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

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

The biggest piece of advice I can give anyone is to have confidence in yourself! On test day, look yourself in the mirror, strike some power poses, and give yourself a motivational pep talk. You might feel silly doing this but it really helps! At this point you’ve studied so hard and as long as you do your best that’s all you can ask for. This helped me relax on test day because I knew I studied as hard as I possibly could so if I didn’t do well I couldn’t have been mad at myself.

Get into a regular exercise routine. Go for a run or hit the gym. It could be something as simple as doing yoga before bed or taking walking breaks during studying. I found exercise to be a great way to clear my head and help deal with stress.

There’s no short-cut or easy way to do this. If you want to do well on the DAT you’re going to have to work hard and make sacrifices. Before you start studying make a plan and find out what works best for you. Go ahead and sign for the DAT. I knew that once I paid and registered I would be much more motivated to study. When preparing for the DAT I would always try to simulate testing conditions as much as possible. Each week chose a different thing to focus on while you’re studying!

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

DAT Bootcamp became an invaluable resource in my study plan. I followed a modified version of Ari’s 10 week study guide and would spend 2 days on topics that I felt less comfortable with. DAT Bootcamp’s practice tests were very helpful, especially with timing and helping deal with stress. The explanations for the answers were even more helpful. Even if I got a question correct I would still go through all of the explanation to make sure I truly understood why I got the question correct. Any topics or questions that I was not 100% confident in I would make a notecard for. For topics that I would continually confuse I would put on a sticky note to stick on my wall so I would see it every single day!

The PAT generators were very helpful and I would do those when I didn’t feel like studying and needed a break. My roommate and I would go through PAT generators while we would watch the Bachelor on Monday nights. It was a great way to take a break from studying while still being productive at the same time.

If you want to do well on the DAT I highly recommend taking all of the full length DAT Bootcamp tests. The questions on these tests were comparable to questions on the actual DAT and was a great way to practice your test taking skills! Taking these full length tests was the most beneficial thing I did to prepare for the DAT. The weeks leading up to my exam I would take a full length test every other day, making sitting down for 5 hours on test day “easy”.

What would you do differently to prepare for the DAT?

Going back, I would have spent less time trying to learn chemistry formulas. It’s much more important to understand the concepts behind the problems instead of simply memorizing the formulas. Generally speaking, if you truly understand a concept memorization isn’t necessary.

One of the most important things you can do when studying for a big test like the DAT is to take breaks every once in a while. I do believe there’s a thing as studying too much and I feel like a lot of people (including myself) stress out and don’t know how to take a break. That’s probably the most important thing when studying for a big test like the DAT! I could have studied another month and don’t think I would have been able to do any better on test day. With this being said, I definitely should have taken more breaks and had more fun my last semester of college.

If anyone has any additional questions feel free to email me at bgg3mq@virginia.edu!

• Biology20
• General Chemistry21
• Organic Chemistry26
• Reading Comprehension23
• Perceptual Ability23
• Quantitative Reasoning23
• Academic Average23

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