How Steven Used this Piece of Advice to Ace the DAT

Meet Steven, a happy DAT Bootcamp customer who recently conquered the DAT. I’ve asked Steven to share his DAT experience with us to wrap up 2020 as the Featured Student of December.

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

The piece of advice that I would give is “Really Want It”. My belief is someone who really wants something will pursue it relentlessly. As soon as I started shadowing, working at an office, and seeing the effect a dentist could have on an entire person’s demeanor and attitude, I fell in love with Dentistry. I then knew I really wanted a high score on the DAT in order to pursue what I really wanted.

Also, know that sometimes you’re going to give up something that seems more enjoyable, so don’t settle for the instant gratification and discipline yourself to be in it for the long haul. Personally for me I had a bad habit of spending too much time on my phone during my study breaks, so in order to fix that bad habit I deleted all social media and any time wasters off my phone and I had my younger brother place restrictions on my phone so that I couldn’t access the internet from my phone either. In the moment I definitely wanted to not be studying and hang out with my friends and watch something, but I knew in order to achieve what I truly wanted I had to put that aside and hit the books! And remember consistency is key. Have a set time everyday to sit down and study and get your work done!

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

I used DAT Bootcamp constantly for test questions. I believe the practice questions/tests and explanations afterwards were the most important resources that helped me succeed. Once I got a question wrong I thoroughly watched the video explanations and read the written explanations on those in order to understand why I got something incorrect. Also for questions that I would get right but I would eliminate down to 2 answers I would watch the explanations to understand why the other answers weren’t correct. One of the best things that DAT Bootcamp offered was the option to mark questions as learning, reviewing, and mastered. For questions I marked as reviewing and learning, I would look over that concept again until I really understood how to do them later. I cannot reiterate enough how important watching all of Dr. Mike’s Videos are as they will help you understand all the concepts through and through if you take the time to watch them! Also ASK QUESTIONS!!!! Sometimes even after watching a video you won’t be able to immediately understand why a question is wrong, so don’t be afraid or shy to asking questions about stuff you don’t understand to the team members!

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

If I could do something differently it would be to focus my mentality on not just what I thought I wasn’t good at. I was really scared of the science sections so I went over them way more than QR and PAT. Also, I would mentally prepare myself for the PAT pace going into the test. I had a bad habit of getting tunnel vision, focusing on a question too long, and then sometimes not giving myself enough time to answer questions I could’ve gotten right. On the PAT section I ended up doing this and missing some really easy questions in the process. So take their advice! When watching Joel’s videos, I recommend to not spend too much time on any one question! Remember to focus on the test as a whole rather than focus on specific portions of it.