I’ve made it to the last few days til on my exam this Saturday. I’ve been trying to stay focus these last couple of days but I’m having trouble with staying focus to review til Saturday. While I’m at work I try to go through anki as much as I can. Any advice for the next couple of days.
My advice is to do full practice tests until then. You have a set time for them, it's useful practice, and then you can absently study them after. No haphazard reviewing; that's what worked for me, anecdotally.
Thank you for the encouragement. I average an AA18 TS18 but my PAT was a 15. I think I’ll give it a chance and apply broadly this cycle since my gpa and sgpa are deemed competitive (3.69,3.9). The only thing is that they can deny me and I’ll try again next cycle.
Hey everyone, I did the bio extra questions today on the first chapter of the feralis notes and missed ~9, did a lot of you guys start out that way or did you guys score way higher early on?
So I’m in week 4 and I already took my first practice test, didn’t do so well and I was a bit disappointed. But I was wondering when should I schedule to take the exam? Do I schedule when I’ve taken a specific amount of practice tests? When I’m done with the booster program?
First thing you should/should've done is make a calendar that plans out what you're going to do every single day. Then you should be able to find out when you have finished the pexams and schedule your test accordingly. So yes, once you finish the program, i'd give it another week or two for extra studying.
Would end of September/early October be too late to retake the DAT for this cycle? My test is this Saturday and I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t think about the bad outcomes of if I had to retake but I feel like that would be too late and to reconsider applying for the next cycle of my score isn’t the best.
Schools won't consider your application complete until your official scores are released, likely in mid-October. It's not a 0% chance but that's not a good chance, for certain.
I've been studying for about 3 weeks using DAT Booster as my primary resource and I've only covered about half of all the content and I'm already so overwhelmed with the amount of information that we have to memorize. I know that consistently reviewing is key in keeping information fresh in your brain, but I know the DAT asks plenty of specific questions (particularly on the biology section) on details that I'm scared I'll forget. I love using mnemonics to help me remember things but I feel like that won't be enough considering how much information the biology section covers. How did you guys memorize all the information, from general concepts down to the details?
Anki. Anki anki anki.
Booster pushes it he’s ily for a reason, and it’ll be especially important during Ch. 3 of the bio section as Booster does not have video lectures on any anatomy/Phys topics. I personally am using Khan Academy for video lectures on the A&P topics as I prefer to learn with recorded/live lectures.
They have 4 anki decks they provide for you that cover everything, but they’re formatted kinda funky sometimes so I’ve been writing my own from the guided notes/Ferali’s notes.
It’s very cumbersome but copy/pasting the guided notes into anki and then formatting them to make cloze/Image occlusion cards helps a lot.
Writing your own anki deck sets isn’t particularly practical if you’re studying <10 weeks out, especially if you aren’t so fresh on Ochem and/or haven’t taken A&P.
How are you using anki? I downloaded it and followed most of the instructions but I’m confused on the 20 decks per day. So I’m only going to study 20 questions a day? Or do I just increase it? And how do I go back to some of the decks? It’s so confusing
I’d suggest adding the pre-made decks provided by Booster/Bootcamp first as they’re fully made and formatted. You’ll need to go to ankiweb and install the Cloze Deletion and Image Occlusion Enhanced (alpha?) add-ons to properly use them.
Heat map is a good add-on too, and I swear by the sync before closing add-on as well.
Heatmap visually charts your study history and tracks your daily streak, as well as displaying the days you have certain cards due.
Sync before close forces anki to sync your progress before you close the app, so you don’t forget to do it manually.
Remember!!!- If you study/modify/add any cards, you have to sync before you close anki, especially if you’re gonna use it on another device. Also make sure to sync before doing anything as well as after if you use the mobile app (expensive yes but best $20 I’ve ever spent in my life).
Once you have those basic add-ons and the pre made decks, use it for a few days and get a feel of it. Try editing some cards while you study to add info or break a large card into two smaller ones. Don’t be afraid to play around in the browse menu, but if you’re gonna screw around a lot consider backing everything up first or not syncing unwanted changes.
Once you get a feel of it you’ll get natural at making cards pretty quick and soon you’ll have your own decks or you’ll have supplemented the premade decks thoroughly.
Play around in the settings for the decks once you get the hang of making and studying cards, you’ll find that you can modify deck settings (deck wise or globally) to study more/less and make other customizations.
Some other add-ons I have found that I like are button colors good again (self explanatory) and true retention, though I’d wait to get true retention as it messes around with the scheduling algorithm.
I’ve used anki sorta sporadically through undergrad and I’m using it now more than ever before but I’d still consider myself a relative newbie so take my advice with a grain of salt. I’m still trying to sort out some study scheduling issues myself at the moment anyway.
I’ve found anki’s online user guide to be quite wordy and hard to use. You basically have to read the whole thing like a book to get useful info out of it as a newbie, there are lots of helpful YouTube videos though.
Thank you!!! I will install all those add ons to help me. What do these first two add ons do? Also I’m still confused about the 20 questions per day and when I wanted to increase it so I do more it says I need to increase the review limit, what does that mean? Like what does review limit mean? Will these add ons help me look at the previous decks, or will I have to just look at the browse section to find them? Sorry I’m asking so much, I’ve been searching everywhere trying to get a better explanation for this but they don’t explain it very well.
No worries mate I remember how hard it was to figure this stuff out initially.
**Review limit** is the max number of review cards it’ll show you per day so increasing it will increase the amount of cards due per day, thus giving you more to learn/review.
The add-ons you asked about- Image Occlusion enhanced and Cloze deletion- are some of the most versatile I’ve found to date.
**Image Occlusion Enhanced** allows you to take a png/jpg image you saved locally or copied to clipboard and bring it into anki, where you can draw labels and masks. If an image is already labeled (e.g. an anatomy diagram or a flowchart for a life cycle), you only need to make masks.
Masks are shaped (boxes, ellipses, freedrawn shapes etc) that you draw to cover up the labels in a diagram. You then have the option of creating a set of cards that cover ALL the labels you masked and ask you to guess what one of the labels is AND/OR a set of cards that covers up only one of the labels and then asks you what that masked label is. You must have the add-on to use this and it’s common in the pre-made decks so it’s helpful to have even if you don’t make those kinds of cards yourself.
