What Chris Wishes He Had Done Differently to Prepare for the DAT

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

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

Do not ignore any sections. I hear a lot about people ignore Quantitative Reasoning and Reading Comprehension. Sometimes people have success with this method; however, I believe that people drop easy points in these sections. I know I would have scored higher in Reading had I completed all of the passages on Bootcamp instead of just two of them.

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

Bootcamp really helped me with timing. Having timed practice problems on Bootcamp helped me to be able to solve all types of problems quickly, which resulted in me having a few minutes at the end of every section to go back and review marked questions. Having time to go back and review harder questions definitely benefited my score.

Bootcamp is the most representative source that I used. I did all of the subject tests for the sciences 3 – 4 times. I made sure that I was getting close to a perfect score on every test. The key to this is to know the concepts behind Ari’s answer choices and not just memorize the answers themselves. Moreover, Ari’s blog posts are extremely helpful.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

I wish that I gave myself another week or so to go through more of Bootcamp’s PAT and Reading subject tests. I know that I would have nailed these sections had I done this. Bootcamp’s PAT was the most representative PAT preparation that I saw. I would have studied more for biology as well. I potentially think making my own deck of Anki flashcards for this section would have brought my score up a couple of points.

Ari really provides all the resources and guides on how to succeed on this test. I only had 5 weeks to study, but I would highly recommend at least reading through his 10-week study guide and getting a general idea on how you should format your studying.

In the end, going into the test with confidence that you are prepared is key. Using Bootcamp will give you this confidence and allow you to score the best of your ability come test day.