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- Jan 6, 2020
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So I haven't been an sdn user, I just made this account, but I visited the site frequently during the prep process and figured with applications coming up I would get more involved. Sorry if I unintentionally break any site rules, just let me know and I will try to correct any errors.
I found breakdowns to be very helpful when working through how to get through the DAT, which is why I figured I would try and do the same. I think I read chemistrydentist's, and rainbowsheep5's breakdowns like 3 times...
But! Something I didn’t see, and sort of wanted to, was someone’s COMPLETE breakdown of their approach, as I felt that just seeing “I studied 6 hours a day, 3 months” missed a lot of potentially interesting and important information about the pathway taken to a solid DAT score. This is my reason for having an obscenely long post (that and it was fun for me to reflect on what just happened).
I posted this on reddit and got decent reception so hopefully you guys enjoy this as well. Thanks again for all the info available on this site!
Scores.
BI: 30
GC: 30
OC: 26
(TS) : 30 (idk how they do this math tbh, but I’m down)
PAT: 28
RC: 25
QR: 30
(AA) : 28
I’ve organized the post as followed:
These sections are labeled in all caps if you want to skip around.
BIG TIPS: At the top I went over a number of “tips” that I thought were key focuses to successful studying.
SCHEDULE: Then I went through the different phases of my schedule, along with my thoughts on how it worked along the way.
TEST DAY: Near the bottom of this schedule part I have my test day thoughts.
RESOURCE REVIEW: Then at the bottom I have my review of the different resources I have used.
Also, feel free to message me about further questions, although if it’s something I included on here, I’ll probably refer you back to the post. Hope you find something helpful in here!!
BIG TIPS
1st tip : Don’t risk a retake!!
Please do not register as a first step, I feel like I saw people doing this as a “motivator” but if you register before studying, you don’t have a complete idea of how much content needs to be learned, or how much time you are going to be able to commit (or focus). This test is hard, and for me I didn’t fully realize how much I needed to learn until I was a couple weeks into studying.
Take some time to see how well you are able to focus, see how much energy/time you are able to commit per day, and see how you feel with the content before deciding what test day to go for. Now this does involve some early planning if you want to hit a certain application cycle, and is not really consistent with the common schedule of taking the DAT Summer of Junior year (it’s harder to just say “oh I’ll do it in January” when there’s pressure to apply as early as possible).
For me I started planning on a 6 month schedule, but only signed up for a test date after I got a practice score that would get me into dental school, and after a few weeks into Fall term, as I wanted to see if I would be able to balance classes and DAT studying effectively before committing to a date. So this meant 3.5 months of studying, then registering for a test date 2.5 months out. This also allowed me to progress other parts of my application while DAT studying, and allowed me to be OK when I fell behind on my study schedule some weeks.
As an add on, if you don’t feel like your practice scores will get you into the dental school, there is no shame in a reschedule. Sometimes I saw people saying “you’ll get a few points higher on the real thing don’t worry”, and while that probably is true, it seems like an expensive risk. I walked into test day knowing there was a zero percent chance of a retake, which meant when I saw a few problems in a row that I didn’t 100% know the answer to, there was no “oh god this is it I’m done” and I was able to move on without losing too much time based on anxiety. I didn’t want risk my chances of getting into my dream job over 1 test, so I made sure I didn’t feel rushed to just take the thing and move on. Similar to the discussion above, being honest with yourself is important to avoid getting in an unfortunate position as an applicant.
I put this as the first tip because I think it is the most widely applicable way to ensure you don’t spend money you don’t have to on reschedules and retakes, or end up halfway into an application cycle and realize you have to wait until next year. I view this point as helpful for mental health as well, as I imagine feeling rushed and not being confident would cause a lot of additional stress/ anxiety.
I’m writing a lot for this breakdown, but in the end the main reason my score was higher than average was because I spent more time than the average person. Spacing out your studying over longer periods of time is likely a huge solution to the DAT for future dentists who need to work full time, are taking classes, or just aren’t the type to be able to lock themselves in a room for 10 hrs a day.
2nd tip : Motivation and mental health is an important topic.
For me, this test represented a pretty big hill to get over, and at the beginning the content looked like this impassable wall. I noticed it became easy to just think of the DAT as this standalone thing permeating through all of my daily thoughts. This made starting out studying an intimidating process, especially considering I hadn’t taken A&P or biochem when I started.
Point being, while I was willing to sacrifice some mental health for this test, I am overall a pretty stable/ focused person and this test still involved a struggle to stay focused, stay calm, and not burn out before test day. While I know everyone has their own strategies, I’ll talk about how I addressed this subject, although admittedly I wasn’t perfect with this component of studying (I barely held it together test day haha).
