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I had used this website to help prepare me for my OAT so I thought I would pay it forward and tell about my experience. Hopefully this is especially helpful for those who have taken the test before and didnt do as well as they wanted. I'm putting out a warning right now that it may be long I am going to try and give as much detail as I can.
Background:
I took the test once already last winter during my christmas break and all I used was a Kaplan test book. I was busy with finals before the break so didn't get a chance to study before it. I was getting horrible scores on my practice exams and it showed up on test day. I didnt get above a 300 on any subject, I believe my TS (Total Science) was 280, and my AA (Academic Average) was 290. Needless to say I was pretty upset and I knew i had to re-take the exam. I am not good at taking standardized tests in the first place so I know I had a struggle ahead of me.
Study Methods:
I know I needed to do something drastic, so this might seem a little much for some people and probably a lot you won't need to do half this much, but if I can help just one person writing all this out will be worth it. The first time I studied about two week, this time it was about a month and a half. I advise not wasting your time and money if you do anything short and rushed its just not worth it.
I still had the Kaplan book that had the practice problems and practice exams. But the best decision I mad was purching Princeton Review Book for the SAT. I bought the Physics, Chemistry, and Biology book all at about $10 on Amazon. They were great with the amount of information they had in them and the practice problems during and after each chapter. I highly recommend actually READING everything, remember on the OAT its not all calculations there are a lot of conceptual questions.
I also went to the OAT website, opted.org I believe it is and printed off the sheet that shows all the subjects that that OAT will cover under each section and I looked up information on each and every single section, this took quite a long time but I wanted to make sure when I actually started studying I wanted all the information in front of me. Just be sure to work on it every night and you'll get it all. I think transferred terms and equations as I was going to notecards (the notecard method helps me to study but you may have some better ways), I ended up using almost two packs of notecards and after a while I started throwing out some that I had down well.
After a lot of work and studying I saw improvements in my practice test scores. I did not practice the reading section I just had too much to do with the other things. For quantitative reasoning I found it helpful in the Kaplan book to practice and then in the back actually read and understand how to do the problem.
Test Day:
This is pretty simple, show up with your two forms of I.D. They pretty do everything for you to get set up, just try and keep calm. I see a lot of people on here talk about the markers and board you use, but mine didn't smell and were no problem for me at all.
Biology:
I was a biology major so this part came a little bit easier to me than the others. I remember there was a picture of a cell performing an action and asked which type it was. I didnt see the infamous birth control question but I did my first exam. There were probably 3 over Evolution, and a decent amount about genetics. Some were about the theories of posulates of Hardy Weinberg if i recall. One about a plant anatomy. A lot seemed pretty simple and I flew through a lot of these questions.
Gen Chem:
This was one of my worst subjects and I had to spend a lot of time on it studying. There was a simple stoich question, Hess Law, two periodic trend questions. There was a question on Vapor pressure, I think it asked on how to change it, I narrowed it down to two answers. Question solving using the ideal gas equation not too bad. Question on which molecule is polar, and one on solubility.
Org Chem:
About three where it would have been useful to memorize their names. Also some questions on solubility. Pretty easy nomenclature.
Reading:
The first time I took the test I just panicked and would read the sentence and nothing was processed so I quickly went to the search and destroy method. This time I remained calm and realized I actually knew some information on the three passages that I read which helped and I took the time to read them. Writing down quickly one or two words about what is in each paragraph as you go can help if you quickly need to look back and find an answer.
Physics:
Another weak section for me, and always has been. Like I said just make sure to understand concepts. I got about 3 problems over Optics, the questions are very similar to the Kaplan questions. About 3 kinematic questions that if you know the equations youd be fine. One question on capacitors, I found that I could sometimes find the answer by looking at the units of what they were looking for and finding the answer that way.
QR:
My biggest piece of advice for this section is actually to not be too relaxed during it and concentrate on going at a quick pace which was my problem. I would know how to do a problem and would take my time where I should have gone at a faster pace. A lot of triangles, and trig stuff (sec, csc, cot) I looked these up while studying and wasnt too bad to remember just make a notecard for them! Remember the ones where its purely calculations be sure to go as fast as you can, these arent very hard but can sometimes take a while to type out on the calculator. I think this section is done best by Kaplan example types.
Results:
QR : 300
Reading Comp: 350
Biology: 330
Gen Chem: 330
Org Chem: 320
Physics: 310
Total Science: 330
Academic average: 320
Well usually people who post on here have the 360's and 380's but having tested so poorly before and having a difficult time with standardized tests I was fine with my results. It was a lot of work for a pretty average score, but sometimes you have to work extra hard to even get those so hopefully this will help those who have a hard time on standardized tests as well.