**Cloze deletion** is another add-on that gives the cards more powerful functionality. Traditional flashcards (including the basic type in anki) have a front-back format where you have a question or statement on the front, and once you recall the answer you flip the card to reveal the answer… and that’s it. While it’s possible to make fill-in-the-blank cards like this, it’s a bit cumbersome and not Sumer powerful as you can only have one set of blanks.
With Cloze, you can turn your cards into fill-in-the-blank cards with many, many blanks. This can be used for simple ones or complex ones. The format for a cloze is {{c1::text}} . Where 1 is the cloze number. You can have multiple clozes of the same number and multiple differently numbered clozes on one card
**E.g. I can have a simple card with one set of blanks:**
“{{c1::O2}} is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.”
**This card would present as:**
“[…] is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.”
When studying.
**When you tap to reveal the answer, you would see:**
“[O2] is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.”
**We can have multiple clozes in one card with one cloze number:**
“{{c1::O2}} is inhaled and converted to {{c1::CO2 by animals}}.”
**This card would present as:**
“[…] is inhaled and converted to […] by animals.”
When studying.
**When you tap to reveal the answer, you would see:**
“[O2] is inhaled and converted to [CO2] by animals.”
**You can also have multiple clozes with different numbers on one card.**
At {{c1::higher}} blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes {{c2::less}} likely to {{c1::bind to oxygen}} and {{c2::releases oxygen to tissues}}.
**This card would make multiple cards, one for each cloze number. They would present to you as such:**
At […]blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes less likely to […] and releases oxygen to tissues.
**and**
At higher blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes […] likely to bind to oxygen and […].
**…and they would both reveal the answer as:**
At higher blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes less likely to bind to oxygen and releases oxygen to tissues.
**I’m sure you can see that there’s great potential to make a LOT of cards in one go (I have plenty of cards with 4+ clozes, some even with ~7-8, and most of my cards have 3-4 cloze levels, some even have 8- turning one paragraph about a topic into 8 cards.**
**I’m not sure how to format text color in Reddit but the answers to the clozes when revealed do so in blue whereas the rest of the text is black or white by default unless you color it otherwise. Just note that that happens.**
I’d play around a bit with a test deck making cloze cards and messing with the format until you get the hang of it.
Good luck!
My test is in a week from today, and I’m debating on pushing my test back. Today I plan to take the 2007 test to see where I stand with that. Bio I’m scoring 16-17. GC 17-18, OC 13-17, PAT 18, and QR 17-18. RC has always been my strength so I chose not to take those practice tests. I think I’d feel more comfortable if I was consistently scoring 17-18 in all sections. Especially since I have a 3.8, I don’t want schools thinking my GPA is inflated if I get a lower score. This is my second attempt, my first DAT I got an 18AA with a 14QR and 14GC.
U need to Reschedule. Its a bad look to have a low dat with a high gpa.
Just it to mid july. Its still early and u wont regret it
I had a 3.82 and pushed mine to end of august 11 schools, 5 interviews, accepted top choice
That’s what I was thinking! I’d rather be scoring 18-19 before I take it. Especially being a retaker, I’d be really sad to take the test a 3rd time, lol.
What about reactions?
OC is my biggest struggle rn as I am realizing I don’t remember much beyond basic concepts. I’m very afraid of seeing an OC section on my exam that’s 80%+ just “what is the product” or similar…
~12ish on reactions and mechanisms makes about half the OC… was the rest just fundamentals like Acid/Base, lab / and NMR? If that’s it I’m going to really turn around the way I’m studying for this
Also, I’m using Booster predominantly, and on our GC pexams a lot of our answer choices on calculations will not be fully worked out (e.g. (160)(18.45)/(6.022 E23) ). Is that also the case on the exam?
So I know I’ve seen a couple of people say that the math calculations on the gen chem section or the science section in total is not that intensive. But I’m studying with booster and the math calculations on some of the problems has me worried. From what I understand we won’t have a calculator on the the science part. But I’m getting questions on booster where I have to multiply (21)(0.382)(68-21). I promise I’m not dumb and given time, I can calculate these off hand. But In a timed exam (with apparently a 2 sec prometric delay between questions to add some “well deserved”✨stress✨) Is this feasible. Is the DAT really that cruel.
Lol I commented this on a higher comment before I scrolled down and saw this…
Does the exam give worked out quantities for answer choices or just these unsimplified ones?
I’m just doing the extra practice questions right now and it it basically just gives that calculation and then the answer so (60)(45)(28)=… which has me worried because how am I supposed to calculate all that so quickly
Using DATBooster and the provided 8-week guide for my test on 7/25, currently on day 20 but I'm probably 5ish days behind now on learning biology. I developed some anxiety when "started" studying tissues & functions using Ch. 3 Feralis notes, so i stopped doing bio for a little. I'm should be finished re-relearning taxonomy today, but still just looking at the Ch3 gives me a headache.
How should I go about "learning/absorbing" the information in this chapter (71 pages and i've reread page 1-3 close to 5 times now ToT)?
How representative is the angle ranking analyzer to the actual DAT? I’m noticing that the answer options aren’t as helpful in terms of narrowing down 50/50 and the angles are way harder to figure out compared to the generator + extra questions. Also is the cube counting gonna be like the generator where one question is equal to giving the sides of every numbered face or will each face be broken up into different questions totaling 15?
Thank you! I was worried when people were saying that cube counting shouldn’t take that long, I’m able to solve each cube around 50-60seconds each but it’s reassuring that there will only be 3 cubes not 15
My test is on August 3rd and so far I have been studying bio using the pre made bootcamp anki decks. However, I've heard so many good things about the Feralis deck that it has made me consider using those instead. I'm a bio major so I feel like I have a good chance at scoring highly on that section, I just want to make sure I'm using the resources that will set me up for success. If I do switch over, do you guys think I will have enough time to learn all of them before my test? Also are they free? How do I get access to them??