To start, I spent part of my time during the first few weeks watching YouTube videos of dental students to see people who were close enough to undergrad to still seem relatable (I’ll say it, real, successful dentists are still like Gods to me). I really enjoyed a channel called “FutureDDS” that not only had a lot good information on how to make yourself a good applicant/ how to approach the DAT, but also has a series that is comprised of interviews with a student from every school in the country. The two people are also just super positive. Additionally, I started going on Reddit/ FB for similar reasons. This sort of made me feel more involved in being a pre-dent, whereas previously, aside from a few pre-dent club meetings and shadowing, I felt more like some Microbio major that was OK with seeing gross teeth.
That helped with the activation energy to start spending a lot of time during Summer, but admittedly the hype started to dwindle by the time I was in Fall term and actually taking a full schedule of classes (which made this studying thing a whole lot worse). Once that point was reached, I used less sustainable methods, such as eating junk food and complaining with my friends (the ones who were studying for the MCAT) about how this standardized test studying kinda sucked. In the future I hope to develop more sustainable/healthy mechanisms for accounting for mental health such as regular exercise, but for last few months that’s what worked for me.
During winter break I was even more tired, however being able to focus on just the test was a lot more calming, and I gave myself a lot of 10-15 minute breaks throughout the day, as I was already in a position where I did not need to cram.
As a final note, I found taking a FULL break day before the test date (ok, I still did a few flashcards in the morning) to be incredibly valuable. The days leading up to the test I got limited sleep (despite 20 mg melatonin and having screens off at 9:30 pm), and felt jittery/ a little nauseated. Taking a day to just sit down and watch random YouTube videos allowed me some processing time and some time to remember that this test is something I am prepared for.
3rd tip : Objective based schedule > time based schedule (for me)
What I mean by this is that setting a number of things to get done each day seemed to work better than setting a certain amount of time per day. A time-based schedule seems to have the flaw of allowing a person studying to lose focus and space out for portions of time, and effectively just sort of “wait out” the allotted time for studying. Alternatively, an objective based schedule works independently of your ability to focus, (as if you lose focus, you don’t make progress towards completing the objectives) which may even motivate you to focus more in order to get through the day’s schedule as quickly as possible. There is the danger of setting a schedule and then not doing it, but I view this as just a risk of studying in general, rather than a risk linked to a particular study strategy.
Also, by setting up objectives per day it becomes easier to fill in gaps within your day with tasks. If you were doing a schedule based on time, its hard to fit in 5 minutes here or there, as that would include transitions, or it would be complicated to keep track of how much time you had been productive studying throughout the day. For example, if you studied for 60 minutes throughout the day, in the form of 12, 5 minute intervals, my guess is you would’ve been less productive then if you studied for 60 minutes straight. With objectives, filling a 15 minute wait for the bus, or getting somewhere a few minutes early, then can translate to checking off a box of things to do, which will be translate to the same amount of work regardless of when/ how you completed the task.
I would often break down my tasks by subject, so I would do something related to each subject each day. (Ex: 25 bio questions, 25 PAT generator questions, 3 chem videos, 2 ochem videos, ect.) By doing this, I got to feel smaller senses of accomplishment throughout the day, which helped everything seem more achievable. It wasn’t “oh god only half way through my 18 ochem videos today… puke” but rather “ok we got bio done, lets move on to chem”. This also helped because bio often translated to more learned information per day than the other subjects. If I had done subjects by day bio days would’ve killed me with the sheer quantity of content!
Additionally, constantly evaluating and reevaluating your schedule was important for getting through the most content per day. I would usually set up a day where I would like to be done with a “thing” (ex: I want to be done with the Destroyer in 20 days), then do the math to see how much I would need to do per day to get it done. Often times I would not even hit my “goal”, but I would get close, which was enough to fit in the use of multiple study resources throughout the months of studying.
4th tip: Scale up studying over time
Along with reevaluating the schedule to ensure it is right for you, if you are spending a lot of time studying, you’re going to get better at consuming DAT-related information, if not all information. Inversely, this means at the beginning, studying may go slower, as there is a ton of never before seen information. For this reason, I view it as advantageous to start a study schedule with a low number of things per day, then, upon reevaluation, increasing the amount of things done per day. In this way, you can take advantage of the skills you develop along the way, and also avoid starting too big and failing to keep up with your schedule.
In my schedule you may notice at the start I was doing a decent amount of studying, but not nearly as much as during Winter break/ late Fall term. This is an example of this principle.
5th tip : Do not rely on your background (to some extent)
Paying attention in your pre-reqs is extremely important for being successful on the exam, it takes a lot of time to learn all the chemistry, bio, and ochem for the first time. That being said, relying on the knowledge you’ve gained from those classes seems dangerous for me. While having a lot of background will definitely support your studying, I believe this advantage should only be used to make content review go faster, rather than skip content review to focus on other areas.
For any class or test, you don’t know what you don’t know, and the DAT is a super broad test for every section. So cover everything you can, even though it may seem annoying (having Mike explain to me how to balance equations during my Junior year did feel a little ridiculous, but then he mentioned something that made me able to do some problems a little faster, and I never know when stuff like that is going to happen).
