DAT Breakdown

[nohaybanda]

Hey all. I've been a long-time lurker and thought other breakdowns were really helpful, so I thought I would share my own. Check out the TL;DR at the bottom if you don't want to read through the entire post.

Scores:​

PA - 22
QR - 22
RC - 28
Bio - 20
GC - 22
OC - 21
TS - 21
AA - 23

Proof:

Background:​

Graduated senior from private, liberal arts college with 3.7 cGPA, 3.5sGPA. Chemistry major.

Materials Used:​

• DATBooster 12 Week Study Plan
  • Hit around 250 hours studying on DATBooster. Used every single one of the Biology practice tests and most of the GC and OC tests. I challenged myself to try to figure out what I don’t know, which was moderately aided by practice tests. I moderately followed the 12 week study plan, breaking off towards phase 2. I would say that it gave me a great base of knowledge for the first few weeks and helped me not get lazy. I will say that by Phase 2 I really started to identify where my weaknesses were and that I really needed to do an extended review into Anatomy and Microbiology. I never took Microbiology, and Anatomy is so complex that I needed a refresh of almost every section. I barely used the GC resources because a lot of it was targeted for non-chemistry majors. I struggled in Orgo, but getting lots of practice with section-specific review helped to slowly build the concepts back that had been forgotten for a couple of years. The PAT section for DATBooster is incredible and really helped me to approach this section with confidence. RC was also a breeze because DATBooster gives you more complexity than you’re likely to see on the DAT. I got a little too overconfident on QR because I got a 30 in a practice test but I should’ve kept practicing the Sufficient/Not Sufficient questions because they slowed me up quite a bit on test day.
• Whiteboard Time/Youtube Videos
  • DATBooster has great videos for almost every biology topic except Anatomy. In fact, the DATBooster developmental biology videos were a life-saver. However, it was helpful to use Youtube for come Anatomy content that DATBooster doesn’t quite have enough videos for yet. Boosters has all the study notes and review sheets but some things stuck a little more if I could draw diagrams straight from a video. For example, I didn’t learn the Renin-Aldosterone-Angiotensin system in Anatomy class and relied on Youtube videos to learn that.
• Anki/Physical Flashcards
  • I used Anki hard for OC reaction review. I thought it was really helpful to just keep getting these reactions in my head and recognize them when they came out of order just like on test day. I will say that I didn’t use the DATBooster Anki Bio cards very much. Just grinding Anki cards all day didn’t feel like efficient study, so I created physical cards for every Biology question that I got wrong from a practice test. Looking back, probably a more efficient way to do this would be to utilize the “Mark” feature on DATBooster and then reviewing wrong/difficult questions periodically. If you are the kind of person that does well with grinding huge flashcard lists, go for it. I prefer learning by creating my own flashcards and I haven’t quite mastered Anki enough yet to do it instead of physical flashcards.
• Make it Stick/Other Learning Strategies
  • This is a book my Organic Chemistry teacher forced us to read passages from during my second year. I didn’t bother reading it at the time, but now I refer back to it constantly. It really aided my studying by not bothering with ineffective forms of studying like written-out word notes, highlighting and re-reading. Instead, I opted for more effective methods like writing out notecards, interleaving practice, taking lots of practice tests and creating mnemonic devices. These were super helpful every time I knew that I wouldn’t be able to remember a set of information. For example, how do you remember what each part is of an angiosperm? You could grind the answers into your brain, or you could alphabetize them, create a phrase with the starting letters, create a story, etc. I will always and forever now remember that the pistil is the ovary-producing part of the flower because of how I thought of an old-western cowgirl with a pistol on her hip. If the mnemonic is stupid and it works, it’s not stupid! Anything it takes to get this information in your brain is a good study practice.

Study Timeline:​

I studied for 13 weeks following moderately closely to the DATBooster 12 week study guide.

