searawrloo
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2022 DAT Breakdown (24AA/24TS/22PAT)
Hello everyone, I took the DATs last week and decided to write a breakdown since I found them to be extremely helpful in my studying process. I studied for approximately 6 weeks full-time for the exam right after my finals. I averaged around 6-7 hours of studying per day and also had certain days where I studied for less than 2 hours. But throughout the 6 weeks, I never had a real “break day” which was helpful for me to reinforce the concepts.
Background: Biology Major - 3.79 GPA I don’t have the best study habits in school. I procrastinate a lot and often cram for exams. I often studied just for the sake of passing the exam and forget the material right after. I knew this very well about myself so I decided to give myself a relatively shorter period to study for the exam and signed up for a test date.
Resources I used:
Before starting the practice exams, I skimmed the full Bootcamp condensed notes, copied down all the Orgo reactions on a sheet of paper, and reviewed formulas for GC and QR. This took approximately 3 days (a very rough review). I skipped all the content that I was relatively familiar with as a Bio major. After this short review, I jumped straight into practice exams.
For the first 5 weeks of studying, I took 2 full practice tests a week. One on Tuesday and one Friday. This gave me 2-3 days to do the content review and go over wrong answers. My first practice test was the only one where I did individual sections rather than the full exam in one sitting. Right after my practice exam, I would review the wrong answers and call it a day. The following day, I went back and reviewed all questions on the science portion of the exam, whether I got the answers right or not. Then I would go back, take notes on these concepts, watch videos, etc. For QR, I only reviewed the questions I marked. This process usually took a day. The remaining 1 or 2 days before my next full-length exam, I did regular content review in more detail as you would if you followed the schedule. I repeated this process for the first 5 weeks of my studying. Honestly, this made my studying a lot less stressful and I found myself having a lot of free time during the days between my practice exams. Once you begin taking the practice exams, you begin to pick up patterns and high-yield questions. These high-yield questions were relatively consistent throughout the practice exams and along with the real exam. My testing strategy was usually to do and answer all the questions as fast as I could marking all the questions that I was unsure about then going back with around 30 minutes remaining to go over all these questions.
The final week before my exam: On my final practice exam, I scored a 22AA. I only scored above 20s on all sections on my 8th and 10th exams. This made me feel more confident because I would definitely be satisfied with this score on the real exam. For the final week, I once again took 3 days to go over all of the Bootcamp condensed notes, this time with all the additional notes that I’ve written throughout my study sessions. I also rewrote all the Orgo reactions, leaving out the ones I knew by heart along with the lab tests. With 4 days remaining, I retook the individual science sections of all 10 exams along with the free Bootcamp science portion (3,3,3,2 for each day). I know this sounds like a lot, but if you did the review properly you should be able to answer the questions in half the time. I did these in one go. Since this was my second time doing the exams, I only scored 4 or 5 wrong across the sciences, and at this point, you know this is what you really need to review again. Since I’m a big crammer, I did the science portion of my 10th exam along with Bootcamp exam’s science portion the day before. I really suggest doing Bootcamp’s full-length exam if you have the time because their interface is exactly like the DATs. It provides a nice peace of mind knowing exactly what you are going to encounter down to the tutorial.
I neglected PAT and RC. The majority of my practice for these sections came directly from the practice exams. For PAT, I followed strategies from mental dental videos and used the search and destroy method for RC.
Test Day: Bring some snacks, 2 official government IDs, hoodie/jacket but don’t bring a jacket with a lot of pockets because they will ask you to put it back). For my testing center, the mask policy was that you could either wear your mask or leave it off. If you wear your mask, you could not remove it during the duration of the test. I personally did not have any word or word questions on my exam compared to Booster but the majority of the questions allowed me to easily eliminate choices to pick between 2 answer choices. I was actually quite nervous about my scores even during the exam so my score results were quite shocking. Even if you are feeling this way, don’t give up until the end!
As for difficulty, everyone’s exams are different. For me personally, science sections are exactly the same level of difficulty. PAT is also the same except, that maybe TFE is slightly easier while Angle Ranking is slightly harder. I had some pretty dense scientific passages but once I started reading, I realized the majority just focused on small details you can easily find through search and destroy. QR was actually slightly harder as well on my exam which surprised me because this is different from all the breakdowns I read. Although it was a bit harder, none of the question types were new.
If you have the financial means, definitely get both Booster and Bootcamp. I believe that Bootcamp provides a better explanation of questions. For example, while Booster would just explain the correct answer and why it's right, Bootcamp often goes over the general topic related to the question. This would be helpful if you are weak with the content. However, you can easily compromise this with a quick google search with Booster. Booster definitely offers the most value for the buck - especially when you are able to get a discount with them. Sometimes they offer a 20% discount with extra 20 days so definitely look out for that.
Overall I either scored the same as my highest on the practice exams or improved by 2 points. Here’s a breakdown of my practice exams compared to the real:
Bio: (17,17,20,19,19,21,20,22,21,24)
GC: (18,19,20,18,19,19,21,20,22,20)
OC: (20,16,18,20,20,20,19,22,20,22)
PAT: (21,21,22,20,19,21,21,21,21,21)
RC: (18,17,19,21,18,22,19,22,18,22)
QR: (20,19,19,20,19,22,21,23,21,21)
I hope this was helpful, and Good Luck Studying!!!
