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

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

Come up with a study schedule that works for you. I only had four weeks to study for my DAT, so I was worried about having enough time to prepare for the exam. To start, I outlined what I wanted to accomplish each day, but realized that I was overly ambitious as I as fell more and more behind schedule. You know your own study habits best, so be realistic and true to yourself when deciding how much time you need to prepare.

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

I discovered DAT Bootcamp only a week before my exam, so I did my best to take full advantage of the program in the time I had. I was taking one full-length DAT Bootcamp practice test each day the week leading up to my DAT. After completing each test, I thoroughly reviewed the answers and explanations. Two days before my DAT, I took the free 2007 DAT exam provided by the ADA and used the DAT Bootcamp answer explanations to review my performance. I also completed subject-specific practice tests to brush up on areas where I needed reinforcement. DAT Bootcamp especially helped me to improve in Reading Comprehension and the Perceptual Ability section. The DAT Bootcamp Reading Comprehension tests were the only source of practice material that I had and they were critical in enabling me to practice different strategies until I found one that I felt comfortable with using on test day. The DAT Bootcamp Perceptual Ability tests were very didactic and I am so grateful for their detailed explanations that really taught you to visualize in three dimensions rather than using gimmicks to arrive at an answer.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

I would have spent more time reading scientific papers to improve my comprehension and reading speed for the reading comprehension section of the DAT. I didn’t end up completing all the DAT Bootcamp quantitiative reasoning practice tests either, so I definitely would have finished those. Lastly, I would have gone over more general chemistry and organic chemistry practice questions. I felt confident going into the exam that those two areas would be a strong point for me, but they ended up being some of my lowest scores. It is easy to become overconfident when you see high scores during practice tests, so don’t let them give you an excuse to be lazy.

My score breakdown: 24 AA, 24 TS, 25 BIO, 23 GC, 23 OC, 22 RC, 26 QR, 26 PAT.

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