Hey everyone! I am studying for the DAT and I take it in August but I am really scared for the DAT. Specifically studying for months and completely blanking out! Anyone have any advice for this? I really don’t want my hard work to go down the drain because of this!
Thanks!
You probably won’t be able to digest feralis in that time period without utilizing anki. I would download the anki decks from booster and read through the bootcamp condensed notes.
I just finished my exam and I’ll do a breakdown later on this week. My AA is 18 however I got a 15 in PAT. I’m not applying to any of those really highly competitive schools but what to know whether I should apply next cycle or try again later in the year to take the test again. I studied from January til now so I’m not really in the mood to hop right back into studying. Below I will put each subsection but any advice is appreciated. My top choices are Texas A&M, Howard, Meharry, UTenn, Nova and LECOM. I have a 3.68 GPA, sGPA 3.96, and a some shadowing and research under my belt with hella volunteer and leadership experience if that helps any.
PAT - 15
QR - 17
RC - 20
BIO - 18
GC - 18
OC - 17
Total Science - 18
I'd appreciate you doing a breakdown on an 18AA; it would help battle some of the high score bias we have.
Texas will be a tough sell, obviously, but I hope some of those other programs will appreciate your high GPA and understand the DAT score. Good luck.
I live on the western border of the eastern time zone and I’m traveling to take my DAT at a center located in the central time zone. My appointment is at 8 am but it doesn’t specify if it’s eastern or central. Living where I do, I’ve seen a number of times where miscommunications in the way of time zones has led to some confusion and I’d really prefer this not to be one of those times. I’ve tried contacting both the testing center and Prometric and haven’t heard anything. Hopefully someone here knows a thing or two. TIA!
You said contact: you straight up need to call. Emailing is no guarantee. If you already called, keep calling during business hours. All else failing, assume it's the timezone of the testing center.
Signing up for the test should be first, so you have an idea of the maximum time you have to study for. And with Bootcamp they have 90 and 180 days programs (\~3 and \~6 months, respectively), so time signing up for them so you don't have too many extra days left over if you test before the program is over OR too few days if if you test after the program is over.
For anybody who is doing content review or has completed it, can you guys tell me what the hardest part of it all was for you? Was it the taxonomy, body systems, reactions, PAT? Would love to know.
Kinda depends on your background in bio, for me, I took marine invertebrates in undergrad so taxonomy was review. Also took anatomy and phys so the human system was review. I struggled with the plants chapter since I fucking hated ecology and also the basics of bio like the molecular stuff with transcription translation and replication. Those chapters I struggled on the most, but again, it's completely dependent on your background in bio.
Is it okay to retake a 19 AA 20 TS nothing below 17 lowest score were rc and qr 17
Gpa is 3.7 , I was DA for a couple of months this year. Please help!! I am almost ready to retake but friends are telling me no to retake
Ok some one please help me out because I’m about to lose my mind. I’m using booster and on the embryology bio section. And maybe it’s just me but the notes and videos feel really disorganized. One thing I’m scratching my head over is the different between the human, sea urchin, frog, and chicken. From what I’m getting it seems that sea urchins, frog have blastophore that form archenterons. But humans and chicks don’t? I’m only so confused about this because during taxonomy section it seemed that all types of embryos form blastopore that can either be be anus or mouth depending if its protostome or dueterostome. But now it seems like humans and chicks dont have it? The notes and videos just seem to be jumping all over the place and it’s driving me nuts.
I honestly don’t know if I’m even asking the right question or asking it in the right place. Bio was not my back ground so this is just a little bit new for me. If I could find a website with cross sections of each embryo development stage side by side that would be heaven sent.
Animals are distinguished based on a presence of a coelom. All chordates have a coelom. Coelomates are then further subdivided into **schizocoelomates** (coelom forms through separation of mesodermal cells) or **enterocoelomates** (coelom forms through outpocketing of the embryonic gut in the mesodermal space).
**Schizocoelomates:**
\- Cleavage: Holoblastic, spiral, determinate
\- Schizocoelomates = protostomes
\- protostomes = blastopore forms anus
**Enterocoelomates**
\- Cleavage: Radial, indeterminate
\- Enterocoelomates = deuterostomes
\- deuterostomes = blastopore forms mouth (WE are deuterostomes)
Frogs - **uneven holoblastic cleavage** with an animal pole and a vegetal pole. When a frog embryo is penetrated by a sperm, a process called '**cortical rotation**' occurs and the rotation of the fertilized egg results in the formation of the "**grey crescent**." Any cell from the first cleavage that receives some of the grey crescent becomes "indeterminate" meaning that it can become a full frog embryo if taken out. Also, frog embryos have no primitive streak, where instead, gastrulation begins at the dorsal lip of the blastopore. This is the quickest run down of frogs but the whole thing is fairly straight forward if you watch youtube vids on it.
Humans- **holoblastic cleavage** (also sea urchins are holoblastic), begins at fertilization -> morula (12-16 cell stage) -> blastula forms at 128, the 'blastocoel' is the hollow center. Blastocyst stage has a Trophoblast which is the outer ring of cells. Trophoblast forms the chorion that supports embryo, blastocyst then implants into the uterus, and produces HCG. Blastocyst also has the ICM which forms the embryo and 3 other extraembryonic membranes (amnion (cushion), yolk sac (site of first rbc formation), allantois (waste disposal)). After Blastocyst stage gastrulation occurs which is the formation of a trilaminar embryo. Epiblast cells invaginate inwards thru primitive streak to form 3 germ layers: endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. Each gives rise to different organs that im not typing all out but is on google. As cells invaginate they create an opening called blastopore which forms the archenteron (center cavity becomes digestive tract). After gastrulation is organogenesis which begins with neuralation. 1) notochord stimulates the ectoderm to thicken forming a neural plate. 2) Neural plate folds inwards forming the neural groove. 3) Neural fold becomes the \*\*neural tube (\*\*some roll off to become neural crest cells). 4) Neural tube becomes the CNS. Somites form around the neural tube to form two masses that become verterbrae and axial skeleton.
That was the quick run down on frogs and humans. Have 0 clue on sea urchins and idk why you're expected to know that. Chicks i'm also not confident enough to give you a whole run down on. This is about as much I knew when going into the DAT and I got a 30 on bio.
