2024 DAT Breakdown
I’ve probably read every single dat breakdown on this sub so here’s mine!
Background: I took this exam going into junior year and I’m a Neurology major, so I’ve taken gen chem and ochem in the past two years and had some familiarity with them starting out + a little bio knowledge from intro bio courses and the very beginnings of physio under my belt.
Study Material: Booster, Bootcamp cheat sheets
Study Plan: I started studying about 12 weeks ago with Booster but I was using their 10 week plan because I knew I’d get a little lazy and I wanted to have some buffer time. I stuck with the video/qbanks/notes schedule at first for about 3 weeks before I started getting lazy (you’ll notice a pattern as you keep reading).
Bio (first and last three practice tests 17/17/21/22/19/25): A few weeks in I’d realized that what little bio/physio knowledge I had was pretty much nothing compared to what the DAT tests on, so I’d dropped qbanks entirely and I made myself focus on the bio videos. I couldn’t get through feralis notes AT ALL; I think he has a hot voice so the videos were easy to watch but the notes made me want to kill myself. I was genuinely falling asleep. I did the section tests in between and when I kept tanking bio I decided to lock in and start anki, which I kept up with until 3 weeks before my exam. I regretted not keeping up with anki until the very end, because I felt like I was forgetting stuff, but the DAT bio section didn’t really focus on the small details so anki wasn’t super helpful. A couple weeks before my test I started splitting bootcamp with one of my friends, and their 120ish page cheat sheet was a lifesaver.
Gen chem (18/20/18/28/23/26): After doing the scheduled first two chapters I got lazy and I skipped all the ochem and gen chem videos. I would read the notes instead, which sometimes I did seriously and sometimes I did while watching HBO Max. I think the notes are your best bet, and also look over the formula sheet to make sure you understand when to use them. Bootcamp’s is a lot more complicated that booster’s but I stuck to booster’s and I didn’t get any problems that I couldn’t think of the formula for. I didn’t do any qbanks but made sure to review my practice tests well.
Ochem (20/21/21/19/25/26): I took ochem the year before but the ochem course at my school doesn’t require you to memorize the reactions so I had to learn all of them for the DAT. I pretty much studied by reading through bootcamp’s reaction cheat sheet/skimming booster’s notes every so often and doing qbanks when the dentist I was shadowing was in between patients. I did boosters game challenge for a bit a few times every week which helped A LOT.
PAT (16/22/21/20/19/21): I played booster’s pat games a lot. I played a lot of booster’s games, in general, because they were prefect for when I was too lazy to properly study but felt too guilty to do nothing. I’d do five keyhole, pattern or the questions a twice a week, and I did the diy PAT exams in booster’s 10 week schedule for a week in phase 2 before I stopped. I think PAT got really tiring for me to do all at once everyday, so I did a lot of sporadic PAT like playing an hour of cube counting one day and then hole punching a few days later. I HATE keyholes with a burning passion so I could only do them while watching tv, untimed. TFE I think there’s a trick to it and you can pick one aspect of the shape to focus on and rule out at least 2 answer choices.
RC (24/24/26/24/30/28): I’m a good reader to begin with, so I mostly just took note of what I got wrong. I recommend search and destroy if you’re able to find things fast, because it helped me with the meatier passages.
QR (23/24/25/28/30/25): I have a solid math background as well so I mostly took practice tests to see what I was getting wrong and then watched only those videos. If I was still iffy I did qbanks for that topic.
Before test: Two days before I did a quick reread of all the cheat sheets for TS. The day before I did one last TS and reviewed my answers, then I watched Justice League Snyder cut and went to bed early. I had such bad sleep it was I think I woke up like 7 times but when my alarm rang I was so pumped bc I was finally getting the DAT over with.
Exam: I had what I thought was a decent sized breakfast in the morning and then I got to my testing center 45 min early so I could find the restrooms and where the actual room was. I was given the option to start my test a half hour early after I checked in which I did eagerly because I was feeling flush with adrenaline. Bio was a lot of general topics with one biome question that stumped me. GC I think I didn’t have any calculations, I only had to set them up. I got 2-3 lab questions for ochem and I did have quite a few questions about polarity/protic solvents with SN2/E2 and acidity. I had less reaction stuff and more trends than I was expecting. For PAT I have no idea how I got a 28. I was scoring avg 21-22 on practice tests for the most part. I think the actual PAT is a lot easier compared to booster. I marked like half of my keyholes and tfe because the answer was so obvious for some I thought it was like when booster tricks you by making the easy answer wrong. My jaw actually dropped when I saw my score I was so shocked. With practice tests I got really tired by PAT but I felt energized all through it. I would have skipped my break entirely if my stomach wasn’t growling loud enough that I was worried other people could hear me. I ate a pbj, used the restroom, and was back in 7 min. I have a bone to pick with prometric on RC bc time was such an issue. There started to be a 6 second whitescreen lag in between questions. Learn to read fast 😭😭 One of my RC passages was really meaty but it was fine when using the highlight feature. I didn’t use highlighting when practicing but it was so helpful on the test. I have a bigger bone to pick with QR bc the lag was there to stay. I probably lost at least 12 min just clicking between questions. Math was mostly okay and I did get a lot of sufficiency, absolute value equations, and probability.
Advice: Focus on high yield stuff! I spent a lot of time being lazy because it felt like there were so many tiny details I had to know but the big picture was what was really important. I think reviewing cheat sheets and practice exams was really helpful, make sure to go over questions you get wrong. A lot of the DAT questions seemed familiar to me because I’d seen questions similar to them in my practice exams, so take advantage of that! I also got worried when in practice tests my scores would suddenly nosedive in certain sections, I got a 19 in bio then chem in my last couple tests which worried me. But your scores will be consistent so don’t worry too much!
