Condensing a 10 Week Schedule into 6 Weeks by Keyan

Meet Keyan, a happy DAT Bootcamp customer who recently conquered the DAT. I’ve asked Keyan to share his DAT experience with us as the featured student of May.

What is one piece of advice you would give to another student preparing to take the DAT?

My biggest advice for studying for the DAT is to stay consistent. The moment that you make an exception to your schedule, it becomes harder to stick with it. I almost gave in and convinced myself that “I did enough yesterday, it’s fine if I stop a few hours early today.” However, I caught myself and continued to study that day. Having a strong mindset is crucial to succeeding, which is why staying consistent is important. It may help to ask someone else to hold you accountable. I asked my friend who lives across the country to call me every night and ask me how much work I did (although you may not need this). Another piece of advice that I have is to do 30 minutes of the PAT generator every night. I would do it before I would go to sleep, to the extent where I would see Keyholes in my nightmares.

How did you use DAT Bootcamp to prepare for the DAT?

I followed Ari’s study schedule by the book (I highly recommend DAT and Math Destroyer as well as the Cliff’s Black+Yellow AP Biology book). I wanted to take the DAT at the end of winter break, so I had to condense the 10 week plan into 6 weeks. I went about doing this by doing two days’ worth of the plan every day for 4 weeks. So I would do days 1 and 2, days 3 and 4, etc. This means sacrificing most of the rest days in the plan since you need to save time wherever you can. However, every two weeks I would give myself a rest day where I only did flashcards and took time to myself. After going through 8 weeks of the plan in 4 weeks, I then only did practice tests. The trick with the Bootcamp practice tests is to write down any problem you get wrong in a notebook. Afterwards, you should research the solutions and write those down as well. Then, for the last few days before the test, I would go through the notebook and look over all the missed problems. This allowed me to better understand my weak areas and work on them. Finally, try and take your practice tests in an isolated environment. I drove to my local community college and took the tests in empty classrooms.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

My one regret with the way I studied would be that I didn’t do enough probability problems. I recognized them as a weakness as I was studying, but felt as though they wouldn’t bother me on the actual test. I ended up seeing them on my DAT, which made it difficult to do well. I say this because I realize now how important it is to work on your weaknesses, no matter how frustrating it may be. If you recognize an Achilles heel, put in the extra effort to practice those sort of problems and improve your skills.