Summary: BIO 27, GC 20, OC 21, RC 30, QR 21
24 AA / 22 TS / 21 PAT
Hey guys! I’ve been a pretty silent lurker here on SDN for a while and have privately messaged a few folks but never gotten around to posting on the forums. I have to say that the DAT threads have been super helpful for me in the long run studying and I wasn’t sure if I’d post a breakdown but I did a lot better than I thought I would and while my scores aren’t crazy compared to others, I wanted to give some hope and advice to anyone else that was going through the same thing! It’s tough and it’s hard, but you’ve got this.
Feel free to jump ahead to a particular section if you’re curious about one in particular!! I read and analyzed these things like crazy during my free time studying so I’m throwing another in-depth one to the pile, but I get it’s a lot, haha. I'm currently a rising senior with a 4.0 GPA.
General Studying
I used DAT Booster to study and started around late May. At first I followed the 8 week schedule for about 7 days (lol) but I had surgery soon after and had to take a few days off and decided it wasn’t for me, so I postponed my test date from Mid-July to early August. (today!) After that I followed the 10 week study schedule. I would say the first 8 weeks of studying I crunched hard, generally studying at least 7 hours a day- that was as long as I could maintain focus broken into bits.
The last two weeks I slacked!! Not even gonna lie, y’all. My average hours of studying per day went down to around 5 and some days, it was less. Around 3 weeks out my mom had a heart attack and that made it harder to focus on studying, I felt like this was a bad thing and I was going to do not as well as I could have, but I think it did me good- I was fatigued and reducing my study load kept me from completely burning out. If you do the math I also took a fair bit of days off throughout studying to spend time with family or my boyfriend. If you are studying and you feel like you need a break, take one, but try to keep your momentum going.
Biology Practice Tests : 19, 18, 22, 20, 20, 20, 22, 23, 22, 19
Actual: 27
For Biology I took notes on every single set of videos in DAT Booster and also studied the Feralis notes: I generally followed the study schedule but sometimes broke up the amount of pages into two, so I was studying biology every day instead of every 2 days. I have a strong bio background but it’s really helpful to understand the general concepts! Make it make sense, seriously. That’ll go miles on the DAT. For me, reading out loud the Feralis notes and trying not to look at them too much in the later stages of studying while rehearing really set everything in stone and helped me make sense of stuff. I struggle with details like with the hormones and parts of transcription and translation so for memorization I somewhat used the Anki cards and in the last 2-3 weeks made my own set of biology cards I studied around every day.
General Chemistry Practice Tests: 15, 18, 18, 17, 16, 16, 20, 20, 21, 20
Actual: 20
This was my worst section! I can laugh about it now but I was stressing studying for those first 6 PEs. I only used Booster and I think I definitely should have bit the bullet and tried out Destroyer for this. I struggled with memorizing the math and had to do 30-40 practice problems every day the last 2 weeks to get those last 4 scores. For concepts though, the Quizlet flashcards were honestly enough for me- after every practice test I would add conceptual questions I missed to the Booster Quizlet decks and for math problems I missed, I would give the info and ask myself how to set it up. I was studying around 4-5 decks a day the last week, around 3 the previous 3 weeks before that but seriously, I think Destroyer would have been a smart decision.
Organic Chemistry Practice Tests: 18, 18, 20, 17, 22, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18
Actual: 21
I’m really glad I took those last 3 PEs because they turned out to be super representative of the real thing for me. All those 18s seem weird for a 21, but I did good with orgo in college! The DAT orgo questions are definitely tricky and require you to perfectly know not just the rules but order of importance for acid/base ranking, carbocation stability, symmetry in NMR, etc. The questions on my DAT on those topics were much easier than on the PEs but they were there! I made my own deck of almost 200 flashcards for the reaction formula sheet from Booster and questions I missed on the PEs, but honestly? Only about half of my reaction questions were super representative of that. I really do think knowing the mechanisms to the main reactions covered in videos will do you good because I do think they try to test you on recognizing those patterns for similar reactions on the DAT. Memorizing reactions instead of the mechanisms didn’t do me as much good as I hoped, lol.
PAT Practice Tests: 16, 20, 21, 19, 19, 19, 20, 20, 18, 20
Actual: 21
READER BEWARE, my PAT was intentionally stress inducing I think, lol. I hopped to some of the easier sections and was immediately thrown for a loop. Hole punching and cube counting slowed me down by a lot, they were completely different from Booster and I even felt like one of the cube structures violated the rules we’ve been given, haha. I’m not talking about floating cubes. I almost started crying right there, but I managed to get through and do pattern folding, angle ranking, and TFE and keyholes- the last 2 were way easier than Booster!
I want to emphasize to anyone reading this- if you get a stressful PAT, you CANNOT panic. Keep breathing and push forward and tell yourself there will be other questions you know how to solve, that it will get easier, because it will. If I had panicked and freaked out like I almost did, I probably would have gotten an 18. You just have to keep going. Keep in mind the ADA does sometimes throw weird stuff at you just to see what you do. Booster is an excellent resource for PAT and I don’t think the weirdness I’m mentioning reflects on them.
