Hi everyone! First and foremost, I would like to thank everybody in this group for their breakdowns, information, advice, encouragement, etc… I truly couldn’t imagine going through these couple of months without being in this group and helping each other, so I thought I’d share my journey with this test.
A little bit of background, I graduated in chem in May 2022 with around a 3.67 GPA, and currently am working full time in a pharmaceutical lab as a research analyst. The last couple years in school were definitely tough after the shut down, and I developed bad habits including winging everything and studying the days before and even the days of exams. I felt I was learning nothing, being unproductive, and had minimal chances of research, activities, volunteering, and shadowing. I felt lost in what I wanted to do in my future, but I eventually fixated on this path after graduation and shadowing, then dentistry genuinely caught my interest. I started studying for the DAT in the middle of June, and overall it was about 9 weeks. It was a challenge to balance my work and studying at first since I was working 40 hours a week. The first 6 weeks I was coming back from work at 5:30, eating/resting, and studying for around 4-6 hrs depending on the schedule. I was constantly sleep deprived, which caused a cycle of napping after coming back from work, studying, then sleeping 3-4 hrs before work. Please do not do what I did if you have a busy schedule, it did me more harm than good, and try to stay as balanced as possible. Eventually I got my work reduced to ~24 hours a week the last few weeks, which fixed my lack of sleep and I was then able to properly focus on my weaknesses.
I followed the Booster 8 week schedule for the most part until I reached the 3 weeks of practice tests and review, when I realized I had to switch my focus. This will be more discussed below.
BIO: 22
I took bio in my senior year as well as anatomy/physiology 2022-23 post bacc, so you’d think it would be the freshest in my memory.. Well you’d be wrong because I genuinely learned so little due to my bad habits of cramming. I pretty much had to relearn everything, and I knew it was gonna be my biggest hurdle. I took the first practice test before studying, and got a 16. During content learning (1st 5 weeks), I went through all of Feralis notes as per the schedule alongside some of the animated videos during down time at work. I regret going through the Feralis notes because even though they’re comprehensive, they are just way too dense for me and for my schedule, and I usually ended up passively reading through it just to get done without actively learning anything. I tried using anki booster deck, and that was way too much too. I did maybe a third of the bio bits, and I thought they’re a good way of recalling everything you’ve learned if you had the time to go through the thousands of questions. If I could go back, I would probably use the high yield bootcamp notes from the beginning, as well as cheat sheets and all the videos on booster. Whatever isnt covered in these, I would then consider looking at the Feralis notes for that section. Please make sure to not do my mistake of passive reading. Focus on the bigger picture rather than the details, and you’ll find yourself less stressed and learning much more, especially higher yield information. I ended up making my own flash cards in the 2 week practice test/review stage on the high yield notes and cheat sheets, but barely went through any of them. Maybe it was a good method of having active learning by making flashcards 🤷🏽♂️. Also, a BIG help were the booster crash courses.. I cannot emphasize this enough if you are struggling with bio. I got at least 3 questions that were eerily similar or even identical, even questions that seemed random/lower yield and that might not show up. If you can, take the crash courses as close to your test as possible, and focus on that information. It was a great help for me, and Feralis was amazing at teaching us and having an interactive environment. I also got quite a few questions that were similar or identical from practice tests. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to go through the crash course notes, flash cards I made, all the non-animated videos, and taxonomy cheat sheets. Definitely go through those, especially the videos which are very high yield. I guess I got somewhat lucky and didn’t get many complicated taxonomy/diversity of life questions, but honestly I don’t remember much it was a blur. You can see my improvement in bio after the crash courses after Aug 6, esepcially in the extra practice tests and the full length tests.