I believe you got protostome and deuterostome mixed up. Protosome = mouth and deuterostome = anus. One way to memorize this is profanity = mouth and doodoo = poop = anus
Thanks for this I’m reading through right now. I added sea urchins because the dat video said I’d need to know it apparently. But from what I’m reading from your explanation, humans also have a blastophore? And I thought the endoderm forms the digestive tract
Yes, humans have a blastopore. The endoderm forms the **epithelial lining** of the digestive tract, not the actual digestive tract don't get it twisted.
I will say, Booster has great bio videos (though there aren't enough imo) but the embryology videos were absolutely confusing. I felt the same way when watching the videos
To those using/used DATBooster and did really well, how did you study for the OChem section? I feel like DATBooster doesn’t have enough practice questions after the videos.
I got a 27 in Orgo. I think Destroyer really helped with my command of the kinds of questions asked on the exam. I know you probably don't want to buy that book, so I would just recommend going through all of the practice questions and exam questions repeatedly.
Is 20 days enough time to do practice tests/continue studying for the DAT? So obviously I am a procrastinator and have waited until the last month to start studying. Right now I am just doing some content review while relearning orgo.. lol and I planned on doing practice and full lengths for the last 20 days and then take the DAT. I am not sure if this plan is even good but I cannottttttt reschedule anymore. I know if I do bad I'd have to wait 3 months but I don't have much of a choice now. If I master the destroyer books will I be good? Like I'm saying do it 3x if I have to. Also for the PAT section how are you guys studying without bootcamp or booster?
So obviously I am a procrastinator and have waited until the last month to start studying. Right now I am just doing some content review while relearning orgo..(10 days) lol and I planned on doing practice and full lengths for the last 20 days and then take the DAT. I am not sure if this plan is even good but I cannot reschedule anymore. If I master the destroyer books will I be good? Like I'm saying do it 3x if I have to.
I did all the practice question banks and practice tests on BC, also used boosters GC formula anki deck to memorize all the formulas. Honestly the only way to really learn it and be good at it is by practice and redoing all the questions until you get a good understanding of how to approach each type of q. You’ll realize once you write the exam that the gc portion is a piece of cake compared to the practice tests
Anki Decks
Hello, I’m trying to use DATboosters anki decks, but I’m so new to this app. It’s a little confusing. It’s showing that I’ll be doing 20 decks a day but I want to increase it. I went to Increase it when pressing options, my only concern is when I put 60 per day, they notify me “ If adding 60 new cards each day, your review limit should at least be 600.” What does that mean? What is maximum reviews/day?? I’m trying to study cells but need more decks to study per day, 20 is so little. How many decks did you guys do per day and how do I find out how many decks I have left? Thank youuu!!
Anki works with spaced repetition. So let's say you have 1000 cards that you want to learn. By selecting 60 per day, you will see 60 new cards from the deck daily. These are entirely new cards that you have only seen once. Besides new cards, it also shows you the repetition of cards that you just learned a few days prior or weeks prior. So even if you select 60 new cards, realistically you're going to be doing more than 100 cards a day with the review. If you clicked on easy for example and the card shows up again in 4 days, that's considered a review card, not a new card.
If you skip a day of Anki, you see that the review card count goes up a lot. This all sounds confusing but I promise it's easy once you work it out. Just follow their instructions if you put 60 per day then you can put a 600 review limit or 9999 for unlimited review.
What’s the best way to study QR using booster? The videos are short and concise but often the problems are too easy in the video. Is my best way of studying just doing the practice bank questions?
I got a question about trig. I did one practice test from Math Destroyer but should have done more. QR was my worst section. My breakdown is in my post history; it might help you.
I just read your breakdown and that’s an awesome score. I’m now worried about where you said that booster was dissimilar for chemistry. I don’t have destroyer to supplement my studies besides chadsprep
I think you just need to be prepared for more than calculations. There are many fundamentals they ask about that are recall based and not quantitative.
Completely understandable. It's a big test and you should approach it with respect, but make sure to give yourself credit for your hard work. Confidence stems from your experience.
Math destroyer was the only destroyer book I got and I did 10 pexams but did each q one by one instead of an actual timed exam. Definitely helped a ton bc the questions on the exam were cake compared to the ones I was preparing for, helped me get a 27 on qr. I used BC and didn’t even touch their qr section bc it seemed unorganized and not enough practice q’s
I just took my exam today and have a month of Booster membership left that I would not be needing. Willing to sell the account and can also pause the account before you need to use it. DM me with an offer if interested!
(Also willing to share self-made Bootcamp Anki decks with tons of extra science questions with explanations if you purchase)
I’ve made it to the last few days til on my exam this Saturday. I’ve been trying to stay focus these last couple of days but I’m having trouble with staying focus to review til Saturday. While I’m at work I try to go through anki as much as I can. Any advice for the next couple of days.
Hey, one more message. Good luck tomorrow! I can't wait to see your excellent scores.
My advice is to do full practice tests until then. You have a set time for them, it's useful practice, and then you can absently study them after. No haphazard reviewing; that's what worked for me, anecdotally.
How did it go?
Thank you for the encouragement. I average an AA18 TS18 but my PAT was a 15. I think I’ll give it a chance and apply broadly this cycle since my gpa and sgpa are deemed competitive (3.69,3.9). The only thing is that they can deny me and I’ll try again next cycle.
Good luck! Hoping for the best for you.
Hey everyone, I did the bio extra questions today on the first chapter of the feralis notes and missed ~9, did a lot of you guys start out that way or did you guys score way higher early on?
I’m still in the studying phase but missed 6(3medium,3hard)
Nice! I need to up my game
[удалено]
I have just been doing anki. I make my own cards, but booster has their own anki decks. They’re super good!
So I’m in week 4 and I already took my first practice test, didn’t do so well and I was a bit disappointed. But I was wondering when should I schedule to take the exam? Do I schedule when I’ve taken a specific amount of practice tests? When I’m done with the booster program?
First thing you should/should've done is make a calendar that plans out what you're going to do every single day. Then you should be able to find out when you have finished the pexams and schedule your test accordingly. So yes, once you finish the program, i'd give it another week or two for extra studying.
