Meet Will Gudenrath, a happy DAT Bootcamp customer who recently conquered the DAT. I’ve asked Will 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?

I would advise you give yourself ample time to prepare for the exam. I took the exam towards the end of the my spring semester of Junior year in April. I knew that I would have to balance a full schedule of classes with my DAT studying. For this reason, I started studying right at the beginning of Winter break. By the time classes started, I had a good understanding of all the material that would be on the actual exam. This allowed me to focus on practice exams and review for the 3 months leading up to the test in April. Balancing my time was key. Know your own study habits, and plan accordingly. My routine would be about 3-4 hours every day in the library working on Destroyer problems and Bootcamp practice exams. Lastly, try to be as confident as you can be. It’s almost impossible to calm your nerves walking into the testing center, but be confident that you did all that you could to prepare.

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

I used DAT Bootcamp extensively to determine where I was at and what I needed to work on throughout my time preparing. After reviewing all the Biology, Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry material such as Chad’s Videos and Cliff’s AP Bio, I took my first Bootcamp exams. I remember scoring under 20 in each of these first attempts. I tried not to let myself get discouraged, and instead reviewed the solutions carefully because DAT Bootcamp practice exams are extremely representative of the actual DAT. Every week or so, I would take another practice exam, and my scores would gradually increase. The week before test day, I went through every practice exam for the sciences again. For the reading comprehension, DAT Bootcamp was the only resource I used, and the wording of the questions is very similar to the real exam.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

If I could do it again, I would have done more of the Bootcamp PAT exams instead of Crack DAT PAT. I almost always got all of the keyhole CDP questions 100% correct, but struggled on the Bootcamp PAT. I figured that Bootcamp keyholes were significantly harder than what would be on real test, so I didn’t use the PAT practice much. On the real test, the keyholes were significantly harder than CDP keyholes, and much more similar to Bootcamp questions. In addition to PAT, I probably would have spent more time on QR problems. Ari makes the QR on Bootcamp extremely difficult, but this is for your own benefit. It prepares you for the harder questions on the actual exam, and he has great advice on time management for the test by marking the more difficult questions and completing all the easier ones.

My score breakdown: 26 AA, 26 TS, 26 BIO, 24 GC, 29 OC, 28 RC, 22 QR, 22 PAT.

Feel free to PM me on SDN if you have any questions!
SDN username: tcufrof824

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