain it if I only read the Kaplan stuff haha. And I feel ya, physics had me very scared. Personally though, my exam was very, very conceptual! A lot of manipulating variables in equations and then answering how that would affect another variable. My advice for this section would be to know your equations for sure, they help SO much with the easy conceptual questions. Most of my calculation questions were basic plug and chugs. The Destroyer physics section is not really like what you would find on the exam, so don't worry!

 

[ithsirs999]

that is a very good score, congrats....
Did you see any physics question from Fluid dynamics (bernoulli's equation) and Magnetism in the test?
The guideline does not mention these 2 chapters, but I have seen questions in Kaplan!

Nope, none! I believe magnetism was for sure taken off, but im not sure about fluids. I did not have them, though. I would say to focus moreso on electricity, optics, and kinematics/dynamics, from most of the questions i have done. Hope that helps!