It can even make some days feel more relaxing bc you are going over stuff you already know!
6th tip : Please try and use Anki (it’s free so I swear this isn’t just marketting)
Earlier I discussed the advantage to setting up a longer-than-three month schedule, and the main counterpoint I saw being made on the internet was “you’ll just forget what you learned if you go over 3 months”. There are two solutions I had for this issue. The first was just planning to do two sets of content review, (a review of my review…), however the second, and more important solution, was Anki.
While I understand everyone learns differently, I was someone who didn’t make/use flashcards before the DAT, and honestly I have always viewed myself as someone who is better at understanding concepts rather than someone who can recall large quantities of information. Although after forcing myself to use Anki I realized that it was ridiculously efficient for locking down information. It felt like if I had a card made on Anki, it was in my brain forever. So I would say, even if you don’t think it’s for you, at least try to use Anki and see if its helpful, because it could really speed up the studying process.
Just incase you haven’t heard of Anki before (if you have, skip the next two paragraphs), it’s a flashcard app based on the idea of spaced repetition, which, as explained to me by my friend who introduced me to the app, basically says that if you are forced to recall something just before you are going to forget, that information will more readily be commit to long term memory. Maybe that explanation is totally wrong, but it certainly felt true.
How it works is you make your flashcards, and when completing them it will give you an interval of time before you will see the card again. For example, a new card will come up in the next ten minutes, whereas a card you have seen and gotten correct before you may see in 7 days. After a while, the cards you know will only show up like once a month, whereas the cards you struggle with will keep popping up. In this way, you are basically forced to review the information you have less of a grasp on, and it effectively schedules and focuses your studying for you! I am sure other apps may to similar things but as far as I am concerned Anki has it down, and is generally offline so there is no dependency on Wifi or data.
As an added bonus I have an android phone, so the Anki app was free along with the already-free desktop app.
The catch is that Anki is effective when you do you all of your reviews (cards scheduled to be seen that day) every day, for a long period of time. This included break days, and it includes holidays.
Just to give fair warning, by the end of the 6 months, I accumulated around 4250 cards, with 60898 reviews, and during the term, along with my decks made for classes, this corresponded to 500-600 reviews per day, which took up a lot of time.
Note: I’ve gotten a few questions about sharing my Anki decks, but unfortunately, I think the typos and grammar I used (I have some strangely worded cards), and the fact that some are based on paid-for resources, leads me to not want to give them out. I think it would actively put you at a disadvantage to not make your own cards. Apologies.
My main tips for making this easier to keep up with are:
I did this late in the game, but I think that Anki and all of the bio notes often have giga white backgrounds, and by the end of studying my eyes felt really strained. For Anki, use night mode. For PC, doing a quick Google search on how to invert your screen colors and then studying with a black background may save you a lot of eye strain (there’s a reason all the coding people do it!). That being said, during practice tests just go for normal to replicate test conditions.
OK! Those are the main approach things I wanted to cover. Let’s move on to the schedule.
SCHEDULE
As you’ve seen, I’m pretty prone to rambling, so this section will follow suite.
Alright so end of sophomore year, Summer starts, and this DAT thing no longer is just a “I’ll get to that later” topic.
Early Summer (research/ testing + round 1 of content review) ~2 months
Additional responsibilities:
Lab work: 20 hrs/ week
8 credits, business classes: 8 hours/ week
Shadowing: 6 hours/ week (some weeks 4, some weeks 8)
Here is the period of time where I Googled resources, read a ton of breakdowns, and watched a ton of Youtube videos about what I was getting myself into.
Purchased a sub to Chad’s Prep chem/ochem/other stuff that I never used ($50, 6 month). Did I realized that when people said “Chad’s vids” they were talking about some course saver thing, nope. Am I alright with this mistake, yup.
PurchasedPATbooster ($75, 6 month).
Found Feralis notes.
For studying I started with watching some crash course videos, taking notes (whenever I say notes for this breakdown I mean handwritten, laptop notes don’t work for me at all) and making flashcards then attempting to make flashcards for the part of Feralis notes associated with the video’s subject.
Then, I would “complete” 3 parts of Chad’s gen chem course, where “complete” either means watch the videos and take notes (I did NOT make flashcards, as the course was not DAT specific), or answer the practice problems.
Then I would do 70 generator questions off of PATbooster, 35 for two different topics.
Within like 1.5 weeks I realized 3 things.
A. Feralis notes are wAYyyY to much for me to manage starting out studying. That doc is thiq.
B. This current schedule didn’t take much time at all. I still had a lot of free time. A part of my mind (probably an unhealthy part) was telling me, if you’re having a good time, you probably could be trying harder.
C. I was not doing anything for QR or RC.
So, time to revaluate and replan. One change is that I joined the Destroyer FB page, which has a lot of free resources.
