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So I wrote my OAT a couple of days ago. Overall, I thought the testing centre was great, really quiet and no one was there probably because it was during the holidays.
My background:
I have written the mcat, and the cdn DAT prior to this test and I did pretty well in both of those tests. I thought I had a pretty good scientific background heading into it. I was also a Bio major with a minor in Biochem which I completed recently
Here are my scores from the test day,the ADA sample and OAT achiever version 2.0.
OAT/ ADA/ ACHIEVER 1/ 3
BIO 400 380 390 320
GEN CHEM 400 370 390 330
ORGO 400 370 370 400
PHYSICS 400 380 320 300
READING COMP 320 360 300 280
QR 290 320 290 290
AA 370 360 340 320
Test experience:
BIO- How to describe this.... it really tested a bunch of random facts,,, spread out over all sections, My bio degree prepared me for this section and my mcat studying. I had 1-2 plant q's. 1 random question That asked me something I had never seen before in my life..(it was a evolution/ecology subject q, I thought id seen everything the test coudl ask apparetnly not) but it was just the one q. I think i got the rest right. Most q's were your typical cell bio and physiology questions, Hardy W. equilibrium q's, family trees, classification etc.. and a couple diagrams nothing too hard.
CHEM- Really straight forward. concept questions and calculations etc. molarity, molality, stoiciometry, phase diagrams etc
Orgo- Very straight forward.. gave reactions with reactants and asked what woudl be the final product and the reverse situation etc, some concepts.
Physics: this was great.. way easier then I was expecting. Had about 50:50 concept to calc questions. The achiever tests had a lot of detailed calc questions so i just flew through this section with 9 mins left over.
*They had some challenging q's that I used concepts to solve by eliminating wrong answer choices and that really bought my extra time so I didnt have to calculate them out.
RC: to my horror the very first passage that popped up dealt with pianos so it was prolly that talked about "crazy piano passage" that ive read about on here before. (it wasnt the hardest passage ive ever read before but I am sure I got a fair bit wrong on it lol) The rest were pretty straight forward but that first passage ate up alot of my time so I was rushed the rest of the way.
QR: This section was my nemisis. I knew that going into it. I had a lot of word problems which I really sucked at. I was never good at putting words into equations and I coudlnt remember back to my high school days So i guessed alot and apparently I am a bad guesser. The remaining algebra and geomtry q's were alright but there were a couple harder geometry qs.
Overall thoughts:
I thought the test went well. I was finishing well in advance of the time alloted for all of the science sections. RC i finished just in time. I was really struggling with QR and my mark reflects that. I thought however, I'd get a 300-310 not a 290. Ohwell.
How I STUDIED:
I used my princeton review mcat summary notes for bio/orgo/chem/physics and an old DAT kaplan book from 2008 which was supposed to help me in QR since my weakness was a lack of math word problem knowledge. I also couldnt find an OAT kaplan book in time. I studied for roughly 15 days total during the holidays and very sporadically until the final 4 days before the test then I studied a lot and did the majority of my practise tests. I studied right up until the night before the test.
I wrote the OAT achiever 1 to see my baseline then wrote the remaining 2 tests within a couple days of the real deal. I didnt write the 2nd full achiever test as I was running out of time before test day. I also thought the 3rd achiever test was harder then the first one I did.
So to everyone that is writing soon, best of luck. This test is not that bad at all. The fact I survived I think anyone else could. My only regret, I didnt plan well enough in advance to get a kaplan book and just maybe i could have done better in QR. I really thought the ADA was the closest to representing the real deal. However, I can really only compare it to the Achiever.
*I hope I didnt break any rules regarding the OAT confidentiality by my above post. It was not my intention.
My background:
I have written the mcat, and the cdn DAT prior to this test and I did pretty well in both of those tests. I thought I had a pretty good scientific background heading into it. I was also a Bio major with a minor in Biochem which I completed recently
Here are my scores from the test day,the ADA sample and OAT achiever version 2.0.
OAT/ ADA/ ACHIEVER 1/ 3
BIO 400 380 390 320
GEN CHEM 400 370 390 330
ORGO 400 370 370 400
PHYSICS 400 380 320 300
READING COMP 320 360 300 280
QR 290 320 290 290
AA 370 360 340 320
Test experience:
BIO- How to describe this.... it really tested a bunch of random facts,,, spread out over all sections, My bio degree prepared me for this section and my mcat studying. I had 1-2 plant q's. 1 random question That asked me something I had never seen before in my life..(it was a evolution/ecology subject q, I thought id seen everything the test coudl ask apparetnly not) but it was just the one q. I think i got the rest right. Most q's were your typical cell bio and physiology questions, Hardy W. equilibrium q's, family trees, classification etc.. and a couple diagrams nothing too hard.
CHEM- Really straight forward. concept questions and calculations etc. molarity, molality, stoiciometry, phase diagrams etc
Orgo- Very straight forward.. gave reactions with reactants and asked what woudl be the final product and the reverse situation etc, some concepts.
Physics: this was great.. way easier then I was expecting. Had about 50:50 concept to calc questions. The achiever tests had a lot of detailed calc questions so i just flew through this section with 9 mins left over.
*They had some challenging q's that I used concepts to solve by eliminating wrong answer choices and that really bought my extra time so I didnt have to calculate them out.
RC: to my horror the very first passage that popped up dealt with pianos so it was prolly that talked about "crazy piano passage" that ive read about on here before. (it wasnt the hardest passage ive ever read before but I am sure I got a fair bit wrong on it lol) The rest were pretty straight forward but that first passage ate up alot of my time so I was rushed the rest of the way.
QR: This section was my nemisis. I knew that going into it. I had a lot of word problems which I really sucked at. I was never good at putting words into equations and I coudlnt remember back to my high school days So i guessed alot and apparently I am a bad guesser. The remaining algebra and geomtry q's were alright but there were a couple harder geometry qs.
Overall thoughts:
I thought the test went well. I was finishing well in advance of the time alloted for all of the science sections. RC i finished just in time. I was really struggling with QR and my mark reflects that. I thought however, I'd get a 300-310 not a 290. Ohwell.
How I STUDIED:
I used my princeton review mcat summary notes for bio/orgo/chem/physics and an old DAT kaplan book from 2008 which was supposed to help me in QR since my weakness was a lack of math word problem knowledge. I also couldnt find an OAT kaplan book in time. I studied for roughly 15 days total during the holidays and very sporadically until the final 4 days before the test then I studied a lot and did the majority of my practise tests. I studied right up until the night before the test.
I wrote the OAT achiever 1 to see my baseline then wrote the remaining 2 tests within a couple days of the real deal. I didnt write the 2nd full achiever test as I was running out of time before test day. I also thought the 3rd achiever test was harder then the first one I did.
So to everyone that is writing soon, best of luck. This test is not that bad at all. The fact I survived I think anyone else could. My only regret, I didnt plan well enough in advance to get a kaplan book and just maybe i could have done better in QR. I really thought the ADA was the closest to representing the real deal. However, I can really only compare it to the Achiever.
*I hope I didnt break any rules regarding the OAT confidentiality by my above post. It was not my intention.
