How Krishna Got a 25 AA in 2 Months

Hello everyone! My name is Krishna. I took the DAT on December 2, 2023. I started studying October 1 2023. I had complete 2 months to study. I took fall term off to study. I worked 3 days a week and took 1 day off to relax.

I worked as an LA for the Department of Physics at my university. I mostly used Ari’s study schedule for the first couple weeks just to get a head start on how I should structure my studying. Past that, I mostly made my own schedule for the day and stuck to it. I feel like for me, the key was setting ‘realistic’ goals. The DAT is a beast and the only way to tackle it is focused studying, one day at a time. I found it easier to use the 45 min on and 15 min off technique initially. Over course I elongated my study time to 2 hours on 1/2 hour off because the longest you’ll be expected to focus in on go is the Natural sciences + PAT section which is 2 hours total.

I aimed to complete my content review in the first month and wanted to keep the last month for practice exams. But, my content review went on until the second week of November because it had been a while since I took O Chem and Gen Chem. I started taking practice exams second week of November and got 21 on my first one. I would take an exam one day and spend two days reviewing it. All in all I took 8 timed practice tests fully stimulating exam conditions.

I used Bootcamp and Bootcamp only to prep for my DATs. I loved the clear and concise structure of study materials and how we had video explanations for each question! The PAT section is so well explained and has a lot of practice questions. I feel like PATs are something no pre-dental student knows about until they actually start practicing it. DAT Bootcamp does an amazing job at going through this section from beginner to master level questions. Another thing I really enjoyed was the condensed notes for ochem and bio. Towards the end of my prep I would only use these and the review practice questions form the exams to guide my studying. I felt that 95% of the questions asked in the exam were answerable through these notes!