Found Dr. Romano’s Dynamite bio review, instantly saw that this was much easier to digest.
Now the schedule turned into. 10 pages of Romano doc per day, no notes, just flashcards, making sure to do all the new flashcards the same day they were made. First day I did like 50 pages bc it was the more introductory parts.
Then, “complete” 5 sections from Chad’s vids (I did the math, and in order to finish the ochem and chem sections by a certain date this was the number), still taking notes, no flashcards.
Then I would do 70 generator questions off of PATbooster, 35 for two different topics. But after taking a practice test I realized that angle ranking and keyholes were….. rough. So now it was 35 of (AR or KH, alternating every other day) then 35 of (one of the other sections) or, if it was a cube counting, 20 generator problems, bc doing 1 generator problem is like doing 3 real problems.
Finally, I would do two readings, mainly whatever was posted in the DAT Destroyer FB page. The actual practice problems were intimidating, and I honestly didn’t want to look or feel dumb so I pretty much ignored these… For better or worse who knows.
Sundays were break days, at the beginning of the Summer I didn’t even do Anki on these days, but I did end up doing most of the homework for my business classes on these days… Eventually I started doing Anki on break days because it hurt too much to have double the cards due on Monday.
So this schedule I enjoyed, it got a little hard because in my lab some people gradated so I had to pick up on some of their responsibilities. My lab involves cell culture, and cells won’t wait until your weekend is over to need help…. Then when I got to the anatomy section of the Romano notes I began to fall a little behind my schedule, as there was a ton of super new information that took a lot of flashcards and time to work through. What helped motivate me through anatomy was knowing that learning this all now would make Fall term anatomy a whole lot easier, as I was very scared of Fall term given how I had no clue how I would fare with the combo of taking classes and DAT studying, along with extracurricular stuff.
Then part way through Summer (the day after I finished Chad’s gen chem course, as well as the ACS ochem refresher course on Chad’s site) my girlfriend and I went to Alaska for two weeks to her grandparents’ house. The week before this I was unable to get many Romano pages done, as lab responsibilities kicked up to 40 hours for that week, and my business classes had final projects/ finals due. So even though I originally planned to have the document done by then, I ended up spending some of the long car rides on this trip typing up Anki cards for the ecology section of the notes. Although bc we did a ton of hiking it was sort of fun to see examples of the ecology stuff I just read during that day’s hike.
Overall, didn’t enjoy making/ doing anki cards on the trip, but it was a nice break from the lab/shadowing/chemistry stuff. I will note that I also did NOT do PAT generators during this trip. Only bio and keeping up with Anki reviews. Additionally, the main reason I bring up this trip was because it was a motivator to stay on schedule during the two months prior (or at least mostly on schedule), as I knew it would recover any built up burnout accumulated over the early Summer.
Late summer (finish content review + Destroyer start + first practice test) ~3 weeks
Additional responsibilities:
Lab work: 25-30 hrs/wk (a few people got banned from the cell culture room for contamination, so I had to pick up their cell lines ☹ )
Shadowing: 4 hrs/wk
Romano notes finished!!! That was exciting.
With a round of review done for the chemistries and bio, I figured it was finally time for the Destroyer (the original big boi, 2019, $150). At the start I just went for 10 ochem, 15 chem, 25 bio, and 10 math problems per day. I probably missed all 10 of the ochem problems first day, (and probably others) but it was fine. For all explanations and problems, I made flashcards, although I did NOT just control copy the problem, because I knew I was planning on doing multiple rounds of the book. Mainly made flashcards for concepts, reactions, equations, and all the random terms dropped in the bio section.
Kept up with PAT generators, Anki, and readings, but I didn’t have a ton of time outside of this and Fall term was coming so I didn’t try and commit harder.
Took a practice test one day, as Chad’s prep had 5 free practice tests available (no RC or PAT section, so I just did 3 readings to substitute for RC, and a PATbooster test to sub for PAT). I got slightly lower than expected, as despite having maybe 1/3 of the Destroyer under my belt, and 2.5 months of content review I got between 18-20 for all of the sections, which is fine, but I just didn’t like seeing the 70%s on everything. Also even though I figured I had been building up stamina, I was very tired for QR, even without taking a real RC section. This test was hard, and honestly I feel like getting close to a 20 was partially due to some lucky guesses. One silver lining was that the timing was there.
At the time I had not even applied to set a test date, and I knew I had plenty of time, so overall, I was pretty content with this result. However, I still wanted to wait until the term started before committing to a test date.
I found breakdowns to be very helpful when working through how to get through the DAT, which is why I figured I would try and do the same. I think I read chemistrydentist's, and rainbowsheep5's breakdowns like 3 times...
But! Something I didn’t see, and sort of wanted to, was someone’s COMPLETE breakdown of their approach, as I felt that just seeing “I studied 6 hours a day, 3 months” missed a lot of potentially interesting and important information about the pathway taken to a solid DAT score. This is my reason for having an obscenely long post (that and it was fun for me to reflect on what just happened).