CHEM: 30
The last time I took Gen Chem was 2018. It’s definitely been a while since I took the basics of chemistry, and I did have to relearn a lot, but maybe my higher level chem classes helped a bit (not a whole lot). It was my best science score before and after my learning phase, and I attribute my improvement after those 4 weeks to practice tests. I watched some of the booster videos at work, did all the practice questions, went through all the notes (and the questions in them) and highlighted the stuff on the PDF that I needed to know. After my learning phase, I realized that bio was by far my weakest link, so for the following 2 weeks I almost fully neglected everything else but bio (I don’t recommend this at all, and you wouldnt need to if you focus on the bigger picture from the beginning of bio learning). My only way of keeping everything fresh was practice tests. The last week before my exam, I dedicated 2 days to go through all ~350 of my marked questions in chem (from questions and tests), made a few anki flashcards of basic concepts, and skimmed through some notes. It’s true that the real test is not calculation heavy and you need to know your concepts from the notes. Don’t neglect the calculations though! But my point is that you should know a bit of both concepts and calculations, and the calculations werent that difficult on the exam for me.
ORGO: 22
I really winged orgo in school, which is embarrassing to say as a chemistry major. I forgot almost everything since 2020, and my second semester was interrupted by COVID so that attributed to even more winging. Still, it wasn’t too bad to relearn because I found DAT orgo to be simpler and more straightforward than in school. I studied by mainly going through the notes exactly like gen chem, as well as making my own flash cards of concepts, doing all practice questions, going through a bit of the anki reactions deck, and all the cheat sheets including the reactions. I didn’t really memorize much of the reactions, and instead just understood the concepts and some mechanisms behind them. I relied to recall the reactions by doing the practice questions rather than straight up memorizing. I still tried to memorize some though, but it wasn’t my main approach for reactions you could make some sense of. To do well, you really need to understand the concepts behind the basics, such as acids/bases, how nucleophiles and electrophiles react, etc. Remember to memorize the concepts and shifts of NMR and IR, and the lab tests in the cheat sheets. I made flash cards out of the latter and kinda made mnemonics in my head. I neglected orgo just like gen chem, and then dedicated a few days in my last week to do every single marked question (around 450). I made it a habit to mark every single question that was a new concept in order for me to repeat later on to recall it, which I think was a good method for me. Acid/base ranking, solvents for SN2/SN1/E2/E1, fastest reaction to occur as an electrophile/nucleophile, hybridization; that type of stuff was common in my exam and important to know. As you can see in my practice test trends, my raw scores dropped when I neglected chem and orgo, and I dont recommend anyone to do that. If it does though, dont get discouraged, and learn from your mistakes even if you get a 15 like I did in Test 7 😅.
PAT: 23
I followed the 8 week schedule for this in the first 4-5 weeks then kinda neglected it as well when I felt comfortable, and my main source of practice were practice questions every few days on my weakness, as well as practice exams. I did generators for way too long, and when I did my first PAT practice test it caught me off guard because it wasnt similar at all except for maybe angle ranking and hole punching. I recommend just going through the practice questions since theyre more representative, and only do generators as a secondary source of practice. Before doing any practice, I watched the videos to get an idea of how to approach problems and used their tips to develop ways to tackle this section. On the exam, I started on Q31 (angle ranking) all the way to pattern folding, and left around 20-25 mins for keyholes and TFE. On my practice tests, I would usually run out of time for TFE and completely guess on it, but still get around 21. This shows that you can really do well on this section by focusing on your strengths. I would still recommend to give yourself time to fully go through all the questions, and not get caught up on one difficult one. Try to be as quick and efficient as possible, and that only comes with practice and knowing the tricks.
