DAT BREAKDOWN 24 AA 25 TS

DAT BREAKDOWN
AA: 24 TS: 25 PAT: 22

Background:
I’m an upcoming junior with a double major in Biology and Spanish and a 4.0 GPA. I started studying for my DAT the second week of May, right after my finals were finished. I used DAT Bootcamp. I followed Dr. Ari’s 11 week (2.5 month) study plan exactly, as well as adding many of my own study techniques into the mix as well. I also took off a week in the middle of my studying for vacation—which was much needed to prevent burnout. I did super long days during the week (usually around 10 hours), and took the weekends off. However, I did study this past weekend before my test and the weekend before.

Note:
My first 5 practice tests were all taken individually, and my last 5 were all full length tests, in which I tried to simulate the real testing environment as much as possible. I also retook some of my practice tests, which I included also with red dots next to the ones that I retook. This helped me to remember how to do high yield questions. I also didn’t focus on the score when I retook the test because I had already seen the questions, I solely used it to ensure I remembered how to do/solve all of those problems.

Overall:
WOW I am so excited to finally be writing my own breakdown after constantly reading tons of you guys’ (this is gonna be a long one)!!! I hope this helps some of you because during my DAT studying I also wanted as much insight as I could possibly get! I believe that Bootcamp is absolutely enough to do extremely well on this exam. The real exam was SO much easier. It was crazy. Bootcamp definitely over prepares you, and if you do everything you can with it, your test day will be an absolute breeze. I also saw manyyy of either the exact same or very similar questions directly from Bootcamp. On the entire science section there were only 2 questions that I had no idea how to do, anything else I missed would have just been from mistake or miscalculation. Also, on the full length practice tests I would hardly ever finish the science section with time left over and if I did it was maybe 2-3 minutes. On the test today I finished with 18 minutes left to look over my answers. The real exam truly is so much simpler and allows you to finish faster and have extra time.

PAT: 22
I was shocked at how much easier this was on the real exam. As you can see from my practice scores, I never got a score this high (except for when I retook a test, but never on my first try). Some of my hole punches were only 2 folds, and the ones that were 3 or 4 were not very complicated at all. The angles were much easier to visualize, it was likely because of the huge screen. I actually felt confident in my angles today, and I usually felt like I was just guessing on angles on the practice tests. Nothing crazy on any of the other PAT sections either. I felt like I often rejected PAT during my studying, I aimed to try and practice some of it each day and that never happened. I would end up doing some PAT practice about twice a week for maybe about 2 hours. Towards the end of my studying though I would do the generators on my phone pretty often just to get faster at it. I also recommend watching some YouTube videos for other methods of how to approach some of the PAT sections because you might be able to find something that clicks more with you than however you’ve seen it explained before. I watched a couple videos from Mental Dental.

QR: 21
I was actually so scared for this section because of how hard Bootcamp’s QR tests were, but this test was so much different, in a good way!!! I did not have any geometry on mine, thank goodness. But overall, I did all of the Q banks on Bootcamp, all of the practice tests, and tried to learn from the video explanations on all of the questions. I would resolve all of the questions I got wrong on practice tests every time I took one, as well as write down why I got it wrong. I also made a master sheet on my Ipad of all the formulas to remember. I got a bunch of probability problems and not many data sufficiency problems, maybe 3 or 4. I also don’t think I got any logs, which I was surprised about. There were some easy graphs/data analysis questions. And I think I even got like 3 questions about mean, median, and mode.

RC: 21
I was also scared for this section because I have always been a slow reader and I felt like I really struggled on every practice test I took. On the first couple practice tests I paused the timer so I could finish, otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten through all the questions. I tried multiple strategies and ended up using a mix of two. When I tried straight up search and destroy I felt like it was too hard to search for something new every time, but when I would read the whole passage first I spent too much time on it and always ran out of time before I got through all the questions. What I ended up doing was going through either the first half of the passage, or the whole passage depending on how long it was, and highlighting key terms, names, dates, or words that looked important. As you do more practice tests you realize which words are important to highlight. Then when you do the questions you already have an idea of where everything is, but you didn’t waste time reading things that you might not have had to. However, on the real exam, the questions were mostly so straightforward you probably wouldn’t have had to comprehend much of it at all. It felt completely different from the practice tests, in a good way. For the first time ever I finished with a couple minutes left.

