u/doot8771

so summer semester ended july 31st meaning in between leases i returned home knowing i had the OAT scheduled for today, August 19. My home is far from my college town, so I was not going to be working for these 3 weeks and could focus solely on the OAT. When i graduated high school 14 and a half months ago i didn’t think i’d be taking it on so fast, but here we are. I exclusively used booster as it is by far the best method to access all the practice material in such a short amount of time. i was also lucky to have taken every science class tested besides Orgo 2 since starting undergrad last fall.

QR:350. Definitely study probability and statement sufficiency for this section. I had quite a few questions that gave the 2 statements and then asked if 1, both, or none were sufficient. Those for the most part were the only ones that tripped me up. Apart from that, this was all math I’ve been familiar with since high school, and after seeing that I got 340 on this part during a booster practice exam I dedicated almost no study time to it. It is very doable though, know your algebra

RC: 400. I absolutely penetrated this section and knew while taking it that there’s no way i got less than 390. I didn’t do search and destroy and took about 5-7 mins reading each article. I may have just gotten lucky with them though, as on the booster practice test with completely different topics i got 340. Today though, one of my articles was on parts of the nervous system and I have taken 2 semesters of neuroscience, which definitely made it easier to almost fly through. Even with that, something about the other articles just clicked in my mind, they just made sense. I was done with about 12 mins left in the section but genuinely 90% of the answers to questions were blatantly stated in the text

BIOLOGY: 360. As most people here say, it definitely is more straightforward and surface-level than the booster practice tests. Booster practice tests i was getting anywhere from 290-330, which honestly had me worried. Even while taking the actual I felt kinda weird, but then I went back and reviewed my answers and realized i understood most of it and was just overthinking because it was fairly basic. my method was the CHEAT SHEETS i’ll swear by it to anyone i talk to about the bio section, i made my own notes from them and copy pasted one page of them at a time into AI asking to make interactive practice tests for active recall. Functions of systems are pretty high yield, but i took human physio this past summer so I caught a little break with more of that section.

GEN CHEM: 380. To be honest, this was just my clear strong point I didn’t study at all since there were much bigger fish to fry and i only had 2.5 weeks. I did really well in gen chem 1 and 2 in college, and haven’t lost much of a step since finishing those classes. Because of that, I unfortunately don’t have much advice for if you’re using booster for it. I did get a 340 in the booster practice, which was a little harder than this one. in the actual test though, didn’t see anything specific that was super high yield compared to others, as it covered about anything u can think of in gen chem.

ORGO: 350. This was definitely the bigger fish to fry when it came to my studying since i only took orgo 1 this past summer but had no orgo 2 knowledge. on booster, i would watch the videos for each section then absolutely spam the reaction question bank. almost my whole day yesterday was making sure i got enough reps in with those as i could. the more you do, the more it becomes simple pattern recognition for many of the questions you’ll see, but there will still absolutely be hard ones. Don’t slack on spectroscopy, i had probably more than 5 questions on that alone. BEFORE teaching myself orgo 2 material i got 280 on a practice, so im definitely happy with a 350 even if its a tad lower than most other subjects. can’t complain at all with how much i fried my brain trying to remember everything

PHYSICS: 330. You know with such a small amount of studying time my goal for my overall average was 330. I am again in the majority of people who finds physics the hardest, and was definitely expecting to score more towards the 300 range. even though it’s my lowest part, i can’t be mad. test was very conceptual and of the 40 questions only around 10 or so i had to plug numbers in and actually do a calculation. optics were VERY high yield for me but luckily that was the last thing i looked at during the 30 min break because i knew it would be tough. The rules for circuits are important as well, know the differences for when resistors are in series or parallel. Also make sure you know your units, i kinda slacked and took it for granted but i may have missed on a 340-350 bc of it. once again though, this subject and orgo were the 2 i dedicated the most time to, so im just glad it wasn’t worse because i admittedly was scared going in.

So overall, my score despite time constraints was a lucky combination of previous (and recent) knowledge and skills for gen chem, QR, RC, and some of bio. any holes in bio were filled by active recall from the cheat sheets. physics and orgo took the bulk of my effort, but the booster question banks and videos will help a lot. Now i can submit my completed application, and Hopefully i can get into NOVA for next fall, being from South FL. Booster is very worth it, and even though its easy to overthink, if you make it a point to practice your weak spots and go in with confidence from there, you will do great! :)