Meet Demitria Estrada, a happy DAT Bootcamp customer who recently conquered the DAT. I’ve asked Demitria to share her DAT experience with us as the featured student of November.

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

One piece of advice I would give someone who is preparing to take the DAT is to make sure that at the beginning of your preparation you have a general idea of how much time you will need to study. I saw so many questions on SDN asking how much time is needed to study for the DAT. Although I had the same question at the beginning of my DAT preparation, no one can really answer this question for you. It’s imperative that you take time to reflect on your own abilities and make a decision about how long to prepare based on what you know about yourself. Although others may be able to provide you examples of their own preparation experiences, at the end of the day, you know yourself the best.

Up until this point in your education you have most likely taken dozens of exams, and in this time you have probably realized a lot about the way you learn best. Some of you may be crammers who perform best under pressure and may elect to do a shorter preparation time, with longer and denser days of studying. Some of you may be like me and like absorbing information a little at a time and not feeling rushed, and therefore want to spread your studying out a little bit more. You may also fit somewhere in the middle of these categories – that’s fine. Whatever you decide to do should be largely your decision and based on what you already know about yourself.

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

DAT Bootcamp helped me tremendously in the second half of my studying as I started to apply everything I reviewed to real questions. Every practice exam was similar if not more difficult than the actual exam and it provided a fantastic model for the format of the real DAT. In order to get the most out of Bootcamp, it’s important that after every practice exam you take you go over every question you either guessed on and got right, or got wrong. It is not enough to just read the solution description for each question and not write it down. You may think you’ll intuitively remember it for next time, but chances are with all the other information in your head you probably will not. Instead, write down the question and the solution, and go back into your notes to read over the section the question comes from to reinforce not only why the correct answer is correct, but why the incorrect answers are incorrect.

The best part of DAT Bootcamp was the 10 PAT exams and the random question generators for each of the six sections. It was extremely beneficial to do the PAT full-length exams when I wanted to practice timing and get a general idea of what sections I needed to spend more time on, and then practice these specific sections using the question generators. It is imperative, however, that during your practice with all full-length exam that you really try you hardest to not get caught up in the score, but instead, focus on areas of weakness and try to improve. Towards the end of my study schedule, I set up each practice test in a different tab and took the practice exams like a real DAT, with the same scheduled breaks, and did not look at any score until the end. Not only was this an effective way to see where I was in my preparation, it was also helpful in building the mental stamina that you will need exam day.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

If I were able to go back and do something differently I would probably try to focus more on my weaknesses than my strengths. It’s very common to start focusing more on things you’re good at, rather than things you aren’t. It’s dangerous. I wish I focused more on math, a subject I know is not my strongest rather than some of the sciences. It’s important to recognize your weakness and really hone in on improving on those without completely ignoring your strengths.

If you have any questions or would like to get in touch with me, please do not hesitate to email me at demitria.estrada@uconn.edu

My score breakdown: 23 AA, 23 TS, 22 BIO, 26 GC, 24 OC, 20 QR, 24 RC, 24 PAT

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