Jadon's Path to a 530 AA in Just 72 Days

Hello everyone!

My name is Jadon da Costa, and I studied for the DAT for exactly 72 days. I made sure to take the exam during the summer, so I would not have any classes or other responsibilities competing for my time. I studied around 4-5 hours per day, with some days being as low as 2 hours. Additionally, I did not plan any rest days into my schedule because I felt that scheduling days off would only make it easier to take more, and I wanted to take the exam as soon as possible. You don't need every day to be a perfect eight-hour study day. Even on days when I only studied for a couple of hours, I was still moving forward.

I was slightly nervous going into the exam, but more than anything, I was just happy to finally get it over with. By the last couple days, I felt like I had studied as much as I could and was ready to take it.

Biology: 580

The Bootcamp High-Yield Biology Notes were probably my most valuable resource, along with using AI to generate additional practice questions once I had worked through all of Bootcamp’s Question Banks. I also really liked the biology videos because they gave me a good understanding of the information before I went deeper into reviewing it. I studied biology extensively and probably learned some topics in more detail than I needed to. My biggest advice for this section would be to know the general concepts extremely well before worrying about every tiny detail.

General Chemistry: 490

General Chemistry ended up being the section I was somewhat disappointed with because it had been one of my most reliable strengths throughout my preparation. Since I was a TA for Introduction to Chemistry and had done well on every practice exam, I went into the exam feeling confident in the material. I am not entirely sure what happened on test day, but I assume a few random errors and more than expected conceptual questions brought my score down. One thing that stood out on my actual DAT was how heavily it emphasized conceptual understanding rather than calculations, so I would recommend having a strong grasp of the fundamentals instead of relying mainly on equations and problem-solving.

Organic Chemistry: 540

For Organic Chemistry, I mainly relied onBootcamp's videos and the Organic Chemistry Cheat Sheet. There are a lot of reactions and reagents to recognize, so having everything condensed into one cheat sheet made reviewing much easier. I started reviewing the reactions very early in the summer, even before I had watched all of Dr. Mike's videos. Dr. Mike's videos were explained so well that I honestly felt like I could have learned the material without ever taking an organic chemistry course beforehand. I'll be sure to pass that compliment along to my first organic chemistry professor!

PAT: 500

During the first couple weeks, I did around 10 questions from each PAT section every day and moved the PAT videos earlier into my study schedule. I stopped practicing PAT consistently in the middle of my studying and then picked it back up during the final week. My hardest sections were Angle Ranking and Pattern Folding. I loved Cube Counting, liked TFE, and Keyholes were usually okay for me. PAT was one of my biggest surprises on test day. I genuinely felt like I was guessing on around half of the questions, so seeing a 500 PAT afterward was a very pleasant surprise!

Reading Comprehension: 500

Reading has always come naturally to me, but the first few Bootcamp passages caught me off guard. That was until I developed a strategy that worked for me. I would split the passage up into 3-4 sections, and read only one section at a time. I would then go through all the questions and answer everything I could based on what I had just read. I would continue through the passage this way and then use search and destroy for any remaining questions. Overall, I thought Bootcamp Reading was harder than the real DAT. One of my actual passages felt similar to Bootcamp's difficulty, but the other two felt noticeably easier and the questions were somewhat in chronological order, which worked well for my strategy.  

Quantitative Reasoning: 520

For QR, I mainly used Bootcamp's Question Banks and focused on my weakest areas rather than repeatedly practicing problems I was already comfortable with. One thing that surprised me was the amount of probability questions on my exam. There were significantly more than expected, but it was a welcome surprise. Every DAT is different, so I wouldn't focus only on probability, but I would definitely make sure you're comfortable with it.