1. The first six weeks (around early March to mid-April) I studied around an hour a day. I mostly got overwhelmed by the sheer amount of science content to cover on top of exams and life during my senior spring semester. I think the key in your first four weeks or so is just trying to absorb as much as you can, especially in biology, by drawing pictures of diagrams and concepts. I would highly suggest against taking handwritten notes because that is a recipe for thinking that you understand the content without actually causing your learning to last (see Make it Stick). I think my first practice tests on each section were around 16-17. So not great, but good enough that they gave me a slight sense of false confidence.
2. The next four weeks I started to really turn up the pace of my studying at least two hours a day. This was a challenge with finals and graduation but I kind of no-life’d it by locking myself in the basement of the library for a few hours. I highly suggest getting out of your dorm room because your new environment will help you to avoid distractions and retain what you’re learning.
3. My last two weeks started by getting a 15 on a DATBooster Bio practice exam and panicking. I studied 70 hours that week and the next week I started my job. The week before my exam I worked a 9 hour shift every day and then came home and studied for another 4 hours or so. During this phase creating my own physical notecards helped me the most. I would draw diagrams and then quiz myself by trying to describe/name each part of my drawing. I also took tons and tons of the DATBooster practice tests and wrote down and drew out every single question that I missed from every exam. This method helped me identify common topics that I got wrong so I could go back and review those sections. I studied hard the day before the test (don’t do this) and I felt reasonably confident that I would at least get a 17 on each section.

Day of Exam:​

• Bio
  • I went in trying to stay calm and really think through the tough questions, which slowed me down especially because I marked every question that I wasn’t sure on. If I were to do this section again I would still mark every question that I didn’t know but give myself a hard stopping point where I needed to move onto GC.
• GC
  • Definitely more conceptual questions than calculations. DATBooster almost prepared me too much for complex redox equations and such. Acid/Base and titration questions are such a huge part of this section so prepare for those questions a lot. I’m still kicking myself for not memorizing the seven strong acids.
• OC
  • I grinded these reactions hard with Anki and felt the best in this section of all the sciences. There was one question on aromaticity that stumped me but otherwise I had a good answer for every question. I took care of the mechanisms, and the rest of Orgo kind of took care of itself.
• PAT
  • I began with question #30 so that I could tackle the easier PAT categories before jumping into Keyhole and Top-front-end. This was a really good strategy because I finished the entire PAT section with lots of time to spare and look over lots of flagged questions. I will say that make sure you cube-count accurately the first time! I wasted a lot of time trying to go back and count again which limited my time on Keyhole and TFE.
• RC
  • I was pretty shocked at how easy these questions were and how easily I could find them straight from the text. I found through studying that I could do a quick read-through of the essay, identify the main idea in each passage, and then use the question to guide me to the place in the text where I knew the answer would be. Remember to read the question thoroughly the first time, but DATBooster prepared me really well for this section.
• QR
  • I was a little too overconfident in this section, and probably should’ve gotten a little more practice with the Sufficient/Not Sufficient questions. I got probably 5 of those and it definitely slowed me down to have to think through what the given answers meant. The pace of this section was super quick too so I had to speed up towards the end and didn’t quite review all of my flagged answers.

Ending Advice:​

TL;DR: I think the most important pieces of advice I can give are to use effective study strategies, identify what you don’t know, and follow a guide to keep yourself honest to your study schedule. I know that I perform best when I draw out pictures on a whiteboard, move into distraction-free areas, and make lots of mnemonics. I also know that I think I learn by creating hand-written word-notes and grinding flashcards until my eyes bleed. Find out which strategies work best for you. Know when to adhere strictly to a schedule and when to deviate to maximize your learning of your weak Biology concepts, for example. Think about how good it will feel to be done and also stay motivated by knowing that you might fail. Obsessing about how I would have to take a second gap year if I didn’t perform well was a good, albeit probably unhealthy, motivator. Good luck on your studying and thank you for reading through my two-cents on how to perform well on the DAT. I am so proud of how hard you have worked to achieve your dreams of becoming a dentist <3. Keep grinding!

---

Members don't see this ad.