r/PreOptometry

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! :)

Btw I graduated on time with a health science degree 3.56 GPA.

However… let’s just say my ADHD was in full effect.

Fun fact: I have never studied for a class ever. Like ever. And I’m not being dramatic when I say that. So when I had to take harder difficulty courses… I backed out because I knew I couldn’t do it with my non existent studying and/or would flunk exam after exam.

How the heck do I explain this to admissions in an interview? 😳

If you’re wondering how I’d apply without taking Orgo… I’m taking it this fall despite graduating last year. And I WILL be studying every day. And maybe medicated. Lol.

I really enjoyed reading OAT breakdowns while preparing for the OAT, so here's what I did to score in the 99th percentile!

I studied ~20 hrs a week with OAT booster for 3 months (May - August) while working parting time. I also took at least 2 weeks off for vacation, which helped prevent burnout. Initially, I considered using Booster's ridiculous, neurotic "custom schedule", but quickly realized that was going to be a massive waste of time. Unless you've never taken a science course before in your life, I promise you don't need to watch every single video or do every single practice test. Be extremely honest with yourself about what your strengths and weaknesses are, and devote your time accordingly.

BioloIgy 400: EVERYTHING you need to know is on the cheat sheets!! I exclusively used those to learn content and reinforced it with bio bits/practice tests, but like everybody says, biology on the real OAT is so much more straightforward. They will never ask you the niche garbage you see in bio bits. I personally made Anki decks out of the cheat sheets and spammed those, but as long as you find a way to memorize the information they contain, you too will score a 400 in bio

Gen Chem 400: also much simpler than booster's question banks, with acids & bases, electrochemistry, periodic trends, kinetics, thermodynamics, and le chatelier's principle well represented. An interesting question format I didn't encounter on oatbooster was one that would seemingly require extensive calculations to solve... but when I looked at the answer choices, I realized they were all the same number written in different ways (ex. 0.394, 400*10^-3, etc) and all you had to do was identify the correct number of sig figs.

Orgo 400: I ended orgo with a C in undergrad, so if I scored a 400 on this section, so can you!! I watched every single orgo video and made flashcards for all the reactions. This turned out to be complete overkill, because, after all, they can't quiz you on every single rxn from orgo 1 & 2 in just 30 questions. As others have said, know SN1/SN2/E1/E2, carbocation stability, acidity/basicity rankings (I actually got more basicity questions on my version of the exam), as well as basic lab skills such as IR spectroscopy, C-NMR, H-NMR, and solvent rules. I saw people saying the real exam likes to give reactants and products in the form of IUPAC nomenclature, but I only saw one of those questions. The rest featured booster-style pictures of products and reactants. I also SUCK at identifying enantiomers/diastereomers, but I only had 2-3 questions on that and they were laughably easy.

Reading Comprehension 380: I honestly can't say if this section was similar to booster or not because I took exactly one practice test in May and never touched it again. I knew I had bigger fish to fry lol

Physics 370: Hands down my worst subject. I was scoring 290s (the lowest score oatbooster gives!) on the practice tests, so I sat down and watched Chad's free physics 1 & 2 video series and spammed the practice tests. DO NOT BOTHER WITH ALL THE NICHE BOOSTER EQUATIONS!!! The only ones I ended up using were the kinematic equations, forces, friction, pressure, and of course optics. Optics was by far the most heavily represented unit on my exam, both conceptually and calculations-wise.

Quantitative Reasoning 400: As long as you passed SAT math and understand how dice work (lol), you'll be fine. Do be prepared for lots of statement I/statement II questions, which are the hardest thing you'll encounter here. Please don't bother with the videos - completing the question banks will teach you how to solve the problems, and solve them QUICKLY.

In conclusion - the OAT feels like one hell of an undertaking, but if you focus on key concepts and are honest with yourself about what you do and don't know, you will be perfectly fine! I am no genius (like I said, I almost failed orgo I), and I still dropped some 400s! If I did it, so can you :))))

Just took my oat today and after lurking on these reddit, i can finally join! I remember I was scour reddit for advice before the OAT so i wanted to contribute my two cents.

I studied for about 4-5 months, but there were many days I would skip due to work. I studied maybe 3-4 hours a day, nothing super crazy. I followed the videos OAT booster gave me (using the old schedule) for the first phase. This phase took me the longest, probably about 3 months before I started reviewing. That's just how I operate and study: i like to get an understanding of everything before doing any practice test. I took my first full length practice test 1.5 weeks before the exam. I completed 8 full length tests total, maybe 2-3 every week for about 1.5-2 weeks before the exam.

