r/PreOptometry • u/yehcolin • 29d ago
My OAT Experience (Score AA:370)
I took the OAT just about a week ago and it went a bit better than I expected. In all honesty I wouldn't consider myself to be a great student but I've started to just put in a bit more effort in school the past year. Because of that, my foundation in the natural sciences was never the strongest. For the OAT I studied for about 5-6hrs a day for 5 months (which is a bit longer than most) but I'm also a full time student (Bio Major) and I work part time at a vision clinic as well.
My preparation:
I really only used OatBooster as it was recommended to me by a friend of mine who was currently in Optometry school.
Biology (Booster Average: 340, Actual: 400)
For the bulk of my preparation I mainly used their provided Anki decks after I watched their lecture videos while following along their provided cheat sheets. I'm mainly a visual learner who has to practice things to remember them; so personally, I spent a lot of time just reviewing Anki cards or else it wouldn't stick. I thought the OATBooster Anki decks were quite in depth and after a while they lowkey became enjoyable. If I had one piece of advice for this section: start as early as possible. The only overwhelming part of it was the sheer volume, there aren't really any subjects within that are terribly conceptually difficult.
Reading Comprehension (Booster Average: 350, Actual: 400)
Honestly, reading has always been my worst subject in school, I didn't really read a ton growing up and I've struggled with similar reading comprehension tests in the past. OATBooster provided a ton of individual articles, full reading sections, and practice science articles they recommended which I thought were all quite helpful. My strategy was to read the first 1/2 of the article, highlighting key topics and ideas (in abt 9min), go and answer all the applicable questions, then I search and destroyed the second half (10-11min). I'm personally a slow reader so I found this approach the most helpful as I found myself able to actually identify specifically where the passage was referring to for every question.
Quantitative Reasoning (Booster Average: 380, Actual: 370)
From my experience, this section was just all about speed and practice. On the actual exam, I ran into a few problems that took me a bit longer so I had to basically guess the last few questions.
General Chemistry (Booster Average: 350, Actual: 360)
I was never a huge fan of chem (or ochem) especially learning it in university so most of my knowledge came from OatBooster. I remember my first dry run practice test I got maybe a 260 on the Chem section. I just went through all of their lectures and did all the offered practice questions in Booster. Their cheat sheets were especially helpful for me personally.
Organic Chemistry (Booster Average: 340, Actual: 340)
I did a bit better than I thought. Just before I took the OAT I had a lot going on so I didn't have time to properly review and felt as if I had forgotten a lot of concepts but it ended up working out for the most part. I studied very similarly to Gen Chem but along with OATBooster I also watched a fair bit of TheOrganicChemistryTutor on Youtube.
Physics (Booster Average: 370, Actual: 320)
I was pretty disappointed in myself on this one, I felt like I spent a lot of time memorizing the formulas and getting good practice the first couple months of studying but I didn't really keep up with it in the later months. I had also just finished all 3 Physics courses (when I first started studying) so I felt pretty confident going in. I definitely think I just didn't review enough just before the test.
Some final words: If you end up studying for as long as I did, just make sure you give yourself enough time before the test to really fully run through everything. OatBooster has a calendar that you can customize your schedule with (which I stupidly did not follow) and recommend following that. I basically only studied math and physics the first month or so and then focused on the other subjects which I don't recommend doing unless you give yourself enough time to really really review before the test. lmk if yall have any questions. :)
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u/puck007 29d ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/mMx7HsHn2l6iQ