Reading: 21
I honestly have no clue how I got a 21 on this section. I was expecting way less. The passages ended up being way longer than the practice tests (avg of 14-15 paragraphs per passage), and the last passage only had 14 questions. It caught me off guard and I ended up only having 10-12 mins left for the last passage and had to rush to get every question answered. My strategy was reading the passage for 6-8 mins while highlighting every year, percentage, name, and just buzz words that you could see in questions/answers. This helped me go through the passage quickly and know exactly what each paragraph talked about, and where those easy recall questions can be found. You just have to practice and find the right technique for you. It took me a while to find my best strategy, and struggled with the practice passages at first by getting some 16s and 17s. Please dont expect this section to have shorter passages, because it seems like a trend with everyone where passages are much longer than expected. Not sure if I got lucky with my educated guesses, because I was stressing about the time and where to find the answers in the passage. My advice is to never get caught up on one single question if it’s taking more than a minute. Mark the questions you are unsure of after guessing, and keep going. This goes for every section, especially QR, reading, and PAT. Never get discouraged if you feel you’re guessing. Make your best educated guess in order to have time for all the questions, because you might miss out on easy ones, and then you might have time to go back to the marked ones!
QR: 23
Same with reading (and honestly all sections), I expected much less in this section as I’m going through the questions. I consider myself quite decent at math, but my weaknesses I would say were probability and word problems. I did all the practice questions and watched a few videos at work on stuff I didnt fully know. Practice questions taught me best, and if I had time, I would have went through all the marked questions again from practice tests and questions. Again, I neglected this section as well during that 2 week period after the learning phase, which made my raw scores go way up and down between 24/40 to near perfect scores. My best advice is to focus on your weakness, practice here and there to keep stuff fresh, and NEVER get caught up on long and complicated questions, and questions that make you blank out for more than 5-10 seconds. Always make an educated guess, mark, and move on. Most of my practice tests that were of low grades were because of me being stubborn and not moving on because I know I could do the question, but it’s not worth wasting 3+ mins on a single question when there are many more easier ones towards the end. Make it a habit to mark and move on, and please ALWAYS reach the end. There were a few instances where I left easy questions at the end blank or completely guessed. This section is all about timing, and practice to manage it well! Overall, I recommend all practice questions, cheat sheets, practice tests, move on if you are unsure of a question after guessing, and keeping track of time to not fall behind. During the test, I would always check if I’m behind, constantly reminded myself to move forward and not get stuck, and I still barely managed to finish the last question without having the time to go back to my guessed marked questions. Still though, this shows how important it is to get to the really easy questions. I felt that some questions were vague/confusing, few were flat out too time consuming, and the rest were either reeeeally easy questions or on par with practice exams/questions.
Some other pointers I have:
Taking a dark colored jacket with me to erase the laminated papers was a life saver. Erasing with your hand would smudge the paper, and make the laminated paper oily and hard to write on with the marker. I was struggling with the oil during the PAT section, and the marker wasn’t writing properly, so try your best not to rub your hands too much on the laminated paper, and definitely get something you could erase with. Earplugs were also a big help for me, they were like noise cancelling earbuds almost. Try your best to go through all of your marked questions, especially from your practice tests. For bio, I would recommend not only going through the practice tests but also understanding the concepts behind every answer and wrong choices. Make use of the videos in practice tests and questions if the text explanations isn’t making the idea stick or make sense. And remember, get through all the questions, don’t miss out on the easy ones. Always try to move on and stay on track! I feel like i’ve said that a lot, but its so important and helped me personally.
I seriously didn’t ever imagine I would get anywhere near this score (especially during the exam), and I couldn’t have done it without booster, this group, and bio crash courses. Never get discouraged, especially during the test. I was extremely nervous but I tried my best to not get caught up if there was a question I was unsure of, and reminded myself to mark the question and on to the next one. Use the practice tests as an opportunity to learn your weakness. For example, when my scores dipped in orgo and chem, I decided that I couldn’t keep neglecting and made sure I went through all the marked questions and incorrect answers from the practice tests and questions.
Remember, this test is far from easy, but there are many resources to be well prepared, and with hard work and consistency, everyone can get a good score. If you are getting practice scores lower than you expect, learn from your mistakes, and focus on your weakness, and I guarantee you will see drastic improvements like I did. Trust yourself and your preparation, and it’s very possible you do much better than you expect! I believe in every single one of you, and we will all achieve our goals one day of becoming successful dentists!