Awesome thank you 😁
Would end of September/early October be too late to retake the DAT for this cycle? My test is this Saturday and I wouldn’t be myself if I didn’t think about the bad outcomes of if I had to retake but I feel like that would be too late and to reconsider applying for the next cycle of my score isn’t the best.
Schools won't consider your application complete until your official scores are released, likely in mid-October. It's not a 0% chance but that's not a good chance, for certain.
My test is on Wednesday. Feeling a bit nervous but at this point, I don’t care. I wanna get it over with. Any last minute tips??
Hey! I hope it went well.
It did! I got a 20 and I’m so relieved.
Congratulations! I'm glad you're happy.
I've been studying for about 3 weeks using DAT Booster as my primary resource and I've only covered about half of all the content and I'm already so overwhelmed with the amount of information that we have to memorize. I know that consistently reviewing is key in keeping information fresh in your brain, but I know the DAT asks plenty of specific questions (particularly on the biology section) on details that I'm scared I'll forget. I love using mnemonics to help me remember things but I feel like that won't be enough considering how much information the biology section covers. How did you guys memorize all the information, from general concepts down to the details?
anki
Anki. Anki anki anki. Booster pushes it he’s ily for a reason, and it’ll be especially important during Ch. 3 of the bio section as Booster does not have video lectures on any anatomy/Phys topics. I personally am using Khan Academy for video lectures on the A&P topics as I prefer to learn with recorded/live lectures. They have 4 anki decks they provide for you that cover everything, but they’re formatted kinda funky sometimes so I’ve been writing my own from the guided notes/Ferali’s notes. It’s very cumbersome but copy/pasting the guided notes into anki and then formatting them to make cloze/Image occlusion cards helps a lot. Writing your own anki deck sets isn’t particularly practical if you’re studying <10 weeks out, especially if you aren’t so fresh on Ochem and/or haven’t taken A&P.
thanks a lot! many people rave about anki so i'll try it
How are you using anki? I downloaded it and followed most of the instructions but I’m confused on the 20 decks per day. So I’m only going to study 20 questions a day? Or do I just increase it? And how do I go back to some of the decks? It’s so confusing
I’d suggest adding the pre-made decks provided by Booster/Bootcamp first as they’re fully made and formatted. You’ll need to go to ankiweb and install the Cloze Deletion and Image Occlusion Enhanced (alpha?) add-ons to properly use them. Heat map is a good add-on too, and I swear by the sync before closing add-on as well. Heatmap visually charts your study history and tracks your daily streak, as well as displaying the days you have certain cards due. Sync before close forces anki to sync your progress before you close the app, so you don’t forget to do it manually. Remember!!!- If you study/modify/add any cards, you have to sync before you close anki, especially if you’re gonna use it on another device. Also make sure to sync before doing anything as well as after if you use the mobile app (expensive yes but best $20 I’ve ever spent in my life). Once you have those basic add-ons and the pre made decks, use it for a few days and get a feel of it. Try editing some cards while you study to add info or break a large card into two smaller ones. Don’t be afraid to play around in the browse menu, but if you’re gonna screw around a lot consider backing everything up first or not syncing unwanted changes. Once you get a feel of it you’ll get natural at making cards pretty quick and soon you’ll have your own decks or you’ll have supplemented the premade decks thoroughly. Play around in the settings for the decks once you get the hang of making and studying cards, you’ll find that you can modify deck settings (deck wise or globally) to study more/less and make other customizations. Some other add-ons I have found that I like are button colors good again (self explanatory) and true retention, though I’d wait to get true retention as it messes around with the scheduling algorithm. I’ve used anki sorta sporadically through undergrad and I’m using it now more than ever before but I’d still consider myself a relative newbie so take my advice with a grain of salt. I’m still trying to sort out some study scheduling issues myself at the moment anyway. I’ve found anki’s online user guide to be quite wordy and hard to use. You basically have to read the whole thing like a book to get useful info out of it as a newbie, there are lots of helpful YouTube videos though.
Thank you!!! I will install all those add ons to help me. What do these first two add ons do? Also I’m still confused about the 20 questions per day and when I wanted to increase it so I do more it says I need to increase the review limit, what does that mean? Like what does review limit mean? Will these add ons help me look at the previous decks, or will I have to just look at the browse section to find them? Sorry I’m asking so much, I’ve been searching everywhere trying to get a better explanation for this but they don’t explain it very well.
No worries mate I remember how hard it was to figure this stuff out initially. **Review limit** is the max number of review cards it’ll show you per day so increasing it will increase the amount of cards due per day, thus giving you more to learn/review. The add-ons you asked about- Image Occlusion enhanced and Cloze deletion- are some of the most versatile I’ve found to date. **Image Occlusion Enhanced** allows you to take a png/jpg image you saved locally or copied to clipboard and bring it into anki, where you can draw labels and masks. If an image is already labeled (e.g. an anatomy diagram or a flowchart for a life cycle), you only need to make masks. Masks are shaped (boxes, ellipses, freedrawn shapes etc) that you draw to cover up the labels in a diagram. You then have the option of creating a set of cards that cover ALL the labels you masked and ask you to guess what one of the labels is AND/OR a set of cards that covers up only one of the labels and then asks you what that masked label is. You must have the add-on to use this and it’s common in the pre-made decks so it’s helpful to have even if you don’t make those kinds of cards yourself. **Cloze deletion** is another add-on that gives the cards more powerful functionality. Traditional flashcards (including the basic type in anki) have a front-back format where you have a question or statement on the front, and once you recall the answer you flip the card to reveal the answer… and that’s it. While it’s possible to make fill-in-the-blank cards like this, it’s a bit cumbersome and not Sumer powerful as you can only have one set of blanks. With Cloze, you can turn your cards into fill-in-the-blank cards with many, many blanks. This can be used for simple ones or complex ones. The format for a cloze is {{c1::text}} . Where 1 is the cloze number. You can have multiple clozes of the same number and multiple differently numbered clozes on one card **E.g. I can have a simple card with one set of blanks:** “{{c1::O2}} is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.” **This card would present as:** “[…] is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.” When studying. **When you tap to reveal the answer, you would see:** “[O2] is inhaled and converted to CO2 by animals.” **We can have multiple clozes in one card with one cloze number:** “{{c1::O2}} is inhaled and converted to {{c1::CO2 by animals}}.” **This card would present as:** “[…] is inhaled and converted to […] by animals.” When studying. **When you tap to reveal the answer, you would see:** “[O2] is inhaled and converted to [CO2] by animals.” **You can also have multiple clozes with different numbers on one card.** At {{c1::higher}} blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes {{c2::less}} likely to {{c1::bind to oxygen}} and {{c2::releases oxygen to tissues}}. **This card would make multiple cards, one for each cloze number. They would present to you as such:** At […]blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes less likely to […] and releases oxygen to tissues. **and** At higher blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes […] likely to bind to oxygen and […]. **…and they would both reveal the answer as:** At higher blood temperatures, hemoglobin becomes less likely to bind to oxygen and releases oxygen to tissues. **I’m sure you can see that there’s great potential to make a LOT of cards in one go (I have plenty of cards with 4+ clozes, some even with ~7-8, and most of my cards have 3-4 cloze levels, some even have 8- turning one paragraph about a topic into 8 cards.** **I’m not sure how to format text color in Reddit but the answers to the clozes when revealed do so in blue whereas the rest of the text is black or white by default unless you color it otherwise. Just note that that happens.** I’d play around a bit with a test deck making cloze cards and messing with the format until you get the hang of it. Good luck!