I posted this on reddit and got decent reception so hopefully you guys enjoy this as well. Thanks again for all the info available on this site!
Scores.
BI: 30
GC: 30
OC: 26
(TS) : 30 (idk how they do this math tbh, but I’m down)
PAT: 28
RC: 25
QR: 30
(AA) : 28
I’ve organized the post as followed:
These sections are labeled in all caps if you want to skip around.
BIG TIPS: At the top I went over a number of “tips” that I thought were key focuses to successful studying.
SCHEDULE: Then I went through the different phases of my schedule, along with my thoughts on how it worked along the way.
TEST DAY: Near the bottom of this schedule part I have my test day thoughts.
RESOURCE REVIEW: Then at the bottom I have my review of the different resources I have used.
Also, feel free to message me about further questions, although if it’s something I included on here, I’ll probably refer you back to the post. Hope you find something helpful in here!!
BIG TIPS
1st tip : Don’t risk a retake!!
Please do not register as a first step, I feel like I saw people doing this as a “motivator” but if you register before studying, you don’t have a complete idea of how much content needs to be learned, or how much time you are going to be able to commit (or focus). This test is hard, and for me I didn’t fully realize how much I needed to learn until I was a couple weeks into studying.
Take some time to see how well you are able to focus, see how much energy/time you are able to commit per day, and see how you feel with the content before deciding what test day to go for. Now this does involve some early planning if you want to hit a certain application cycle, and is not really consistent with the common schedule of taking the DAT Summer of Junior year (it’s harder to just say “oh I’ll do it in January” when there’s pressure to apply as early as possible).
For me I started planning on a 6 month schedule, but only signed up for a test date after I got a practice score that would get me into dental school, and after a few weeks into Fall term, as I wanted to see if I would be able to balance classes and DAT studying effectively before committing to a date. So this meant 3.5 months of studying, then registering for a test date 2.5 months out. This also allowed me to progress other parts of my application while DAT studying, and allowed me to be OK when I fell behind on my study schedule some weeks.
As an add on, if you don’t feel like your practice scores will get you into the dental school, there is no shame in a reschedule. Sometimes I saw people saying “you’ll get a few points higher on the real thing don’t worry”, and while that probably is true, it seems like an expensive risk. I walked into test day knowing there was a zero percent chance of a retake, which meant when I saw a few problems in a row that I didn’t 100% know the answer to, there was no “oh god this is it I’m done” and I was able to move on without losing too much time based on anxiety. I didn’t want risk my chances of getting into my dream job over 1 test, so I made sure I didn’t feel rushed to just take the thing and move on. Similar to the discussion above, being honest with yourself is important to avoid getting in an unfortunate position as an applicant.
I put this as the first tip because I think it is the most widely applicable way to ensure you don’t spend money you don’t have to on reschedules and retakes, or end up halfway into an application cycle and realize you have to wait until next year. I view this point as helpful for mental health as well, as I imagine feeling rushed and not being confident would cause a lot of additional stress/ anxiety.
I’m writing a lot for this breakdown, but in the end the main reason my score was higher than average was because I spent more time than the average person. Spacing out your studying over longer periods of time is likely a huge solution to the DAT for future dentists who need to work full time, are taking classes, or just aren’t the type to be able to lock themselves in a room for 10 hrs a day.
2nd tip : Motivation and mental health is an important topic.
For me, this test represented a pretty big hill to get over, and at the beginning the content looked like this impassable wall. I noticed it became easy to just think of the DAT as this standalone thing permeating through all of my daily thoughts. This made starting out studying an intimidating process, especially considering I hadn’t taken A&P or biochem when I started.
Point being, while I was willing to sacrifice some mental health for this test, I am overall a pretty stable/ focused person and this test still involved a struggle to stay focused, stay calm, and not burn out before test day. While I know everyone has their own strategies, I’ll talk about how I addressed this subject, although admittedly I wasn’t perfect with this component of studying (I barely held it together test day haha).
To start, I spent part of my time during the first few weeks watching YouTube videos of dental students to see people who were close enough to undergrad to still seem relatable (I’ll say it, real, successful dentists are still like Gods to me). I really enjoyed a channel called “FutureDDS” that not only had a lot good information on how to make yourself a good applicant/ how to approach the DAT, but also has a series that is comprised of interviews with a student from every school in the country. The two people are also just super positive. Additionally, I started going on Reddit/ FB for similar reasons. This sort of made me feel more involved in being a pre-dent, whereas previously, aside from a few pre-dent club meetings and shadowing, I felt more like some Microbio major that was OK with seeing gross teeth.