Apologies for the long post and scattered screenshots of my scores. I tried to be as thorough as I could, and if anyone needs any help, or if you have any questions, I’ll try my best to get back 🙂
A little bit of background, I graduated in chem in May 2022 with around a 3.67 GPA, and currently am working full time in a pharmaceutical lab as a research analyst. The last couple years in school were definitely tough after the shut down, and I developed bad habits including winging everything and studying the days before and even the days of exams. I felt I was learning nothing, being unproductive, and had minimal chances of research, activities, volunteering, and shadowing. I felt lost in what I wanted to do in my future, but I eventually fixated on this path after graduation and shadowing, then dentistry genuinely caught my interest. I started studying for the DAT in the middle of June, and overall it was about 9 weeks. It was a challenge to balance my work and studying at first since I was working 40 hours a week. The first 6 weeks I was coming back from work at 5:30, eating/resting, and studying for around 4-6 hrs depending on the schedule. I was constantly sleep deprived, which caused a cycle of napping after coming back from work, studying, then sleeping 3-4 hrs before work. Please do not do what I did if you have a busy schedule, it did me more harm than good, and try to stay as balanced as possible. Eventually I got my work reduced to ~24 hours a week the last few weeks, which fixed my lack of sleep and I was then able to properly focus on my weaknesses.
I followed the Booster 8 week schedule for the most part until I reached the 3 weeks of practice tests and review, when I realized I had to switch my focus. This will be more discussed below.
BIO: 22
I took bio in my senior year as well as anatomy/physiology 2022-23 post bacc, so you’d think it would be the freshest in my memory.. Well you’d be wrong because I genuinely learned so little due to my bad habits of cramming. I pretty much had to relearn everything, and I knew it was gonna be my biggest hurdle. I took the first practice test before studying, and got a 16. During content learning (1st 5 weeks), I went through all of Feralis notes as per the schedule alongside some of the animated videos during down time at work. I regret going through the Feralis notes because even though they’re comprehensive, they are just way too dense for me and for my schedule, and I usually ended up passively reading through it just to get done without actively learning anything. I tried using anki booster deck, and that was way too much too. I did maybe a third of the bio bits, and I thought they’re a good way of recalling everything you’ve learned if you had the time to go through the thousands of questions. If I could go back, I would probably use the high yield bootcamp notes from the beginning, as well as cheat sheets and all the videos on booster. Whatever isnt covered in these, I would then consider looking at the Feralis notes for that section. Please make sure to not do my mistake of passive reading. Focus on the bigger picture rather than the details, and you’ll find yourself less stressed and learning much more, especially higher yield information. I ended up making my own flash cards in the 2 week practice test/review stage on the high yield notes and cheat sheets, but barely went through any of them. Maybe it was a good method of having active learning by making flashcards 🤷🏽♂️. Also, a BIG help were the booster crash courses.. I cannot emphasize this enough if you are struggling with bio. I got at least 3 questions that were eerily similar or even identical, even questions that seemed random/lower yield and that might not show up. If you can, take the crash courses as close to your test as possible, and focus on that information. It was a great help for me, and Feralis was amazing at teaching us and having an interactive environment. I also got quite a few questions that were similar or identical from practice tests. Unfortunately, I didn’t have the time to go through the crash course notes, flash cards I made, all the non-animated videos, and taxonomy cheat sheets. Definitely go through those, especially the videos which are very high yield. I guess I got somewhat lucky and didn’t get many complicated taxonomy/diversity of life questions, but honestly I don’t remember much it was a blur. You can see my improvement in bio after the crash courses after Aug 6, esepcially in the extra practice tests and the full length tests.
CHEM: 30
The last time I took Gen Chem was 2018. It’s definitely been a while since I took the basics of chemistry, and I did have to relearn a lot, but maybe my higher level chem classes helped a bit (not a whole lot). It was my best science score before and after my learning phase, and I attribute my improvement after those 4 weeks to practice tests. I watched some of the booster videos at work, did all the practice questions, went through all the notes (and the questions in them) and highlighted the stuff on the PDF that I needed to know. After my learning phase, I realized that bio was by far my weakest link, so for the following 2 weeks I almost fully neglected everything else but bio (I don’t recommend this at all, and you wouldnt need to if you focus on the bigger picture from the beginning of bio learning). My only way of keeping everything fresh was practice tests. The last week before my exam, I dedicated 2 days to go through all ~350 of my marked questions in chem (from questions and tests), made a few anki flashcards of basic concepts, and skimmed through some notes. It’s true that the real test is not calculation heavy and you need to know your concepts from the notes. Don’t neglect the calculations though! But my point is that you should know a bit of both concepts and calculations, and the calculations werent that difficult on the exam for me.
ORGO: 22
I really winged orgo in school, which is embarrassing to say as a chemistry major. I forgot almost everything since 2020, and my second semester was interrupted by COVID so that attributed to even more winging. Still, it wasn’t too bad to relearn because I found DAT orgo to be simpler and more straightforward than in school. I studied by mainly going through the notes exactly like gen chem, as well as making my own flash cards of concepts, doing all practice questions, going through a bit of the anki reactions deck, and all the cheat sheets including the reactions. I didn’t really memorize much of the reactions, and instead just understood the concepts and some mechanisms behind them. I relied to recall the reactions by doing the practice questions rather than straight up memorizing. I still tried to memorize some though, but it wasn’t my main approach for reactions you could make some sense of. To do well, you really need to understand the concepts behind the basics, such as acids/bases, how nucleophiles and electrophiles react, etc. Remember to memorize the concepts and shifts of NMR and IR, and the lab tests in the cheat sheets. I made flash cards out of the latter and kinda made mnemonics in my head. I neglected orgo just like gen chem, and then dedicated a few days in my last week to do every single marked question (around 450). I made it a habit to mark every single question that was a new concept in order for me to repeat later on to recall it, which I think was a good method for me. Acid/base ranking, solvents for SN2/SN1/E2/E1, fastest reaction to occur as an electrophile/nucleophile, hybridization; that type of stuff was common in my exam and important to know. As you can see in my practice test trends, my raw scores dropped when I neglected chem and orgo, and I dont recommend anyone to do that. If it does though, dont get discouraged, and learn from your mistakes even if you get a 15 like I did in Test 7 😅.
PAT: 23
I followed the 8 week schedule for this in the first 4-5 weeks then kinda neglected it as well when I felt comfortable, and my main source of practice were practice questions every few days on my weakness, as well as practice exams. I did generators for way too long, and when I did my first PAT practice test it caught me off guard because it wasnt similar at all except for maybe angle ranking and hole punching. I recommend just going through the practice questions since theyre more representative, and only do generators as a secondary source of practice. Before doing any practice, I watched the videos to get an idea of how to approach problems and used their tips to develop ways to tackle this section. On the exam, I started on Q31 (angle ranking) all the way to pattern folding, and left around 20-25 mins for keyholes and TFE. On my practice tests, I would usually run out of time for TFE and completely guess on it, but still get around 21. This shows that you can really do well on this section by focusing on your strengths. I would still recommend to give yourself time to fully go through all the questions, and not get caught up on one difficult one. Try to be as quick and efficient as possible, and that only comes with practice and knowing the tricks.
Reading: 21
I honestly have no clue how I got a 21 on this section. I was expecting way less. The passages ended up being way longer than the practice tests (avg of 14-15 paragraphs per passage), and the last passage only had 14 questions. It caught me off guard and I ended up only having 10-12 mins left for the last passage and had to rush to get every question answered. My strategy was reading the passage for 6-8 mins while highlighting every year, percentage, name, and just buzz words that you could see in questions/answers. This helped me go through the passage quickly and know exactly what each paragraph talked about, and where those easy recall questions can be found. You just have to practice and find the right technique for you. It took me a while to find my best strategy, and struggled with the practice passages at first by getting some 16s and 17s. Please dont expect this section to have shorter passages, because it seems like a trend with everyone where passages are much longer than expected. Not sure if I got lucky with my educated guesses, because I was stressing about the time and where to find the answers in the passage. My advice is to never get caught up on one single question if it’s taking more than a minute. Mark the questions you are unsure of after guessing, and keep going. This goes for every section, especially QR, reading, and PAT. Never get discouraged if you feel you’re guessing. Make your best educated guess in order to have time for all the questions, because you might miss out on easy ones, and then you might have time to go back to the marked ones!