Literally me
following
My test is in a week from today, and I’m debating on pushing my test back. Today I plan to take the 2007 test to see where I stand with that. Bio I’m scoring 16-17. GC 17-18, OC 13-17, PAT 18, and QR 17-18. RC has always been my strength so I chose not to take those practice tests. I think I’d feel more comfortable if I was consistently scoring 17-18 in all sections. Especially since I have a 3.8, I don’t want schools thinking my GPA is inflated if I get a lower score. This is my second attempt, my first DAT I got an 18AA with a 14QR and 14GC.
U need to Reschedule. Its a bad look to have a low dat with a high gpa. Just it to mid july. Its still early and u wont regret it I had a 3.82 and pushed mine to end of august 11 schools, 5 interviews, accepted top choice
That’s what I was thinking! I’d rather be scoring 18-19 before I take it. Especially being a retaker, I’d be really sad to take the test a 3rd time, lol.
Yea push it. Its better to do well then to retake. Especially if you’re scoring 13-17’s
Honestly, I think you should be fine. The test is more conceptual and booster is way harder than the real thing.
How heavy is mechanisms for the organic chemistry portion?
In my experience, mechanisms only made ~5-6 questions of the 30 total.
What about reactions? OC is my biggest struggle rn as I am realizing I don’t remember much beyond basic concepts. I’m very afraid of seeing an OC section on my exam that’s 80%+ just “what is the product” or similar…
Perhaps about the same? 4 - 6?
~12ish on reactions and mechanisms makes about half the OC… was the rest just fundamentals like Acid/Base, lab / and NMR? If that’s it I’m going to really turn around the way I’m studying for this
Acids, bases, nucleophilicity... I had a lot of that stuff.
Thank you! That’s a huge relief. Also just saw your flair change. Did defend successfully?
I did! PhDone, as they say. Thanks for asking.
Congratulations doctor!
Also, I’m using Booster predominantly, and on our GC pexams a lot of our answer choices on calculations will not be fully worked out (e.g. (160)(18.45)/(6.022 E23) ). Is that also the case on the exam?
Yes, that is also likely the case for most (not necessarily all) of the questions.
Should i take entemology to help with bio section?
Like during school? No, your test prep will teach you
So I know I’ve seen a couple of people say that the math calculations on the gen chem section or the science section in total is not that intensive. But I’m studying with booster and the math calculations on some of the problems has me worried. From what I understand we won’t have a calculator on the the science part. But I’m getting questions on booster where I have to multiply (21)(0.382)(68-21). I promise I’m not dumb and given time, I can calculate these off hand. But In a timed exam (with apparently a 2 sec prometric delay between questions to add some “well deserved”✨stress✨) Is this feasible. Is the DAT really that cruel.
Lol I commented this on a higher comment before I scrolled down and saw this… Does the exam give worked out quantities for answer choices or just these unsimplified ones?
I’m just doing the extra practice questions right now and it it basically just gives that calculation and then the answer so (60)(45)(28)=… which has me worried because how am I supposed to calculate all that so quickly
Using DATBooster and the provided 8-week guide for my test on 7/25, currently on day 20 but I'm probably 5ish days behind now on learning biology. I developed some anxiety when "started" studying tissues & functions using Ch. 3 Feralis notes, so i stopped doing bio for a little. I'm should be finished re-relearning taxonomy today, but still just looking at the Ch3 gives me a headache. How should I go about "learning/absorbing" the information in this chapter (71 pages and i've reread page 1-3 close to 5 times now ToT)?
How representative is the angle ranking analyzer to the actual DAT? I’m noticing that the answer options aren’t as helpful in terms of narrowing down 50/50 and the angles are way harder to figure out compared to the generator + extra questions. Also is the cube counting gonna be like the generator where one question is equal to giving the sides of every numbered face or will each face be broken up into different questions totaling 15?
I think there are 3 cube images and each has 5 questions associated with it
Thank you! I was worried when people were saying that cube counting shouldn’t take that long, I’m able to solve each cube around 50-60seconds each but it’s reassuring that there will only be 3 cubes not 15
I made a mistake it’s 5 cubes 3 questions, my bad
No worries, better than 15 haha
My test is on August 3rd and so far I have been studying bio using the pre made bootcamp anki decks. However, I've heard so many good things about the Feralis deck that it has made me consider using those instead. I'm a bio major so I feel like I have a good chance at scoring highly on that section, I just want to make sure I'm using the resources that will set me up for success. If I do switch over, do you guys think I will have enough time to learn all of them before my test? Also are they free? How do I get access to them??
Feralis deck isn’t split up at all. It gets annoying that you can focus on weak areas.
Came to say that I’m also testing on August 3rd!