I’ve probably read every single dat breakdown on this sub so here’s mine!
Background: I took this exam going into junior year and I’m a Neurology major, so I’ve taken gen chem and ochem in the past two years and had some familiarity with them starting out + a little bio knowledge from intro bio courses and the very beginnings of physio under my belt.
Study Material: Booster, Bootcamp cheat sheets
Study Plan: I started studying about 12 weeks ago with Booster but I was using their 10 week plan because I knew I’d get a little lazy and I wanted to have some buffer time. I stuck with the video/qbanks/notes schedule at first for about 3 weeks before I started getting lazy (you’ll notice a pattern as you keep reading).
Bio (first and last three practice tests 17/17/21/22/19/25): A few weeks in I’d realized that what little bio/physio knowledge I had was pretty much nothing compared to what the DAT tests on, so I’d dropped qbanks entirely and I made myself focus on the bio videos. I couldn’t get through feralis notes AT ALL; I think he has a hot voice so the videos were easy to watch but the notes made me want to kill myself. I was genuinely falling asleep. I did the section tests in between and when I kept tanking bio I decided to lock in and start anki, which I kept up with until 3 weeks before my exam. I regretted not keeping up with anki until the very end, because I felt like I was forgetting stuff, but the DAT bio section didn’t really focus on the small details so anki wasn’t super helpful. A couple weeks before my test I started splitting bootcamp with one of my friends, and their 120ish page cheat sheet was a lifesaver.
Gen chem (18/20/18/28/23/26): After doing the scheduled first two chapters I got lazy and I skipped all the ochem and gen chem videos. I would read the notes instead, which sometimes I did seriously and sometimes I did while watching HBO Max. I think the notes are your best bet, and also look over the formula sheet to make sure you understand when to use them. Bootcamp’s is a lot more complicated that booster’s but I stuck to booster’s and I didn’t get any problems that I couldn’t think of the formula for. I didn’t do any qbanks but made sure to review my practice tests well.
Ochem (20/21/21/19/25/26): I took ochem the year before but the ochem course at my school doesn’t require you to memorize the reactions so I had to learn all of them for the DAT. I pretty much studied by reading through bootcamp’s reaction cheat sheet/skimming booster’s notes every so often and doing qbanks when the dentist I was shadowing was in between patients. I did boosters game challenge for a bit a few times every week which helped A LOT.
PAT (16/22/21/20/19/21): I played booster’s pat games a lot. I played a lot of booster’s games, in general, because they were prefect for when I was too lazy to properly study but felt too guilty to do nothing. I’d do five keyhole, pattern or the questions a twice a week, and I did the diy PAT exams in booster’s 10 week schedule for a week in phase 2 before I stopped. I think PAT got really tiring for me to do all at once everyday, so I did a lot of sporadic PAT like playing an hour of cube counting one day and then hole punching a few days later. I HATE keyholes with a burning passion so I could only do them while watching tv, untimed. TFE I think there’s a trick to it and you can pick one aspect of the shape to focus on and rule out at least 2 answer choices.
RC (24/24/26/24/30/28): I’m a good reader to begin with, so I mostly just took note of what I got wrong. I recommend search and destroy if you’re able to find things fast, because it helped me with the meatier passages.
QR (23/24/25/28/30/25): I have a solid math background as well so I mostly took practice tests to see what I was getting wrong and then watched only those videos. If I was still iffy I did qbanks for that topic.
Before test: Two days before I did a quick reread of all the cheat sheets for TS. The day before I did one last TS and reviewed my answers, then I watched Justice League Snyder cut and went to bed early. I had such bad sleep it was I think I woke up like 7 times but when my alarm rang I was so pumped bc I was finally getting the DAT over with.
Exam: I had what I thought was a decent sized breakfast in the morning and then I got to my testing center 45 min early so I could find the restrooms and where the actual room was. I was given the option to start my test a half hour early after I checked in which I did eagerly because I was feeling flush with adrenaline. Bio was a lot of general topics with one biome question that stumped me. GC I think I didn’t have any calculations, I only had to set them up. I got 2-3 lab questions for ochem and I did have quite a few questions about polarity/protic solvents with SN2/E2 and acidity. I had less reaction stuff and more trends than I was expecting. For PAT I have no idea how I got a 28. I was scoring avg 21-22 on practice tests for the most part. I think the actual PAT is a lot easier compared to booster. I marked like half of my keyholes and tfe because the answer was so obvious for some I thought it was like when booster tricks you by making the easy answer wrong. My jaw actually dropped when I saw my score I was so shocked. With practice tests I got really tired by PAT but I felt energized all through it. I would have skipped my break entirely if my stomach wasn’t growling loud enough that I was worried other people could hear me. I ate a pbj, used the restroom, and was back in 7 min. I have a bone to pick with prometric on RC bc time was such an issue. There started to be a 6 second whitescreen lag in between questions. Learn to read fast 😭😭 One of my RC passages was really meaty but it was fine when using the highlight feature. I didn’t use highlighting when practicing but it was so helpful on the test. I have a bigger bone to pick with QR bc the lag was there to stay. I probably lost at least 12 min just clicking between questions. Math was mostly okay and I did get a lot of sufficiency, absolute value equations, and probability.
Advice: Focus on high yield stuff! I spent a lot of time being lazy because it felt like there were so many tiny details I had to know but the big picture was what was really important. I think reviewing cheat sheets and practice exams was really helpful, make sure to go over questions you get wrong. A lot of the DAT questions seemed familiar to me because I’d seen questions similar to them in my practice exams, so take advantage of that! I also got worried when in practice tests my scores would suddenly nosedive in certain sections, I got a 19 in bio then chem in my last couple tests which worried me. But your scores will be consistent so don’t worry too much!