I am currently making an optometry guide for pre-optom students (trying to get everything into one place to make it easy and accessible). I am working on the OAT section and need everyone's help to tell me what they used to study for the OAT and why. I already have the following listed:
Chad's videos
OAT Destroyer
Kaplan Big Book
OAT Acheiver
Kaplan OAT
Cliff's Notes AP Bio
Barron's AP Bio
ExamKrackers MCAT
Thanks so much!
I used the Kaplan OAT book. In all honesty, I bought it because it was on sale when I was looking for prep books. That being said, the book was perfectly suitable for what I needed. Before I even opened it, I read all of the necessary content (and then some) from my prerequisite textbooks. The Kaplan book gave me a good idea of how the test was set up, and allowed me to practice my timing. The questions also may teach you something that you missed in your studies.
It's worth noting that the Physics and General Chemistry sections were considerably harder in the Kaplan book than the actual test (320 in both sections on the practice tests, while my actual scores were 390 and 400). Additionally, the Quantitative Reasoning section was easier in the Kaplan book than it was on the actual test (400 on practice tests, 360 on actual test), and one big drawback of the Kaplan book is that there is next to no trigonometry in the practice tests, while my actual test was dominated by identities and the like. The other sections in the Kaplan book were quite representative of the actual test.
Overall, I would definitely recommend the Kaplan OAT book to anybody who is serious about writing the OAT. Bear in mind that this book alone (without prior studying) is a poor resource, but if the reader has studied the content beforehand, this book is fantastic preparation, and catches problem areas that one may have missed. I'd wager that my TS and AA scores were probably 20 points higher than they would have been if I hadn't used the book. My score was 390TS/380AA, if that gives any context to my review.
Good luck writing your guide, I hope I helped!