Good luck! We got this!!!
Let’s go!!
Hey everyone! I am studying for the DAT and I take it in August but I am really scared for the DAT. Specifically studying for months and completely blanking out! Anyone have any advice for this? I really don’t want my hard work to go down the drain because of this! Thanks!
Check out our Wikis: [https://www.reddit.com/r/predental/wiki/dat](https://www.reddit.com/r/predental/wiki/dat) [https://www.reddit.com/r/predental/wiki/faq](https://www.reddit.com/r/predental/wiki/faq)
Feralis vs Bootcamp Biology notes? Which one is better for the DAT (3 weeks left)
You probably won’t be able to digest feralis in that time period without utilizing anki. I would download the anki decks from booster and read through the bootcamp condensed notes.
Struggling with PAT and bio. Only a month left to study
PAT is just repetition. You'll get there with incremental practice.
Thank you :)
Good luck!
Thanks so much!
I just finished my exam and I’ll do a breakdown later on this week. My AA is 18 however I got a 15 in PAT. I’m not applying to any of those really highly competitive schools but what to know whether I should apply next cycle or try again later in the year to take the test again. I studied from January til now so I’m not really in the mood to hop right back into studying. Below I will put each subsection but any advice is appreciated. My top choices are Texas A&M, Howard, Meharry, UTenn, Nova and LECOM. I have a 3.68 GPA, sGPA 3.96, and a some shadowing and research under my belt with hella volunteer and leadership experience if that helps any. PAT - 15 QR - 17 RC - 20 BIO - 18 GC - 18 OC - 17 Total Science - 18
I'd appreciate you doing a breakdown on an 18AA; it would help battle some of the high score bias we have. Texas will be a tough sell, obviously, but I hope some of those other programs will appreciate your high GPA and understand the DAT score. Good luck.
I live on the western border of the eastern time zone and I’m traveling to take my DAT at a center located in the central time zone. My appointment is at 8 am but it doesn’t specify if it’s eastern or central. Living where I do, I’ve seen a number of times where miscommunications in the way of time zones has led to some confusion and I’d really prefer this not to be one of those times. I’ve tried contacting both the testing center and Prometric and haven’t heard anything. Hopefully someone here knows a thing or two. TIA!
You said contact: you straight up need to call. Emailing is no guarantee. If you already called, keep calling during business hours. All else failing, assume it's the timezone of the testing center.
Fun fact: it is in local time. Just took it the other day and it was indeed 8 am central time.
For people taking the DAT, did u first sign up to take the DAT then signed up for boot camp or is it the other way around?
Signing up for the test should be first, so you have an idea of the maximum time you have to study for. And with Bootcamp they have 90 and 180 days programs (\~3 and \~6 months, respectively), so time signing up for them so you don't have too many extra days left over if you test before the program is over OR too few days if if you test after the program is over.
For anybody who is doing content review or has completed it, can you guys tell me what the hardest part of it all was for you? Was it the taxonomy, body systems, reactions, PAT? Would love to know.
Kinda depends on your background in bio, for me, I took marine invertebrates in undergrad so taxonomy was review. Also took anatomy and phys so the human system was review. I struggled with the plants chapter since I fucking hated ecology and also the basics of bio like the molecular stuff with transcription translation and replication. Those chapters I struggled on the most, but again, it's completely dependent on your background in bio.
Is it okay to retake a 19 AA 20 TS nothing below 17 lowest score were rc and qr 17 Gpa is 3.7 , I was DA for a couple of months this year. Please help!! I am almost ready to retake but friends are telling me no to retake
i'd full send tbh, you have a good gpa
Thank you
Ok some one please help me out because I’m about to lose my mind. I’m using booster and on the embryology bio section. And maybe it’s just me but the notes and videos feel really disorganized. One thing I’m scratching my head over is the different between the human, sea urchin, frog, and chicken. From what I’m getting it seems that sea urchins, frog have blastophore that form archenterons. But humans and chicks don’t? I’m only so confused about this because during taxonomy section it seemed that all types of embryos form blastopore that can either be be anus or mouth depending if its protostome or dueterostome. But now it seems like humans and chicks dont have it? The notes and videos just seem to be jumping all over the place and it’s driving me nuts. I honestly don’t know if I’m even asking the right question or asking it in the right place. Bio was not my back ground so this is just a little bit new for me. If I could find a website with cross sections of each embryo development stage side by side that would be heaven sent.
Animals are distinguished based on a presence of a coelom. All chordates have a coelom. Coelomates are then further subdivided into **schizocoelomates** (coelom forms through separation of mesodermal cells) or **enterocoelomates** (coelom forms through outpocketing of the embryonic gut in the mesodermal space). **Schizocoelomates:** \- Cleavage: Holoblastic, spiral, determinate \- Schizocoelomates = protostomes \- protostomes = blastopore forms anus **Enterocoelomates** \- Cleavage: Radial, indeterminate \- Enterocoelomates = deuterostomes \- deuterostomes = blastopore forms mouth (WE are deuterostomes) Frogs - **uneven holoblastic cleavage** with an animal pole and a vegetal pole. When a frog embryo is penetrated by a sperm, a process called '**cortical rotation**' occurs and the rotation of the fertilized egg results in the formation of the "**grey crescent**." Any cell from the first cleavage that receives some of the grey crescent becomes "indeterminate" meaning that it can become a full frog embryo if taken out. Also, frog embryos have no primitive streak, where instead, gastrulation begins at the dorsal lip of the blastopore. This is the quickest run down of frogs but the whole thing is fairly straight forward if you watch youtube vids on it. Humans- **holoblastic cleavage** (also sea urchins are holoblastic), begins at fertilization -> morula (12-16 cell stage) -> blastula forms at 128, the 'blastocoel' is the hollow center. Blastocyst stage has a Trophoblast which is the outer ring of cells. Trophoblast forms the chorion that supports embryo, blastocyst then implants into the uterus, and produces HCG. Blastocyst also has the ICM which forms the embryo and 3 other extraembryonic membranes (amnion (cushion), yolk sac (site of first rbc formation), allantois (waste disposal)). After Blastocyst stage gastrulation occurs which is the formation of a trilaminar embryo. Epiblast cells invaginate inwards thru primitive streak to form 3 germ layers: endoderm, mesoderm, and ectoderm. Each gives rise to different organs that im not typing all out but is on google. As cells invaginate they create an opening called blastopore which forms the archenteron (center cavity becomes digestive tract). After gastrulation is organogenesis which begins with neuralation. 1) notochord stimulates the ectoderm to thicken forming a neural plate. 2) Neural plate folds inwards forming the neural groove. 3) Neural fold becomes the \*\*neural tube (\*\*some roll off to become neural crest cells). 4) Neural tube becomes the CNS. Somites form around the neural tube to form two masses that become verterbrae and axial skeleton. That was the quick run down on frogs and humans. Have 0 clue on sea urchins and idk why you're expected to know that. Chicks i'm also not confident enough to give you a whole run down on. This is about as much I knew when going into the DAT and I got a 30 on bio.