BIO (OATBooster: 340-360, Actual: 400): ngl bio was super hard for me, i dont know how to got this score. Personally, I didn't find it to be general, as everyone says. I found it to be the exact same difficulty as the Booster, just a ton of random bio questions. There's no "list all the steps of photosynthesis, etc" so in that sense, it was more general and it requires you to have a bigger understanding of biology and the processes. I think what helped me the most was watching the videos. I didn't use any cheat sheets because as I was watching the videos, I would make up my own questions on a google doc side by side with the videos. So, by the end of alll the videos, I had a complete study guide of everything. Because of that, I didn't really use the cheat sheets. My google doc ended up being about 60 pages and I found it to be helpful. I also skipped allllll of diversity of life videos and just filled in that knowledge using the practice test and pieced it together. I'm glad I didn't memorize that crazy pdf that had linked with all the animals and stuff.

CHEM (OatBooster: 360-380, Actual: 400): I think what helped me the most for chem was just a ton of practice problems. I had a very strong background in chem before, so I didn't find it to be too stressful. The hardest part for me was acids and bases, but I didn't see much of that on the real OAT. In fact, the hardest part for me were questions about pressure on the OAT. Also, be strong in stoichometry because it's useful fr QR as well. I recommend using the cheat sheets and writing down all the equations. I made flashcards for the equations, but conceptually, I didn't study much for chem. Also i had no VSEPR theory questions at all.

RC: (OATBooster: 360-390, Acutal: 340) Honestly, i just got super unlucky haha. I did struggle quite a big with reading comp on oatbooster but I did 12 full length tests and by the end, I was consistently scoring 380, so I thought I was good. I noticed the more scientific articles made my score lower, but wasn't something I could control. Using OATBooster helped me to time manage and pace myself, but i honestly can just say I didn't do as well on this portion bc i was unlucky. Also, for anyone discouraged, I STRUGGLED so much with RC. Couldn't even finish in time when I first started, but my stamina grew after maybe 6-7 full length tests. I didn't do any of the example articles, just full length ones from the beginning. I would read half of the article in its entirety and then search and destroy for the second half.

by break, i was so discouraged i didn't wanna come back but then i realized it was $500 so i went back in for physics :(

PHYSICS(OATBooster:290-300, Actual: 320): Honestly, im super happy with my score. I could never get over a 300 so i was superrr worried. The questions i got were easier than OATBooster, but the booster was very representative of the test as well. Physics is hard bc it requires equations as well as concepts. For example, F=ma, right? But you have to realize that acceleration could be 0 based on the wording. I found the sound questions to be hard but the optics to be easy. Also, i felt like ray diagrams were wayyy to pushed by OATBooster and while they're important, i never used them ONCE to solve optics. I mainly used the thin lens equation and never really got optics wrong. I highly recommend this. But of course, you have to understand the equation, like what does a negative magnification do,etc? Also, i never learned buoyant force in physics but it was pretty high yield. High yield topics: springs, simple harmonic motion, force, and optics. Also, units were important. For example, "what can be a unit of impulse?" I would write down the equation for impulse: Fv. But it could also be change in momentum. Things like that.

QR (Booster: 370-390, Actual: 350): I was pretty bummed by this bc i consistently got pretty high scores on booster. idk what happened. I got way tewwww much probability so like...yeah. I feel like QR on booster was easier bc i got more graph problems. On the real oat, i got sooo many of those questions were it's like "statement 1 is sufficient, statement 2 is....". It was less straightforward. Not sure how i could have improved bc im so bad at math i still use my fingers to add 8+9 no joke. I felt confident bc oatbooster kinda inflated my scores but maybe i got unlucky with my set of questions. I got zero on interest questions and z scores and normal curve.

also just for context my ex and i broke up 7 hours before my exam so i was taking this test with swollen eyes and 4 hrs of sleep. PLEASE PLEASE get a good night's rest so you can feel motivated and rejuvenated for the exam. My biggest regret is not minicking test conditions. I would take the full length tests at 7pm, finish by like 1am so taking it at 8am was so tiring. A month before the exam, wake up everyday at 6-7 to prepare your body, esp if your sleep schedule is wack like mine. I highly recommend foam earplugs too bc the headphones will give u a headache. GOOOD LUCK EVERYONE! I will answer all questions, just leave them below!

ps dont procrastinate bc i paid for the 6 month booster, didn't study, and had to pay for another 3 months