MY OTHER ADVICE: don’t do puzzles for 3 months. Lol. If you do, only do like 5-7 practice problems every other day in the beginning- I promise you’ll improve in time. I got sick of puzzles towards the end of my studying and was only doing practice once every 3 days if that.
Reading Comprehension Practice Tests: 21, 20, 20, 20, 19, 22, 19
Actual: 30
Search and Destroy. Take the 30 min break to rest your eyes if nothing else, it’s a lot of reading. If I skimmed a passage and couldn’t find the answer I marked it and moved on, and immediately marked any questions pertaining to main idea, etc to come back to after the other questions. WAY easier than DATBooster y’all! I’m a native English speaker and I know that helps a lot, but don’t be worried if you’re scoring low on the PEs in this section.
Quantitative Reasoning Practice Tests: 13, 13, 19, 15, 19, 23, 19, 20, 22, 19
Actual: 21
I’ve always been bad at math and did horribly on several of the PEs. This was something I had to really work on!! Practice is the only way to improve in this section. I made flashcards for a few geometric equations that kept popping up as well as the approach to solving questions I couldn’t wrap my head around. I did anywhere from 20-30 practice questions a day the last 3-4 weeks of studying, usually from marked questions. I pretty much always ran out of time on the PEs and on the real thing I had almost 10 minutes to review my marked questions! I cannot stress enough the importance of marking a question if you know immediately or can feel yourself taking more than a minute or so to solve a problem. Don’t be afraid to make a guess, mark and skip. I’m convinced they probably put the easiest questions towards the end.
I know this was long!! My biggest advice for any section in general and test day:
Considering DATBooster vs DATBootcamp? Bootcamp is a lot more expensive and I didn’t buy it, but my impression (currently) is that Bootcamp has more similar practice test scores to what you’ll actually make. Booster can be extremely, extremely hard. It prepared me and was cheaper, yes, but it tanked my self confidence and mental health MANY times. If you use Booster, you’ll need to remind yourself that 17s and 18s are okay on the practice tests, especially on the first 6- even after that, there’s a good chance of you actually scoring higher. If you have any questions, reach out to me here or in PMs!
24 AA / 22 TS / 21 PAT
Hey guys! I’ve been a pretty silent lurker here on SDN for a while and have privately messaged a few folks but never gotten around to posting on the forums. I have to say that the DAT threads have been super helpful for me in the long run studying and I wasn’t sure if I’d post a breakdown but I did a lot better than I thought I would and while my scores aren’t crazy compared to others, I wanted to give some hope and advice to anyone else that was going through the same thing! It’s tough and it’s hard, but you’ve got this.
Feel free to jump ahead to a particular section if you’re curious about one in particular!! I read and analyzed these things like crazy during my free time studying so I’m throwing another in-depth one to the pile, but I get it’s a lot, haha. I'm currently a rising senior with a 4.0 GPA.
General Studying
I used DAT Booster to study and started around late May. At first I followed the 8 week schedule for about 7 days (lol) but I had surgery soon after and had to take a few days off and decided it wasn’t for me, so I postponed my test date from Mid-July to early August. (today!) After that I followed the 10 week study schedule. I would say the first 8 weeks of studying I crunched hard, generally studying at least 7 hours a day- that was as long as I could maintain focus broken into bits.
The last two weeks I slacked!! Not even gonna lie, y’all. My average hours of studying per day went down to around 5 and some days, it was less. Around 3 weeks out my mom had a heart attack and that made it harder to focus on studying, I felt like this was a bad thing and I was going to do not as well as I could have, but I think it did me good- I was fatigued and reducing my study load kept me from completely burning out. If you do the math I also took a fair bit of days off throughout studying to spend time with family or my boyfriend. If you are studying and you feel like you need a break, take one, but try to keep your momentum going.
Biology Practice Tests : 19, 18, 22, 20, 20, 20, 22, 23, 22, 19
Actual: 27
For Biology I took notes on every single set of videos in DAT Booster and also studied the Feralis notes: I generally followed the study schedule but sometimes broke up the amount of pages into two, so I was studying biology every day instead of every 2 days. I have a strong bio background but it’s really helpful to understand the general concepts! Make it make sense, seriously. That’ll go miles on the DAT. For me, reading out loud the Feralis notes and trying not to look at them too much in the later stages of studying while rehearing really set everything in stone and helped me make sense of stuff. I struggle with details like with the hormones and parts of transcription and translation so for memorization I somewhat used the Anki cards and in the last 2-3 weeks made my own set of biology cards I studied around every day.
General Chemistry Practice Tests: 15, 18, 18, 17, 16, 16, 20, 20, 21, 20
Actual: 20
This was my worst section! I can laugh about it now but I was stressing studying for those first 6 PEs. I only used Booster and I think I definitely should have bit the bullet and tried out Destroyer for this. I struggled with memorizing the math and had to do 30-40 practice problems every day the last 2 weeks to get those last 4 scores. For concepts though, the Quizlet flashcards were honestly enough for me- after every practice test I would add conceptual questions I missed to the Booster Quizlet decks and for math problems I missed, I would give the info and ask myself how to set it up. I was studying around 4-5 decks a day the last week, around 3 the previous 3 weeks before that but seriously, I think Destroyer would have been a smart decision.