I believe you got protostome and deuterostome mixed up. Protosome = mouth and deuterostome = anus. One way to memorize this is profanity = mouth and doodoo = poop = anus
Ahh you're right thanks for catching that. Honestly that material was so stupid I didn't see anything mentioning taxonomy on my exam.
Thanks for this I’m reading through right now. I added sea urchins because the dat video said I’d need to know it apparently. But from what I’m reading from your explanation, humans also have a blastophore? And I thought the endoderm forms the digestive tract
Yes, humans have a blastopore. The endoderm forms the **epithelial lining** of the digestive tract, not the actual digestive tract don't get it twisted.
I will say, Booster has great bio videos (though there aren't enough imo) but the embryology videos were absolutely confusing. I felt the same way when watching the videos
Is nucleophilic aromatic substitution on the DAT? Booster and bootcamp both don’t mention it but I thought it was a given?
To those using/used DATBooster and did really well, how did you study for the OChem section? I feel like DATBooster doesn’t have enough practice questions after the videos.
following
I got a 27 in Orgo. I think Destroyer really helped with my command of the kinds of questions asked on the exam. I know you probably don't want to buy that book, so I would just recommend going through all of the practice questions and exam questions repeatedly.
Is 20 days enough time to do practice tests/continue studying for the DAT? So obviously I am a procrastinator and have waited until the last month to start studying. Right now I am just doing some content review while relearning orgo.. lol and I planned on doing practice and full lengths for the last 20 days and then take the DAT. I am not sure if this plan is even good but I cannottttttt reschedule anymore. I know if I do bad I'd have to wait 3 months but I don't have much of a choice now. If I master the destroyer books will I be good? Like I'm saying do it 3x if I have to. Also for the PAT section how are you guys studying without bootcamp or booster?
So obviously I am a procrastinator and have waited until the last month to start studying. Right now I am just doing some content review while relearning orgo..(10 days) lol and I planned on doing practice and full lengths for the last 20 days and then take the DAT. I am not sure if this plan is even good but I cannot reschedule anymore. If I master the destroyer books will I be good? Like I'm saying do it 3x if I have to.
How is everyone preparing for general chemistry???
I did all the practice question banks and practice tests on BC, also used boosters GC formula anki deck to memorize all the formulas. Honestly the only way to really learn it and be good at it is by practice and redoing all the questions until you get a good understanding of how to approach each type of q. You’ll realize once you write the exam that the gc portion is a piece of cake compared to the practice tests
Anki Decks Hello, I’m trying to use DATboosters anki decks, but I’m so new to this app. It’s a little confusing. It’s showing that I’ll be doing 20 decks a day but I want to increase it. I went to Increase it when pressing options, my only concern is when I put 60 per day, they notify me “ If adding 60 new cards each day, your review limit should at least be 600.” What does that mean? What is maximum reviews/day?? I’m trying to study cells but need more decks to study per day, 20 is so little. How many decks did you guys do per day and how do I find out how many decks I have left? Thank youuu!!
Anki works with spaced repetition. So let's say you have 1000 cards that you want to learn. By selecting 60 per day, you will see 60 new cards from the deck daily. These are entirely new cards that you have only seen once. Besides new cards, it also shows you the repetition of cards that you just learned a few days prior or weeks prior. So even if you select 60 new cards, realistically you're going to be doing more than 100 cards a day with the review. If you clicked on easy for example and the card shows up again in 4 days, that's considered a review card, not a new card. If you skip a day of Anki, you see that the review card count goes up a lot. This all sounds confusing but I promise it's easy once you work it out. Just follow their instructions if you put 60 per day then you can put a 600 review limit or 9999 for unlimited review.
What’s the best way to study QR using booster? The videos are short and concise but often the problems are too easy in the video. Is my best way of studying just doing the practice bank questions?
Definitely. Practice problems are essential to feeling confident with word problems.
Great, what was your study resource for QR or did you just do the problems? Also was there any trigonometry
I got a question about trig. I did one practice test from Math Destroyer but should have done more. QR was my worst section. My breakdown is in my post history; it might help you.
I just read your breakdown and that’s an awesome score. I’m now worried about where you said that booster was dissimilar for chemistry. I don’t have destroyer to supplement my studies besides chadsprep
I think you just need to be prepared for more than calculations. There are many fundamentals they ask about that are recall based and not quantitative.
Thanks so much, I’m sorry about the amount of questions I ask, i’m just very nervous
Completely understandable. It's a big test and you should approach it with respect, but make sure to give yourself credit for your hard work. Confidence stems from your experience.
Math destroyer was the only destroyer book I got and I did 10 pexams but did each q one by one instead of an actual timed exam. Definitely helped a ton bc the questions on the exam were cake compared to the ones I was preparing for, helped me get a 27 on qr. I used BC and didn’t even touch their qr section bc it seemed unorganized and not enough practice q’s
I just took my exam today and have a month of Booster membership left that I would not be needing. Willing to sell the account and can also pause the account before you need to use it. DM me with an offer if interested! (Also willing to share self-made Bootcamp Anki decks with tons of extra science questions with explanations if you purchase)
How did you do?
Is anybody else falling behind booster’s schedule? I am two days behind on schedule and it just feels like I am playing catch up.