That helped with the activation energy to start spending a lot of time during Summer, but admittedly the hype started to dwindle by the time I was in Fall term and actually taking a full schedule of classes (which made this studying thing a whole lot worse). Once that point was reached, I used less sustainable methods, such as eating junk food and complaining with my friends (the ones who were studying for the MCAT) about how this standardized test studying kinda sucked. In the future I hope to develop more sustainable/healthy mechanisms for accounting for mental health such as regular exercise, but for last few months that’s what worked for me.
During winter break I was even more tired, however being able to focus on just the test was a lot more calming, and I gave myself a lot of 10-15 minute breaks throughout the day, as I was already in a position where I did not need to cram.
As a final note, I found taking a FULL break day before the test date (ok, I still did a few flashcards in the morning) to be incredibly valuable. The days leading up to the test I got limited sleep (despite 20 mg melatonin and having screens off at 9:30 pm), and felt jittery/ a little nauseated. Taking a day to just sit down and watch random YouTube videos allowed me some processing time and some time to remember that this test is something I am prepared for.
3rd tip : Objective based schedule > time based schedule (for me)
What I mean by this is that setting a number of things to get done each day seemed to work better than setting a certain amount of time per day. A time-based schedule seems to have the flaw of allowing a person studying to lose focus and space out for portions of time, and effectively just sort of “wait out” the allotted time for studying. Alternatively, an objective based schedule works independently of your ability to focus, (as if you lose focus, you don’t make progress towards completing the objectives) which may even motivate you to focus more in order to get through the day’s schedule as quickly as possible. There is the danger of setting a schedule and then not doing it, but I view this as just a risk of studying in general, rather than a risk linked to a particular study strategy.
Also, by setting up objectives per day it becomes easier to fill in gaps within your day with tasks. If you were doing a schedule based on time, its hard to fit in 5 minutes here or there, as that would include transitions, or it would be complicated to keep track of how much time you had been productive studying throughout the day. For example, if you studied for 60 minutes throughout the day, in the form of 12, 5 minute intervals, my guess is you would’ve been less productive then if you studied for 60 minutes straight. With objectives, filling a 15 minute wait for the bus, or getting somewhere a few minutes early, then can translate to checking off a box of things to do, which will be translate to the same amount of work regardless of when/ how you completed the task.
I would often break down my tasks by subject, so I would do something related to each subject each day. (Ex: 25 bio questions, 25 PAT generator questions, 3 chem videos, 2 ochem videos, ect.) By doing this, I got to feel smaller senses of accomplishment throughout the day, which helped everything seem more achievable. It wasn’t “oh god only half way through my 18 ochem videos today… puke” but rather “ok we got bio done, lets move on to chem”. This also helped because bio often translated to more learned information per day than the other subjects. If I had done subjects by day bio days would’ve killed me with the sheer quantity of content!
Additionally, constantly evaluating and reevaluating your schedule was important for getting through the most content per day. I would usually set up a day where I would like to be done with a “thing” (ex: I want to be done with the Destroyer in 20 days), then do the math to see how much I would need to do per day to get it done. Often times I would not even hit my “goal”, but I would get close, which was enough to fit in the use of multiple study resources throughout the months of studying.
4th tip: Scale up studying over time
Along with reevaluating the schedule to ensure it is right for you, if you are spending a lot of time studying, you’re going to get better at consuming DAT-related information, if not all information. Inversely, this means at the beginning, studying may go slower, as there is a ton of never before seen information. For this reason, I view it as advantageous to start a study schedule with a low number of things per day, then, upon reevaluation, increasing the amount of things done per day. In this way, you can take advantage of the skills you develop along the way, and also avoid starting too big and failing to keep up with your schedule.
In my schedule you may notice at the start I was doing a decent amount of studying, but not nearly as much as during Winter break/ late Fall term. This is an example of this principle.
5th tip : Do not rely on your background (to some extent)
Paying attention in your pre-reqs is extremely important for being successful on the exam, it takes a lot of time to learn all the chemistry, bio, and ochem for the first time. That being said, relying on the knowledge you’ve gained from those classes seems dangerous for me. While having a lot of background will definitely support your studying, I believe this advantage should only be used to make content review go faster, rather than skip content review to focus on other areas.
For any class or test, you don’t know what you don’t know, and the DAT is a super broad test for every section. So cover everything you can, even though it may seem annoying (having Mike explain to me how to balance equations during my Junior year did feel a little ridiculous, but then he mentioned something that made me able to do some problems a little faster, and I never know when stuff like that is going to happen).
It can even make some days feel more relaxing bc you are going over stuff you already know!
6th tip : Please try and use Anki (it’s free so I swear this isn’t just marketting)
Earlier I discussed the advantage to setting up a longer-than-three month schedule, and the main counterpoint I saw being made on the internet was “you’ll just forget what you learned if you go over 3 months”. There are two solutions I had for this issue. The first was just planning to do two sets of content review, (a review of my review…), however the second, and more important solution, was Anki.