BIO: 27
People are not kidding when they say it’s breadth over depth. I did not get a single in depth question. I think that’s why I scored so well because I was prepared for all of the small details and then when I saw how simple it was it felt like a breeze. I definitely put the most amount of study time into this section, mainly because it has the most amount of material. It looks like a lot at first but IT IS POSSIBLE. I probably did biology almost every day of my studying, but for the first month and a half I was just learning all of it. I never took anatomy, so all of the body systems and everything were foreign to me. I think the only body system type questions I got were all about the immune system, and there were 3 of them. To study for this section I watched ALL of the videos on Bootcamp, did all of the bio bites, all of the question banks, and all of Bootcamp’s tests. What helped me the absolute most for this section was the Bootcamp high yield notes!!! I printed these out through Office Depot in a spiral notebook and I can not recommend it more. I will attach a picture. I referred to these for EVERYTHING. I wrote all over it and put sticky notes everywhere. I color coded my sticky notes for either questions I got wrong on practice tests, overall pictures, or things I needed to review more. What helped so much was whenever I would miss something I would go to that page in the high yield notes and read that section/page to understand why I missed it, and after I did that so much I had ended up reading over all the notes so many times that I started to retain a lot of it. I tried to use anki and did not think it was very effective. I did maybe 6 chapters, it might be good for memorizing small details, but I feel like understanding the big picture behind every topic is more important than memorizing. Within my last week of studying I really tried to focus on the question banks and redoing those bc they are most similar to the real test questions. I also reviewed all of my practice tests the night before.

GC: 23
I was superrrr confident in this section going into the test. I had gotten 30s on 4 of the 5 full length tests I took. This was one of the sections I saw one question I had no idea how to do. I believe I had seen it on Bootcamp before, but it wasn’t something very high yield so I hadn’t seen it in a long time and could not remember how to solve it. But overall nothing else surprised me here! It was all pretty straightforward and I didn’t have any ICE table questions which was nice because those take a little longer sometimes! But overall, I can not say enough good things about Dr. Mike’s videos. He is AWESOME. I did not remember ANYTHING from GC 1 or 2 from freshman year and he made everything so easy to learn and understand. For this section, I made physical flashcards for everythinggg. Formulas. Ways to solve problems. Concepts. Soluble vs. Insoluble ions, etc. Every time I would get a question wrong I would make a flashcard about it, whether it was a concept I didn’t know or whatever. I also got the rotten egg smell question!!

OC: 26
I honestly hardly studied for this section since I just finished orgo I & II and did extremely well in those classes and had absolutely awesome professors, so I remembered everything. I watched the Bootcamp videos at a higher speed since I already knew most of the material, but I did encounter just a few reactions I hadn’t learned and a couple things we didn’t go into much depth about in my classes. It was also useful to see what the DAT likes to ask about, which is different from what I would have been asked on an orgo test this past school year. It’s also a lot less detail. I did all of the reaction bites and question banks. Other than that I really just studied my old orgo notes, reaction sheets, and did the practice tests.

Day before the test:
I know a lot of people say to just take the day off and not study the day before your exam, but I just could not sit there and not want to look over some things. So I ended up spending the day doing one big review. I reviewed all of my practice tests, all of my physical flashcards, and some formulas. I tried to also do a quick read over my high yield bio notes.

Day of test:
I will say I wish I had done the practice tests with the Prometric delay, because there definitely is one on test day. Thankfully, mine was never long. Just a normal second or two delay. But it ended up not really bothering me much because I had a lot more time left over on the real test than on the practice tests. Also make sure you get a good night’s rest the night before so you can think to the best of your ability!

Fell free to ask me ANY questions and I will answer as quickly as I can!!!

Lastly I want to say none of this would be possible with the Lord! God is so good and he will always be faithful. He is what kept me going day after day throughout this long process. On test day I prayed multiple times throughout the day and during my test and it calmed my nerves so much. After you’ve put in all the work, it’s all in his hands!