How Benjamin Cracked the DAT and Scored in the High 500s

Hi! I’m Ben, a second-year Biological Sciences major. I began using DAT Bootcamp on May 12, 2025 and took my DAT on August 23, 2025, earning a 560 AA, 580 TS, and 590 PAT. Here’s the study approach that helped me get there!

Background & Study Schedule:

The only classes I took before studying for the DAT were General Biology and General Chemistry. I did not take Organic Chemistry prior to preparing for the DAT. I began DAT preparation a week after my finals ended. I studied around 5-9 hours per day, while taking Organic Chemistry 1 and 2 at a 4-year college over the summer after my first year of college. My days consisted of going to Organic Chemistry lecture, hanging out with friends, going to Organic Chemistry lab, then going home and studying for the rest of the day.

I had a 3-month window between starting Bootcamp and my DAT test date. I wanted the first month to purely learn content, so I set my Bootcamp schedule date to 6/17—about one month after starting—to force myself to finish all the material early. The remaining two months were dedicated to practice tests, weak-area review, and repetition.

I redid all the qbanks, Bio Bites, and Reaction Bites, and created a personalized study guide with every question I got wrong or felt shaky on. During the last two weeks, I studied almost exclusively from that guide. The day before my exam, I took the night off, hung out with friends, and went to sleep early.

QR: 530

Math has always been a strong area for me, so I didn’t spend too much time here beyond completing all qbanks and practice tests. The actual DAT’s QR felt harder than Bootcamp’s and I was a little caught off guard, so if QR isn’t your strength, I’d recommend dedicating more time to it.

RC: 540

Reading has always been harder for me, so I started RC practice early. I experimented with vanilla, search-and-destroy, and a hybrid strategy that ultimately worked for me. Once I found my method, my accuracy improved dramatically—from missing half the questions per passage to only missing 1–2.

Bootcamp RC passages are definitely harder than the real DAT, which felt more straightforward and had questions that followed the order of the passage.

Biology: 590

In the first month of studying, I didn’t really focus too much on memorizing concepts. Rather, I focused on understanding concepts, because I felt like if I could understand a concept well, it wouldn’t be hard memorizing it later. If I had to choose two features that I liked most about Bootcamp, it would be the Bio Bites and the High-Yield Notes. I really loved the Bio Bites because it helped me determine whether or not I really understood the concept, and I really loved the High-Yield Notes because honestly, all the information you will ever need on the biology section is on the High-Yield Notes, and I liked how accessible and organized all the content was. In this first month, I didn’t take any notes at all, because I wanted to focus on listening and learning the information, but this preference varies from person to person. I also tried Bootcamp’s Anki, but I felt like it was too time-consuming and didn’t add much extra benefit, so I quit after using it for around a week.

I would rearrange my schedule so I would schedule the videos and Bio Bites on the same day, and do the qbank the next day. This was so I could see if I understood the content right after learning about it, and to see if I could retain the information by the next day. In the second and third months of studying, I redid all of the Bio Bites and qbanks. If I got a question wrong, I would take note of it in my study guide. I would say that the qbanks are pretty representative of the questions on the actual DAT.

GC: 540

I studied for GC similar to how I studied for Biology. In my first month of studying, I would learn the content one day, and schedule the qbanks to be completed on the following day. I didn’t take any notes for GC as well. The GC section is very similar to General Chemistry in college. In the following months, I redid all of the qbanks and took notes on questions that I got wrong. GC on the actual DAT was a little harder than the practice questions on Bootcamp, but I would say that it isn’t far off.

OC: 600

Taking Organic Chemistry 1 & 2 while studying for the DAT was honestly one of the best moves I made. Any concepts that I didn’t understand while studying for the DAT would be covered by my Organic Chemistry lecture, and any concepts that I didn’t understand while studying for Organic Chemistry lecture would be covered by Bootcamp. If possible, I would recommend taking Organic Chemistry while studying for the DAT.

The OC section on the DAT is a lot easier than the OC classes I took, because you don’t have to be proficient in specific mechanisms. However, learning the mechanisms for all of the reactions in the reaction sheet was beneficial to me because it helped me memorize the reactions more easily. After learning all of the OC content, I wrote out the entire reaction sheet and each reaction’s mechanisms (or half-mechanisms) once, making sure that I understood each step and reaction. After doing that once, I wrote out the entire reaction sheet by memory (not including mechanisms). The reaction bites are very helpful when it comes to learning the reactions.

It is also important to learn about other content not including the reactions. I would say that my test was 50% reactions and 50% other conceptual content, such as carbocations, spectroscopy, electronegativity, and acidity. A lot of the tips and tricks outlined in the videos were extremely helpful, such as CARDIO for acidity. Again, I would take incorrect questions from the reaction bites and qbanks and put it into my study guide. The actual DAT’s OC questions were pretty representative of the OC questions on Bootcamp.

PAT: 590

I started early with PAT practice so I wouldn’t have to worry about it later. Every day (or every other day when I was feeling lazy), I would get net 5 correct questions per section. For example, if I got 3 correct and 2 wrong during my keyholes practice, I would get 2 more questions right to make up for the 2 I got wrong, and then get 2 more right to reach my quota of 5. If I got more questions wrong, I would have to make up those questions and get more questions right. Lowkey, this feels like doing too much, but I got so much practice that PAT became second nature to me.

The PAT videos were pretty helpful, as they went through several tips and tricks. Similar to RC, it is important that you find your strategy. One section that I couldn’t ever master was the angle ranking section. No matter what strategy I tried, I was doing poorly on them, so my strategy for this section was not wasting too much time on it and making my best guess so I could spend my time on other sections that I was better in. PAT on the actual DAT was a lot easier than on Bootcamp, especially for angle ranking, hole punching and TFE, so don’t worry if you aren’t performing well on Bootcamp practice exams.

My strategy for the PAT would be to skip to the first TFE question, because that was my best section, and then do keyholes last, as that was my worst section. After finishing all the sections, I would go back and check my answers for cube counting (because I didn’t want to miss any free points off miscounting cubes), and then check my answers for hole punching if I had time. One of my favorite features on Bootcamp are the PAT Generators. I liked being able to practice my PAT skills on the fly.

Final Comments:

My main pieces of advice are:

• Plan and start early. Don’t slack off and end up having to cram a lot of content nearing the test date.
• Give yourself some time to relax. Studying for hours at a time is tiring and can lead to burn out, so I would dedicate some time playing video games, working out with my friends, dedicating time to my cooking hobby, or taking naps.
• Study with other people. Studying alone is boring and can be lonely sometimes. I studied with two of my good friends, and we would be able to help each other out on content that we were shaky on. Teaching content to another person also helps boost your proficiency on that content.
• Don’t focus on content that you’re already good at. Focus on your weak points. In my opinion, the DAT’s topics aren’t difficult, but broad, so there’s no need to go in depth on topics that you are good at, but it would be beneficial if you focused on your weak points.
• Practice.