Organic Chemistry Practice Tests: 18, 18, 20, 17, 22, 18, 18, 18, 18, 18
Actual: 21
I’m really glad I took those last 3 PEs because they turned out to be super representative of the real thing for me. All those 18s seem weird for a 21, but I did good with orgo in college! The DAT orgo questions are definitely tricky and require you to perfectly know not just the rules but order of importance for acid/base ranking, carbocation stability, symmetry in NMR, etc. The questions on my DAT on those topics were much easier than on the PEs but they were there! I made my own deck of almost 200 flashcards for the reaction formula sheet from Booster and questions I missed on the PEs, but honestly? Only about half of my reaction questions were super representative of that. I really do think knowing the mechanisms to the main reactions covered in videos will do you good because I do think they try to test you on recognizing those patterns for similar reactions on the DAT. Memorizing reactions instead of the mechanisms didn’t do me as much good as I hoped, lol.
PAT Practice Tests: 16, 20, 21, 19, 19, 19, 20, 20, 18, 20
Actual: 21
READER BEWARE, my PAT was intentionally stress inducing I think, lol. I hopped to some of the easier sections and was immediately thrown for a loop. Hole punching and cube counting slowed me down by a lot, they were completely different from Booster and I even felt like one of the cube structures violated the rules we’ve been given, haha. I’m not talking about floating cubes. I almost started crying right there, but I managed to get through and do pattern folding, angle ranking, and TFE and keyholes- the last 2 were way easier than Booster!
I want to emphasize to anyone reading this- if you get a stressful PAT, you CANNOT panic. Keep breathing and push forward and tell yourself there will be other questions you know how to solve, that it will get easier, because it will. If I had panicked and freaked out like I almost did, I probably would have gotten an 18. You just have to keep going. Keep in mind the ADA does sometimes throw weird stuff at you just to see what you do. Booster is an excellent resource for PAT and I don’t think the weirdness I’m mentioning reflects on them.
MY OTHER ADVICE: don’t do puzzles for 3 months. Lol. If you do, only do like 5-7 practice problems every other day in the beginning- I promise you’ll improve in time. I got sick of puzzles towards the end of my studying and was only doing practice once every 3 days if that.
Reading Comprehension Practice Tests: 21, 20, 20, 20, 19, 22, 19
Actual: 30
Search and Destroy. Take the 30 min break to rest your eyes if nothing else, it’s a lot of reading. If I skimmed a passage and couldn’t find the answer I marked it and moved on, and immediately marked any questions pertaining to main idea, etc to come back to after the other questions. WAY easier than DATBooster y’all! I’m a native English speaker and I know that helps a lot, but don’t be worried if you’re scoring low on the PEs in this section.
Quantitative Reasoning Practice Tests: 13, 13, 19, 15, 19, 23, 19, 20, 22, 19
Actual: 21
I’ve always been bad at math and did horribly on several of the PEs. This was something I had to really work on!! Practice is the only way to improve in this section. I made flashcards for a few geometric equations that kept popping up as well as the approach to solving questions I couldn’t wrap my head around. I did anywhere from 20-30 practice questions a day the last 3-4 weeks of studying, usually from marked questions. I pretty much always ran out of time on the PEs and on the real thing I had almost 10 minutes to review my marked questions! I cannot stress enough the importance of marking a question if you know immediately or can feel yourself taking more than a minute or so to solve a problem. Don’t be afraid to make a guess, mark and skip. I’m convinced they probably put the easiest questions towards the end.
I know this was long!! My biggest advice for any section in general and test day:
- Do the “extra questions” as recommended in the study schedule but don’t rely on them too much- they’re harder on purpose. Take into consideration weird exceptions to trends but otherwise focus on understanding the actual practice test problems you missed or guessed on
- If you have 10 minutes in section 1 go ahead and ask for more scratch paper if it’s the laminated stuff. Get two whole new sheets during your 30 minute break too I promise you’ll need it for math
- Sign up for the test run if you’re nervous or unsure about things! I got my ears pierced a few months ago and I literally cannot take them out. I was worried it would be an issue but it was not.
- Don’t worry if you can’t sleep super good the night before or are under the weather. I was struggling with a UTI my test day. I didn’t sleep super well. Try to get rest that week in general but don’t panic because many have taken this test under the weather and the adrenaline kicks in and carries you through!
- Do not doomscroll SDN. It will do you no good. All you can do is study and rest. It will be okay if your practice scores aren’t what you want them to be- any missed question is a learning opportunity that you WON’T miss on your real exam.
Considering DATBooster vs DATBootcamp? Bootcamp is a lot more expensive and I didn’t buy it, but my impression (currently) is that Bootcamp has more similar practice test scores to what you’ll actually make. Booster can be extremely, extremely hard. It prepared me and was cheaper, yes, but it tanked my self confidence and mental health MANY times. If you use Booster, you’ll need to remind yourself that 17s and 18s are okay on the practice tests, especially on the first 6- even after that, there’s a good chance of you actually scoring higher. If you have any questions, reach out to me here or in PMs!