While I understand everyone learns differently, I was someone who didn’t make/use flashcards before the DAT, and honestly I have always viewed myself as someone who is better at understanding concepts rather than someone who can recall large quantities of information. Although after forcing myself to use Anki I realized that it was ridiculously efficient for locking down information. It felt like if I had a card made on Anki, it was in my brain forever. So I would say, even if you don’t think it’s for you, at least try to use Anki and see if its helpful, because it could really speed up the studying process.
Just incase you haven’t heard of Anki before (if you have, skip the next two paragraphs), it’s a flashcard app based on the idea of spaced repetition, which, as explained to me by my friend who introduced me to the app, basically says that if you are forced to recall something just before you are going to forget, that information will more readily be commit to long term memory. Maybe that explanation is totally wrong, but it certainly felt true.
How it works is you make your flashcards, and when completing them it will give you an interval of time before you will see the card again. For example, a new card will come up in the next ten minutes, whereas a card you have seen and gotten correct before you may see in 7 days. After a while, the cards you know will only show up like once a month, whereas the cards you struggle with will keep popping up. In this way, you are basically forced to review the information you have less of a grasp on, and it effectively schedules and focuses your studying for you! I am sure other apps may to similar things but as far as I am concerned Anki has it down, and is generally offline so there is no dependency on Wifi or data.
As an added bonus I have an android phone, so the Anki app was free along with the already-free desktop app.
The catch is that Anki is effective when you do you all of your reviews (cards scheduled to be seen that day) every day, for a long period of time. This included break days, and it includes holidays.
Just to give fair warning, by the end of the 6 months, I accumulated around 4250 cards, with 60898 reviews, and during the term, along with my decks made for classes, this corresponded to 500-600 reviews per day, which took up a lot of time.
Note: I’ve gotten a few questions about sharing my Anki decks, but unfortunately, I think the typos and grammar I used (I have some strangely worded cards), and the fact that some are based on paid-for resources, leads me to not want to give them out. I think it would actively put you at a disadvantage to not make your own cards. Apologies.
My main tips for making this easier to keep up with are:
- Don’t skip a day or else you’ll have 2x the cards due the next day, which will make it even more intimidating to do, and could lead to just not doing the reviews at all.
- Its better to make a lot of easy cards than a few big cards.
- I found it tempting to skip my big cards if I got only a few words wrong but felt I understood the subject, but those small misses are where misconceptions are born.
- Refer to tip 2 on mental health.
- While Anki on the phone makes it super easy to just do Anki on any sort of break (walking between classes, bathroom, ect.) I ended up getting my first and only panic attack by spending a few days in a row doing Anki during meals and breaks throughout the day. Sometimes just walking slowly between classes without doing anything is more helpful to your success than finishing those 50 or so cards that could’ve gotten done.
- Make multiple decks by subject or by resource (ex: one deck for bio notes, one for practice test review, and one for Destroyer) so you can “take on” one deck at a time.
- For me this also made things go faster, as I often would be able to complete one deck in one sitting, rather than going through half a deck, kinda burning out for the moment, then trying to push through the second half of a deck. This is similar to my point of splitting up tasks into bite-sized chunks by subject, as discussed in tip 3.
I did this late in the game, but I think that Anki and all of the bio notes often have giga white backgrounds, and by the end of studying my eyes felt really strained. For Anki, use night mode. For PC, doing a quick Google search on how to invert your screen colors and then studying with a black background may save you a lot of eye strain (there’s a reason all the coding people do it!). That being said, during practice tests just go for normal to replicate test conditions.
OK! Those are the main approach things I wanted to cover. Let’s move on to the schedule.
SCHEDULE
As you’ve seen, I’m pretty prone to rambling, so this section will follow suite.
Alright so end of sophomore year, Summer starts, and this DAT thing no longer is just a “I’ll get to that later” topic.
Early Summer (research/ testing + round 1 of content review) ~2 months
Additional responsibilities:
Lab work: 20 hrs/ week
8 credits, business classes: 8 hours/ week
Shadowing: 6 hours/ week (some weeks 4, some weeks 8)
Here is the period of time where I Googled resources, read a ton of breakdowns, and watched a ton of Youtube videos about what I was getting myself into.
Purchased a sub to Chad’s Prep chem/ochem/other stuff that I never used ($50, 6 month). Did I realized that when people said “Chad’s vids” they were talking about some course saver thing, nope. Am I alright with this mistake, yup.
PurchasedPATbooster ($75, 6 month).
Found Feralis notes.
For studying I started with watching some crash course videos, taking notes (whenever I say notes for this breakdown I mean handwritten, laptop notes don’t work for me at all) and making flashcards then attempting to make flashcards for the part of Feralis notes associated with the video’s subject.
Then, I would “complete” 3 parts of Chad’s gen chem course, where “complete” either means watch the videos and take notes (I did NOT make flashcards, as the course was not DAT specific), or answer the practice problems.
Then I would do 70 generator questions off of PATbooster, 35 for two different topics.
Within like 1.5 weeks I realized 3 things.