Sorry for how long it was, I'll add more below if I can remember anymore and let me know if ya have any questions
Background:
I took the test once already last winter during my christmas break and all I used was a Kaplan test book. I was busy with finals before the break so didn't get a chance to study before it. I was getting horrible scores on my practice exams and it showed up on test day. I didnt get above a 300 on any subject, I believe my TS (Total Science) was 280, and my AA (Academic Average) was 290. Needless to say I was pretty upset and I knew i had to re-take the exam. I am not good at taking standardized tests in the first place so I know I had a struggle ahead of me.
Study Methods:
I know I needed to do something drastic, so this might seem a little much for some people and probably a lot you won't need to do half this much, but if I can help just one person writing all this out will be worth it. The first time I studied about two week, this time it was about a month and a half. I advise not wasting your time and money if you do anything short and rushed its just not worth it.
I still had the Kaplan book that had the practice problems and practice exams. But the best decision I mad was purching Princeton Review Book for the SAT. I bought the Physics, Chemistry, and Biology book all at about $10 on Amazon. They were great with the amount of information they had in them and the practice problems during and after each chapter. I highly recommend actually READING everything, remember on the OAT its not all calculations there are a lot of conceptual questions.
I also went to the OAT website, opted.org I believe it is and printed off the sheet that shows all the subjects that that OAT will cover under each section and I looked up information on each and every single section, this took quite a long time but I wanted to make sure when I actually started studying I wanted all the information in front of me. Just be sure to work on it every night and you'll get it all. I think transferred terms and equations as I was going to notecards (the notecard method helps me to study but you may have some better ways), I ended up using almost two packs of notecards and after a while I started throwing out some that I had down well.
After a lot of work and studying I saw improvements in my practice test scores. I did not practice the reading section I just had too much to do with the other things. For quantitative reasoning I found it helpful in the Kaplan book to practice and then in the back actually read and understand how to do the problem.
Test Day:
This is pretty simple, show up with your two forms of I.D. They pretty do everything for you to get set up, just try and keep calm. I see a lot of people on here talk about the markers and board you use, but mine didn't smell and were no problem for me at all.
Biology:
I was a biology major so this part came a little bit easier to me than the others. I remember there was a picture of a cell performing an action and asked which type it was. I didnt see the infamous birth control question but I did my first exam. There were probably 3 over Evolution, and a decent amount about genetics. Some were about the theories of posulates of Hardy Weinberg if i recall. One about a plant anatomy. A lot seemed pretty simple and I flew through a lot of these questions.
Gen Chem:
This was one of my worst subjects and I had to spend a lot of time on it studying. There was a simple stoich question, Hess Law, two periodic trend questions. There was a question on Vapor pressure, I think it asked on how to change it, I narrowed it down to two answers. Question solving using the ideal gas equation not too bad. Question on which molecule is polar, and one on solubility.
Org Chem:
About three where it would have been useful to memorize their names. Also some questions on solubility. Pretty easy nomenclature.
Reading:
The first time I took the test I just panicked and would read the sentence and nothing was processed so I quickly went to the search and destroy method. This time I remained calm and realized I actually knew some information on the three passages that I read which helped and I took the time to read them. Writing down quickly one or two words about what is in each paragraph as you go can help if you quickly need to look back and find an answer.
Physics:
Another weak section for me, and always has been. Like I said just make sure to understand concepts. I got about 3 problems over Optics, the questions are very similar to the Kaplan questions. About 3 kinematic questions that if you know the equations youd be fine. One question on capacitors, I found that I could sometimes find the answer by looking at the units of what they were looking for and finding the answer that way.
QR:
My biggest piece of advice for this section is actually to not be too relaxed during it and concentrate on going at a quick pace which was my problem. I would know how to do a problem and would take my time where I should have gone at a faster pace. A lot of triangles, and trig stuff (sec, csc, cot) I looked these up while studying and wasnt too bad to remember just make a notecard for them! Remember the ones where its purely calculations be sure to go as fast as you can, these arent very hard but can sometimes take a while to type out on the calculator. I think this section is done best by Kaplan example types.
Results:
QR : 300
Reading Comp: 350
Biology: 330
Gen Chem: 330
Org Chem: 320
Physics: 310
Total Science: 330
Academic average: 320
Well usually people who post on here have the 360's and 380's but having tested so poorly before and having a difficult time with standardized tests I was fine with my results. It was a lot of work for a pretty average score, but sometimes you have to work extra hard to even get those so hopefully this will help those who have a hard time on standardized tests as well.
Sorry for how long it was, I'll add more below if I can remember anymore and let me know if ya have any questions
Last edited:
