Hi there! I just wanted to post a breakdown of my DAT scores and some notes in case they help anyone.
I took it twice: the first time in the summer of 2021 (between my sophomore and junior year of college) using DAT Bootcamp (Pro, $497); and the second time in the fall of 2022 using DAT Booster (Premium, $299). I started studying at the beginning of June in 2021, took off one week for a wedding and took the test September 4th. In 2022, I started September 1st, took one out of all of the rest days when it was scheduled, and used the rest in two weeks for a vacation. The ten-week schedule I used had me ready to take the test around November 15th, and I used the extra two days for another vacation and for study. I don’t know if using all your rest days in one go for a vacation is advisable (see below for my perception of the schedule creators), but that’s what I did.
Background: I am a senior at Cornell University majoring in Biological Sciences and Classics. I enjoy biology, organic chemistry, and the humanities, but not general chemistry or mathematics. I earned about an A-B in my biology courses, B-C in organic chemistry, A in the humanities, C-D in general chemistry, and A-B in mathematics.
The #1 reason that I would say accounted for my increase would be sticking to the study schedule. The first time I studied for my DAT, I did it while shadowing, working, and hanging out with friends. If I stuck to the schedule, I would have realized that I didn’t have time for any of them; it is best to, if possible, spend your DAT study period doing nothing but DAT study, as daunting as that may seem. I took the fall semester of my senior year of college off for this, as I had other commitments the summer prior.
The way I went about studying the first time around was to just do as much as I could in a day, every day, as to me, that seemed like the way to go about it that would yield the best results (the more study, the more material I’d know). Unfortunately, I was very wrong, and after a few days of doing extreme amounts of study, I naturally couldn’t keep up the momentum and my work ethic was horrible for the remainder of my study period: five videos of General Chemistry would be about all of my studying per day, as I couldn’t keep myself focused/motivated to get through more. This ended up in me being severely behind by the time my DAT came around, with me just having completed Bootcamp’s version of the “learning phase” of all the material the day before my DAT.
The second time around, however, I committed myself devoutly to the study schedule. Here is how I thought about it, in a way that kept me going and dedicated to studying and following the study schedule: I thought of the creators of the study schedule as all-knowing and kind of godlike, knowledgeable sages that understood human nature, cognition, ability, and drive. So essentially, they wrote the study schedule where doing more than what the schedule had per day would tire me out mentally and make me unable to do what they had for future days, and doing less would put me behind schedule/off track. I was terrified of getting off track of the schedule and repeating my last DAT study experience, so I knew not to go any slower than the schedule had down, and thus the most important thing for me was to not exceed what they wanted me to do per day, as it was a kind of thing where I thought to myself “they have their reasons” and “they know what they’re talking about, they know what someone can do in a day”. I hope that makes sense, and please feel free to reach out if that isn’t clear; but I really do think that helped me, which is why I’m including it. And I do want to stress that this helped me personally, and I have seen other people say contrary things; I struggle with concentration, motivation, and finding good study techniques, so if there’s anyone out there like that, this could help. And because of my ethic this time around, I never lost concentration or focus, which is rare and unpredictable for me.
Not only did I follow the study schedule, but I followed my own kind of daily schedule (but not very strictly), where I’d wake up around a certain time, do a and b before lunch, do c, etc. and basically kind of have a rough idea of when I’d be doing things per day; but I personally didn’t need to stick militaristically to this type of schedule.
The only issue with this strict study schedule adherence is that if a certain topic needed more review than another, you don’t give yourself space for you to touch on it more. Like I didn’t know the entire section of enolate reactions days before my DAT. Also, try to work in Booster’s Anki from other subjects than Biology every day after the learning phase (except full test days if you don’t want to do anything else on those days).
I will also say that although I used Booster’s Anki flashcards and they were really good, I think what helped me personally the most was making my own. I made my own for all subjects excluding PAT and RC, but I didn’t cover every single topic in my own because I was too close to my DAT so I didn’t have time. Regardless, when I took my DAT, I don’t think I could have done anything more to prepare for it; I felt confident and I don’t think there was anything that I didn’t know of what I needed to know. Except for the order of one boat upstream downstream equation haha.
PAT 17 -> 22: The house technique (from DAT Booster <3) was incredibly helpful for obtuse angles. For acute ones that aren’t very small, I would imagine the two lines forming a triangle with the third side, and trying to see how the side of the triangle that isn’t the base extends to make a visible angle between the two lines, and comparing the angles. If that doesn’t make sense, please reach out! The order of the problems is Keyholes, TFE, Angle Ranking, Hole Punching, Cube Counting, and Pattern Folding. I started out with #31, Angle Ranking, did the rest, and then went to #1 until #30, which was the most time-efficient strategy for me because Keyholes and TFE were the hardest for me.
QR 16 -> 22: The Anki flashcards helped a bit, but I think practice problems are the key and I made my own flashcards too.
RC 24 -> 28: You have to think critically and intelligently about the difficult questions and their answers and reason it out. One technique that really helps is thinking “which of these answer choices would the DAT makers most likely select as correct, which one would they like to see you select”. I can’t exactly explain it without quoting direct questions and answers, but it is sort of an intuitive thing; you begin to subconsciously notice trends in the types of answers that are correct and thus you can select ones that follow the trend. Weird, outlandish, oversimplistic, too florid, and unrelated sounding answers are usually incorrect. My DAT had an insanely difficult RC section with extremely complicated passages, so the trend that the DAT is usually easier than the prep courses/programs did not hold for that specific section; so be prepared.
My technique was a bit of the combination of the search and destroy (DAT Booster) and the standard approach (DAT Booster); I’d skim the passage and read more but not very much if it was an easy passage, and skim more and read less deeply if it were a difficult one so I didn’t waste time trying to understand things that might not even be in the questions.
Biology 20 -> 24: This one was tough because I didn’t feel like I was lacking in biology knowledge, but every time I took a practice test and even on my actual DAT, I wouldn’t score as high as my confidence reflected. To this day I’m not sure why, but here is what I did and what I would recommend, as they are different and I was somewhat scrambling in the latter phases:
During the Content Learning and Memorization Phase, I highlighted and annotated the Feralis-Booster Biology notes. During the Review & Practice Tests Phase, I rewrote in shorthand parts of the notes that I didn’t have 100% memorized or confident (which was intense) and drew rudimentary diagrams where applicable (which is all you need, you truly don’t need to make an art project out of your diagrams). During the Practice Tests & Filling in gaps Phase, I made Anki cards for things I felt really needed review from the shorthand rewritten parts (which bit me because I couldn’t read my own rewriting because of how fast I wrote it), sometimes copying and pasting diagrams I had drawn into Anki (I have a tablet computer) and did Booster’s Anki cards for topics I didn’t feel comfortable in.
What I would recommend is, during the first phase, to take your own, legible, notes on the Feralis notes and videos. I’ve heard that writing notes by hand, either on a tablet or on paper, is best for retention, but that’s up to you (I prefer the first for environmental and convenience related reasons). It might be easier to handwrite biology notes rather than type them because of symbols, subscripts, and things you cannot type easily. In the second phase, I think I would have then, in the next phase, made Anki cards for everything in which I didn’t feel comfortable and drawn diagrams where applicable and made those into cards as well. And then, in the last phase, I would have done the Anki cards and gradually toggle suspended everything but the ones I really needed to review. But this is all hypothetical and just my advice from what I think.
I’d say know the function(s) of the lymphatic system lol, that came up multiple times and on my DAT. Mnemonics are also key. If you can make memories pictorial or mnemonic or into characters or something, that can help.
GC 15 -> 25: I did what I did for Biology, minus the diagrams. My Anki cards consisted of things like solid types and their qualities (covalent network, metallic, etc.), equations, polyatomic ions, and things like that. Practice problems helped, and the same types of problems will recur, so doing them will strengthen your abilities.
OC 16 -> 22: This was my most intimidating section. College organic chemistry was much easier than general chemistry for me, but on the DAT, I had issues with remembering everything for OC. I followed the same technique as Biology and GC, but my Anki cards consisted of things like lab tests, SN2 SN1 E2 E1 substrates and nucleophile properties as to which reaction would proceed, nomenclature, and spectra numbers for memorization. Also purposes of lab techniques, how they occur, etc.
One thing that could help has to do with the priority of functional groups. I thought of it in a pictorial way and it worked wonderfully for me. The lowest priority group is nitro, and I know that nitro comes out of a car out of the exhaust (I think, lol), so I imagined nitro as the exhaust on a car, as the very last bit, all the way to the left. Carboxylic acid is the highest, and its name is longer and bigger than all the others, so it sounds like the highest priority anyway. Ether is next from the bottom and ester is next from the top, and because they’re like twins, I remembered that they were both next from each side. Ester is more complex/more sophisticated than ether because of the carbonyl, so I knew that one was higher. Then, alkyl halide and acyl halide, for the same reasons. In the middle is ketone and then aldehyde, and I remembered this by the word “ketal”, which sounds like ketone and then aldehyde, so ketone comes first (lowest priority, as I listed everything left to right) and then aldehyde. It’s things like these that helped me a lot.
Final/Miscellaneous Words: When I got to the last phase, I was a bit stressed, because I didn’t have a concrete plan for how I wanted to go about reviewing everything. One thing I did was for OC, my toughest section, I took practice test after practice test, which I didn’t do for things like QR or RC.
DAT Booster’s practice tests are a bit different than the actual DAT: Booster’s biology practice tests incorporate information that is outside of the study material, but still fair game for the DAT, and the RC is a bit different, while Bootcamp looks more like the DAT; it’s just a matter of what you prefer.
I struggle heavily with calculations and the more mathematical sciences, like general chemistry. But the GC on the DAT and prep courses is definitely doable, so if you’ve done enough problems and know what to do, you’ll be fine! So don’t lose hope! All in all, if you prepare yourself well, the DAT isn’t really that difficult. For me, I found that some Biology and OC questions were worded weirdly, and the RC as I mentioned above, but that was about it.
DAT Booster explains concepts extraordinarily well, especially the sciences, so you will feel confident with your knowledge upon completion of the course. Don’t think about how you will do do two points better than your Booster practice tests, as that might not always be the case and you won’t put in the necessary work for such an increase if you think your score is set after a few practice tests. You have this time to study, so if some study technique takes you a long time or is a lot of work but helps, this is time reserved specifically for that, so you can and should do it (to an extent lol).
You definitely can do this.
I took it twice: the first time in the summer of 2021 (between my sophomore and junior year of college) using DAT Bootcamp (Pro, $497); and the second time in the fall of 2022 using DAT Booster (Premium, $299). I started studying at the beginning of June in 2021, took off one week for a wedding and took the test September 4th. In 2022, I started September 1st, took one out of all of the rest days when it was scheduled, and used the rest in two weeks for a vacation. The ten-week schedule I used had me ready to take the test around November 15th, and I used the extra two days for another vacation and for study. I don’t know if using all your rest days in one go for a vacation is advisable (see below for my perception of the schedule creators), but that’s what I did.
Background: I am a senior at Cornell University majoring in Biological Sciences and Classics. I enjoy biology, organic chemistry, and the humanities, but not general chemistry or mathematics. I earned about an A-B in my biology courses, B-C in organic chemistry, A in the humanities, C-D in general chemistry, and A-B in mathematics.
The #1 reason that I would say accounted for my increase would be sticking to the study schedule. The first time I studied for my DAT, I did it while shadowing, working, and hanging out with friends. If I stuck to the schedule, I would have realized that I didn’t have time for any of them; it is best to, if possible, spend your DAT study period doing nothing but DAT study, as daunting as that may seem. I took the fall semester of my senior year of college off for this, as I had other commitments the summer prior.
The way I went about studying the first time around was to just do as much as I could in a day, every day, as to me, that seemed like the way to go about it that would yield the best results (the more study, the more material I’d know). Unfortunately, I was very wrong, and after a few days of doing extreme amounts of study, I naturally couldn’t keep up the momentum and my work ethic was horrible for the remainder of my study period: five videos of General Chemistry would be about all of my studying per day, as I couldn’t keep myself focused/motivated to get through more. This ended up in me being severely behind by the time my DAT came around, with me just having completed Bootcamp’s version of the “learning phase” of all the material the day before my DAT.
The second time around, however, I committed myself devoutly to the study schedule. Here is how I thought about it, in a way that kept me going and dedicated to studying and following the study schedule: I thought of the creators of the study schedule as all-knowing and kind of godlike, knowledgeable sages that understood human nature, cognition, ability, and drive. So essentially, they wrote the study schedule where doing more than what the schedule had per day would tire me out mentally and make me unable to do what they had for future days, and doing less would put me behind schedule/off track. I was terrified of getting off track of the schedule and repeating my last DAT study experience, so I knew not to go any slower than the schedule had down, and thus the most important thing for me was to not exceed what they wanted me to do per day, as it was a kind of thing where I thought to myself “they have their reasons” and “they know what they’re talking about, they know what someone can do in a day”. I hope that makes sense, and please feel free to reach out if that isn’t clear; but I really do think that helped me, which is why I’m including it. And I do want to stress that this helped me personally, and I have seen other people say contrary things; I struggle with concentration, motivation, and finding good study techniques, so if there’s anyone out there like that, this could help. And because of my ethic this time around, I never lost concentration or focus, which is rare and unpredictable for me.
Not only did I follow the study schedule, but I followed my own kind of daily schedule (but not very strictly), where I’d wake up around a certain time, do a and b before lunch, do c, etc. and basically kind of have a rough idea of when I’d be doing things per day; but I personally didn’t need to stick militaristically to this type of schedule.
The only issue with this strict study schedule adherence is that if a certain topic needed more review than another, you don’t give yourself space for you to touch on it more. Like I didn’t know the entire section of enolate reactions days before my DAT. Also, try to work in Booster’s Anki from other subjects than Biology every day after the learning phase (except full test days if you don’t want to do anything else on those days).
I will also say that although I used Booster’s Anki flashcards and they were really good, I think what helped me personally the most was making my own. I made my own for all subjects excluding PAT and RC, but I didn’t cover every single topic in my own because I was too close to my DAT so I didn’t have time. Regardless, when I took my DAT, I don’t think I could have done anything more to prepare for it; I felt confident and I don’t think there was anything that I didn’t know of what I needed to know. Except for the order of one boat upstream downstream equation haha.
PAT 17 -> 22: The house technique (from DAT Booster <3) was incredibly helpful for obtuse angles. For acute ones that aren’t very small, I would imagine the two lines forming a triangle with the third side, and trying to see how the side of the triangle that isn’t the base extends to make a visible angle between the two lines, and comparing the angles. If that doesn’t make sense, please reach out! The order of the problems is Keyholes, TFE, Angle Ranking, Hole Punching, Cube Counting, and Pattern Folding. I started out with #31, Angle Ranking, did the rest, and then went to #1 until #30, which was the most time-efficient strategy for me because Keyholes and TFE were the hardest for me.
QR 16 -> 22: The Anki flashcards helped a bit, but I think practice problems are the key and I made my own flashcards too.
RC 24 -> 28: You have to think critically and intelligently about the difficult questions and their answers and reason it out. One technique that really helps is thinking “which of these answer choices would the DAT makers most likely select as correct, which one would they like to see you select”. I can’t exactly explain it without quoting direct questions and answers, but it is sort of an intuitive thing; you begin to subconsciously notice trends in the types of answers that are correct and thus you can select ones that follow the trend. Weird, outlandish, oversimplistic, too florid, and unrelated sounding answers are usually incorrect. My DAT had an insanely difficult RC section with extremely complicated passages, so the trend that the DAT is usually easier than the prep courses/programs did not hold for that specific section; so be prepared.
My technique was a bit of the combination of the search and destroy (DAT Booster) and the standard approach (DAT Booster); I’d skim the passage and read more but not very much if it was an easy passage, and skim more and read less deeply if it were a difficult one so I didn’t waste time trying to understand things that might not even be in the questions.
Biology 20 -> 24: This one was tough because I didn’t feel like I was lacking in biology knowledge, but every time I took a practice test and even on my actual DAT, I wouldn’t score as high as my confidence reflected. To this day I’m not sure why, but here is what I did and what I would recommend, as they are different and I was somewhat scrambling in the latter phases:
During the Content Learning and Memorization Phase, I highlighted and annotated the Feralis-Booster Biology notes. During the Review & Practice Tests Phase, I rewrote in shorthand parts of the notes that I didn’t have 100% memorized or confident (which was intense) and drew rudimentary diagrams where applicable (which is all you need, you truly don’t need to make an art project out of your diagrams). During the Practice Tests & Filling in gaps Phase, I made Anki cards for things I felt really needed review from the shorthand rewritten parts (which bit me because I couldn’t read my own rewriting because of how fast I wrote it), sometimes copying and pasting diagrams I had drawn into Anki (I have a tablet computer) and did Booster’s Anki cards for topics I didn’t feel comfortable in.
What I would recommend is, during the first phase, to take your own, legible, notes on the Feralis notes and videos. I’ve heard that writing notes by hand, either on a tablet or on paper, is best for retention, but that’s up to you (I prefer the first for environmental and convenience related reasons). It might be easier to handwrite biology notes rather than type them because of symbols, subscripts, and things you cannot type easily. In the second phase, I think I would have then, in the next phase, made Anki cards for everything in which I didn’t feel comfortable and drawn diagrams where applicable and made those into cards as well. And then, in the last phase, I would have done the Anki cards and gradually toggle suspended everything but the ones I really needed to review. But this is all hypothetical and just my advice from what I think.
I’d say know the function(s) of the lymphatic system lol, that came up multiple times and on my DAT. Mnemonics are also key. If you can make memories pictorial or mnemonic or into characters or something, that can help.
GC 15 -> 25: I did what I did for Biology, minus the diagrams. My Anki cards consisted of things like solid types and their qualities (covalent network, metallic, etc.), equations, polyatomic ions, and things like that. Practice problems helped, and the same types of problems will recur, so doing them will strengthen your abilities.
OC 16 -> 22: This was my most intimidating section. College organic chemistry was much easier than general chemistry for me, but on the DAT, I had issues with remembering everything for OC. I followed the same technique as Biology and GC, but my Anki cards consisted of things like lab tests, SN2 SN1 E2 E1 substrates and nucleophile properties as to which reaction would proceed, nomenclature, and spectra numbers for memorization. Also purposes of lab techniques, how they occur, etc.
One thing that could help has to do with the priority of functional groups. I thought of it in a pictorial way and it worked wonderfully for me. The lowest priority group is nitro, and I know that nitro comes out of a car out of the exhaust (I think, lol), so I imagined nitro as the exhaust on a car, as the very last bit, all the way to the left. Carboxylic acid is the highest, and its name is longer and bigger than all the others, so it sounds like the highest priority anyway. Ether is next from the bottom and ester is next from the top, and because they’re like twins, I remembered that they were both next from each side. Ester is more complex/more sophisticated than ether because of the carbonyl, so I knew that one was higher. Then, alkyl halide and acyl halide, for the same reasons. In the middle is ketone and then aldehyde, and I remembered this by the word “ketal”, which sounds like ketone and then aldehyde, so ketone comes first (lowest priority, as I listed everything left to right) and then aldehyde. It’s things like these that helped me a lot.
Final/Miscellaneous Words: When I got to the last phase, I was a bit stressed, because I didn’t have a concrete plan for how I wanted to go about reviewing everything. One thing I did was for OC, my toughest section, I took practice test after practice test, which I didn’t do for things like QR or RC.
DAT Booster’s practice tests are a bit different than the actual DAT: Booster’s biology practice tests incorporate information that is outside of the study material, but still fair game for the DAT, and the RC is a bit different, while Bootcamp looks more like the DAT; it’s just a matter of what you prefer.
I struggle heavily with calculations and the more mathematical sciences, like general chemistry. But the GC on the DAT and prep courses is definitely doable, so if you’ve done enough problems and know what to do, you’ll be fine! So don’t lose hope! All in all, if you prepare yourself well, the DAT isn’t really that difficult. For me, I found that some Biology and OC questions were worded weirdly, and the RC as I mentioned above, but that was about it.
DAT Booster explains concepts extraordinarily well, especially the sciences, so you will feel confident with your knowledge upon completion of the course. Don’t think about how you will do do two points better than your Booster practice tests, as that might not always be the case and you won’t put in the necessary work for such an increase if you think your score is set after a few practice tests. You have this time to study, so if some study technique takes you a long time or is a lot of work but helps, this is time reserved specifically for that, so you can and should do it (to an extent lol).
You definitely can do this.
