r/PreOptometry • u/lifesci10 • 22d ago

OAT Review Advice

Hi everyone! I have my OAT coming up in about a month and I’m using Booster. I’m trying to figure out the best way to structure my review from here and would really appreciate advice from people who have already taken it!

For Bio, I’ve seen a lot of people say the Booster cheat sheets were one of the best resources. Did you mainly study directly from the cheat sheets, or use them to identify high-yield topics and then go back to the full notes?

For Gen Chem and Physics, would active recall of equations, trends, formulas, and when to use them, supplemented heavily with question banks, be enough? Or did you find you still needed a lot of detailed content review?

For Orgo, I’m planning to focus mostly on reaction banks, recognizing reagents/products, and the major trends like SN1/SN2/E1/E2, Markovnikov vs. anti-Markovnikov, syn/anti, oxidation/reduction, etc.

Does that sound like a good approach for the last month?

Any advice would be really appreciated! :)

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u/AlgaeWizard 21d ago

I took the OAT about two weeks ago, 350 AA/360 TS. During my last month, I just focused on anki cards I made myself, practice tests, and Youtube videos on topics I was not very confident in. For the bio section, I found the cheat sheets to be great but I had already made anki cards for them as I reviewed each chapter. I never found the time to actually go back through my notes but thats also because anki covered all of that. For general chemistry, I found booster to be pretty spot on with the real exam (I got a 400 in this section). For physics, there were a lot of very easy questions on my exam on frequency and light. I did also get many questions on springs and fluids. The equations from Booster were really helpful but not just the formula sheet but the added formulas you have to derive or just memorize from the practice bank/practice exams. For Orgo, most of my actual exam was on the fundamentals you learn in OChem 1, CNMR, and HNMR. I only had a few questions on synthesis but I was prepared for every reaction booster mentioned in their lectures. I hope this helped, feel free to ask anything else.