Hello everyone, I took the DATs last week and decided to write a breakdown since I found them to be extremely helpful in my studying process. I studied for approximately 6 weeks full-time for the exam right after my finals. I averaged around 6-7 hours of studying per day and also had certain days where I studied for less than 2 hours. But throughout the 6 weeks, I never had a real “break day” which was helpful for me to reinforce the concepts.
Background: Biology Major - 3.79 GPA I don’t have the best study habits in school. I procrastinate a lot and often cram for exams. I often studied just for the sake of passing the exam and forget the material right after. I knew this very well about myself so I decided to give myself a relatively shorter period to study for the exam and signed up for a test date.
Resources I used:
- DATBooster: DATBooster was the main resource that I used. I only used Booster for the full-length exams and Orgo reactions and lab tests.
- DAT Bootcamp: Free single practice exam, Bootcamp condensed notes
Before starting the practice exams, I skimmed the full Bootcamp condensed notes, copied down all the Orgo reactions on a sheet of paper, and reviewed formulas for GC and QR. This took approximately 3 days (a very rough review). I skipped all the content that I was relatively familiar with as a Bio major. After this short review, I jumped straight into practice exams.
For the first 5 weeks of studying, I took 2 full practice tests a week. One on Tuesday and one Friday. This gave me 2-3 days to do the content review and go over wrong answers. My first practice test was the only one where I did individual sections rather than the full exam in one sitting. Right after my practice exam, I would review the wrong answers and call it a day. The following day, I went back and reviewed all questions on the science portion of the exam, whether I got the answers right or not. Then I would go back, take notes on these concepts, watch videos, etc. For QR, I only reviewed the questions I marked. This process usually took a day. The remaining 1 or 2 days before my next full-length exam, I did regular content review in more detail as you would if you followed the schedule. I repeated this process for the first 5 weeks of my studying. Honestly, this made my studying a lot less stressful and I found myself having a lot of free time during the days between my practice exams. Once you begin taking the practice exams, you begin to pick up patterns and high-yield questions. These high-yield questions were relatively consistent throughout the practice exams and along with the real exam. My testing strategy was usually to do and answer all the questions as fast as I could marking all the questions that I was unsure about then going back with around 30 minutes remaining to go over all these questions.
The final week before my exam: On my final practice exam, I scored a 22AA. I only scored above 20s on all sections on my 8th and 10th exams. This made me feel more confident because I would definitely be satisfied with this score on the real exam. For the final week, I once again took 3 days to go over all of the Bootcamp condensed notes, this time with all the additional notes that I’ve written throughout my study sessions. I also rewrote all the Orgo reactions, leaving out the ones I knew by heart along with the lab tests. With 4 days remaining, I retook the individual science sections of all 10 exams along with the free Bootcamp science portion (3,3,3,2 for each day). I know this sounds like a lot, but if you did the review properly you should be able to answer the questions in half the time. I did these in one go. Since this was my second time doing the exams, I only scored 4 or 5 wrong across the sciences, and at this point, you know this is what you really need to review again. Since I’m a big crammer, I did the science portion of my 10th exam along with Bootcamp exam’s science portion the day before. I really suggest doing Bootcamp’s full-length exam if you have the time because their interface is exactly like the DATs. It provides a nice peace of mind knowing exactly what you are going to encounter down to the tutorial.
I neglected PAT and RC. The majority of my practice for these sections came directly from the practice exams. For PAT, I followed strategies from mental dental videos and used the search and destroy method for RC.
Test Day: Bring some snacks, 2 official government IDs, hoodie/jacket but don’t bring a jacket with a lot of pockets because they will ask you to put it back). For my testing center, the mask policy was that you could either wear your mask or leave it off. If you wear your mask, you could not remove it during the duration of the test. I personally did not have any word or word questions on my exam compared to Booster but the majority of the questions allowed me to easily eliminate choices to pick between 2 answer choices. I was actually quite nervous about my scores even during the exam so my score results were quite shocking. Even if you are feeling this way, don’t give up until the end!
As for difficulty, everyone’s exams are different. For me personally, science sections are exactly the same level of difficulty. PAT is also the same except, that maybe TFE is slightly easier while Angle Ranking is slightly harder. I had some pretty dense scientific passages but once I started reading, I realized the majority just focused on small details you can easily find through search and destroy. QR was actually slightly harder as well on my exam which surprised me because this is different from all the breakdowns I read. Although it was a bit harder, none of the question types were new.
If you have the financial means, definitely get both Booster and Bootcamp. I believe that Bootcamp provides a better explanation of questions. For example, while Booster would just explain the correct answer and why it's right, Bootcamp often goes over the general topic related to the question. This would be helpful if you are weak with the content. However, you can easily compromise this with a quick google search with Booster. Booster definitely offers the most value for the buck - especially when you are able to get a discount with them. Sometimes they offer a 20% discount with extra 20 days so definitely look out for that.
Overall I either scored the same as my highest on the practice exams or improved by 2 points. Here’s a breakdown of my practice exams compared to the real:
Bio: (17,17,20,19,19,21,20,22,21,24)
GC: (18,19,20,18,19,19,21,20,22,20)
OC: (20,16,18,20,20,20,19,22,20,22)
PAT: (21,21,22,20,19,21,21,21,21,21)
RC: (18,17,19,21,18,22,19,22,18,22)
QR: (20,19,19,20,19,22,21,23,21,21)
I hope this was helpful, and Good Luck Studying!!!