A. Feralis notes are wAYyyY to much for me to manage starting out studying. That doc is thiq.
B. This current schedule didn’t take much time at all. I still had a lot of free time. A part of my mind (probably an unhealthy part) was telling me, if you’re having a good time, you probably could be trying harder.
C. I was not doing anything for QR or RC.
So, time to revaluate and replan. One change is that I joined the Destroyer FB page, which has a lot of free resources.
Found Dr. Romano’s Dynamite bio review, instantly saw that this was much easier to digest.
Now the schedule turned into. 10 pages of Romano doc per day, no notes, just flashcards, making sure to do all the new flashcards the same day they were made. First day I did like 50 pages bc it was the more introductory parts.
Then, “complete” 5 sections from Chad’s vids (I did the math, and in order to finish the ochem and chem sections by a certain date this was the number), still taking notes, no flashcards.
Then I would do 70 generator questions off of PATbooster, 35 for two different topics. But after taking a practice test I realized that angle ranking and keyholes were….. rough. So now it was 35 of (AR or KH, alternating every other day) then 35 of (one of the other sections) or, if it was a cube counting, 20 generator problems, bc doing 1 generator problem is like doing 3 real problems.
Finally, I would do two readings, mainly whatever was posted in the DAT Destroyer FB page. The actual practice problems were intimidating, and I honestly didn’t want to look or feel dumb so I pretty much ignored these… For better or worse who knows.
Sundays were break days, at the beginning of the Summer I didn’t even do Anki on these days, but I did end up doing most of the homework for my business classes on these days… Eventually I started doing Anki on break days because it hurt too much to have double the cards due on Monday.
So this schedule I enjoyed, it got a little hard because in my lab some people gradated so I had to pick up on some of their responsibilities. My lab involves cell culture, and cells won’t wait until your weekend is over to need help…. Then when I got to the anatomy section of the Romano notes I began to fall a little behind my schedule, as there was a ton of super new information that took a lot of flashcards and time to work through. What helped motivate me through anatomy was knowing that learning this all now would make Fall term anatomy a whole lot easier, as I was very scared of Fall term given how I had no clue how I would fare with the combo of taking classes and DAT studying, along with extracurricular stuff.
Then part way through Summer (the day after I finished Chad’s gen chem course, as well as the ACS ochem refresher course on Chad’s site) my girlfriend and I went to Alaska for two weeks to her grandparents’ house. The week before this I was unable to get many Romano pages done, as lab responsibilities kicked up to 40 hours for that week, and my business classes had final projects/ finals due. So even though I originally planned to have the document done by then, I ended up spending some of the long car rides on this trip typing up Anki cards for the ecology section of the notes. Although bc we did a ton of hiking it was sort of fun to see examples of the ecology stuff I just read during that day’s hike.
Overall, didn’t enjoy making/ doing anki cards on the trip, but it was a nice break from the lab/shadowing/chemistry stuff. I will note that I also did NOT do PAT generators during this trip. Only bio and keeping up with Anki reviews. Additionally, the main reason I bring up this trip was because it was a motivator to stay on schedule during the two months prior (or at least mostly on schedule), as I knew it would recover any built up burnout accumulated over the early Summer.
Late summer (finish content review + Destroyer start + first practice test) ~3 weeks
Additional responsibilities:
Lab work: 25-30 hrs/wk (a few people got banned from the cell culture room for contamination, so I had to pick up their cell lines ☹ )
Shadowing: 4 hrs/wk
Romano notes finished!!! That was exciting.
With a round of review done for the chemistries and bio, I figured it was finally time for the Destroyer (the original big boi, 2019, $150). At the start I just went for 10 ochem, 15 chem, 25 bio, and 10 math problems per day. I probably missed all 10 of the ochem problems first day, (and probably others) but it was fine. For all explanations and problems, I made flashcards, although I did NOT just control copy the problem, because I knew I was planning on doing multiple rounds of the book. Mainly made flashcards for concepts, reactions, equations, and all the random terms dropped in the bio section.
Kept up with PAT generators, Anki, and readings, but I didn’t have a ton of time outside of this and Fall term was coming so I didn’t try and commit harder.
Took a practice test one day, as Chad’s prep had 5 free practice tests available (no RC or PAT section, so I just did 3 readings to substitute for RC, and a PATbooster test to sub for PAT). I got slightly lower than expected, as despite having maybe 1/3 of the Destroyer under my belt, and 2.5 months of content review I got between 18-20 for all of the sections, which is fine, but I just didn’t like seeing the 70%s on everything. Also even though I figured I had been building up stamina, I was very tired for QR, even without taking a real RC section. This test was hard, and honestly I feel like getting close to a 20 was partially due to some lucky guesses. One silver lining was that the timing was there.
At the time I had not even applied to set a test date, and I knew I had plenty of time, so overall, I was pretty content with this result. However, I still wanted to wait until the term started before committing to a test date.
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