QR: 23
Same with reading (and honestly all sections), I expected much less in this section as I’m going through the questions. I consider myself quite decent at math, but my weaknesses I would say were probability and word problems. I did all the practice questions and watched a few videos at work on stuff I didnt fully know. Practice questions taught me best, and if I had time, I would have went through all the marked questions again from practice tests and questions. Again, I neglected this section as well during that 2 week period after the learning phase, which made my raw scores go way up and down between 24/40 to near perfect scores. My best advice is to focus on your weakness, practice here and there to keep stuff fresh, and NEVER get caught up on long and complicated questions, and questions that make you blank out for more than 5-10 seconds. Always make an educated guess, mark, and move on. Most of my practice tests that were of low grades were because of me being stubborn and not moving on because I know I could do the question, but it’s not worth wasting 3+ mins on a single question when there are many more easier ones towards the end. Make it a habit to mark and move on, and please ALWAYS reach the end. There were a few instances where I left easy questions at the end blank or completely guessed. This section is all about timing, and practice to manage it well! Overall, I recommend all practice questions, cheat sheets, practice tests, move on if you are unsure of a question after guessing, and keeping track of time to not fall behind. During the test, I would always check if I’m behind, constantly reminded myself to move forward and not get stuck, and I still barely managed to finish the last question without having the time to go back to my guessed marked questions. Still though, this shows how important it is to get to the really easy questions. I felt that some questions were vague/confusing, few were flat out too time consuming, and the rest were either reeeeally easy questions or on par with practice exams/questions.
Some other pointers I have:
Taking a dark colored jacket with me to erase the laminated papers was a life saver. Erasing with your hand would smudge the paper, and make the laminated paper oily and hard to write on with the marker. I was struggling with the oil during the PAT section, and the marker wasn’t writing properly, so try your best not to rub your hands too much on the laminated paper, and definitely get something you could erase with. Earplugs were also a big help for me, they were like noise cancelling earbuds almost. Try your best to go through all of your marked questions, especially from your practice tests. For bio, I would recommend not only going through the practice tests but also understanding the concepts behind every answer and wrong choices. Make use of the videos in practice tests and questions if the text explanations isn’t making the idea stick or make sense. And remember, get through all the questions, don’t miss out on the easy ones. Always try to move on and stay on track! I feel like i’ve said that a lot, but its so important and helped me personally.
I seriously didn’t ever imagine I would get anywhere near this score (especially during the exam), and I couldn’t have done it without booster, this group, and bio crash courses. Never get discouraged, especially during the test. I was extremely nervous but I tried my best to not get caught up if there was a question I was unsure of, and reminded myself to mark the question and on to the next one. Use the practice tests as an opportunity to learn your weakness. For example, when my scores dipped in orgo and chem, I decided that I couldn’t keep neglecting and made sure I went through all the marked questions and incorrect answers from the practice tests and questions.
Remember, this test is far from easy, but there are many resources to be well prepared, and with hard work and consistency, everyone can get a good score. If you are getting practice scores lower than you expect, learn from your mistakes, and focus on your weakness, and I guarantee you will see drastic improvements like I did. Trust yourself and your preparation, and it’s very possible you do much better than you expect! I believe in every single one of you, and we will all achieve our goals one day of becoming successful dentists!
Apologies for the long post and scattered screenshots of my scores. I tried to be as thorough as I could, and if anyone needs any help, or if you have any questions, I’ll try my best to get back 🙂
