Your studies can take a lot of space in your schedule. When it comes to a test as hard and long as the Dental Admission Test, dedication and constancy can go a long way. This is the main reason why we’re bringing you a great proposal for a DAT study schedule. With it, you can rely on careful planning for your study and be completely prepared for the DAT.
Furthermore, we based this DAT study schedule on an 8-week plan that will be sufficient for you to ace the DAT with a mere two-month preparation. Our alternative offers the chance to study completely based on what resources you have plus a few great ones.
Forget about cramped schedules and this as bothered some as long sleepless night of hard study. You can get all the required knowledge to be fully prepared for the DAT following a simple, yet comprehensive, schedule.
Since everybody is different and our aim here is to offer a well-balanced plan to help every reader with their studies. The following DAT study schedule is made so that everybody can accommodate their needs and material into it. This planning also works regardless of your background formation, you can be great at chemistry and focus a little more on other subjects or vice versa. Let’s present a more formal introduction to our DAT study schedule.
8 weeks is enough time to sufficiently prepare for the Dental Admission Test. Within this time, you can cover the main and most relevant subjects that will determine whether you approve or fail. This DAT study schedule can be modified in order to cover your weak points or other issues you’re having problems with. In case you have a busy schedule; you can increase this schedule to cover more than 8 weeks by reducing the time you spend studying every day. However, you should keep the schedule shorter than 12 weeks.
Maxing out your time by trying to go by this schedule too fast isn’t recommended either. You should keep the overall planning longer than 4 weeks. Remember that resting and letting your system take in all the new information is also an important part of studying. The average pre-dental student spends about 10 weeks in preparation for the DAT, however, most people can cut down that time to 8 weeks with a good schedule.
The most common bachelor degree for pre-dental students is biology. Which is good since it gives a good foundation on biology and chemistry, to a point in any case. Regardless of how well you did on either biology or chemistry, the idea is to adapt the number of hours of this planning to cover your weak points. The actual schedule below is aimed at a person that needs to study chemistry a little bit more than other subjects. But before we get into that, there’s some useful information like tips, tricks and advice, that you can benefit from having.
Allow us to give you some insight on how to prepare for this DAT study schedule and overall the DAT itself. Remember that you can always set your schedule based on your personal needs. For most people, you can find real value in the following tips and advice to do before you begin your studies.
The recommended amount of study hours per week is of 40 hours, in any case, you can lower it if you feel like it’s too much. There can be days when you feel like you can put extra study hours and others when you feel like 8 is too much for one day. In any case, just make sure not to overdo it. A schedule can only help you if you follow it as closely as you can.
Don’t take multiple days off from studying too often, this can and likely will, be harmful for your preparation. The key is to stick closely to the schedule and make sure that you’re keeping a good and regular study habit. Emergencies and family time are of course exceptions to this. Regardless try to keep up with your studies as much as you can.
You can adjust your DAT study schedule only if you know at which areas you need to put some extra work. This is the same as saying that you need to know your strengths and weaknesses to optimize your planning. The key to any good schedule is to study smart, not simply hard.
If you have weaknesses in science or other subjects that will come up in the DAT then you need to be prepared for them. The best way to actually do this is to acknowledge that you need to work on this and plan to do so.
Many pre-dental students do this. People seem to think that between more study material you have the better you’ll do at the DAT. This is a big misconception. What you actually need is reliable material for study. Think less about the amount and more about quality.
Sure, you can have multiple sources of information, but the thing is that they need to complement each other, ideally. For instance, you can us here at DATprep for great Chemistry courses and a different source for the other parts of the DAT.
Again, you need to think about the quality of your study material. Get reviews on different sources of it and inform yourself as much as you can. There are a lot of opinions available on the internet, just make sure that you get your reviews from people that have actually tried those services. Otherwise, you’ll just be believing what someone else says for no good reason.
Ultimately the choice of study material is completely yours. A good idea to practice is to actually try these services yourself and see how good they are. Once you’ve got an idea of each you can go about choosing the best for you.
It’s not bad to want to focus on a single topic and put a lot of effort into it. The problem comes when that prevents you from studying different subjects. You have to remember that while you may have weaknesses the DAT consists on different parts. You must be prepared for all of those parts even if you can’t turn your weak subjects into your strong ones.
Keep your study schedule fresh and don’t get stuck on a single topic for too long. That can only hinder your progress.
Practicing for the actual test is just as important as the material you study. Otherwise, you won’t know if you’re ready to take the DAT. Every DAT study schedule should include a healthy amount of practice and prep quizzes. There are different services that can help you with this, some even offer detailed scores for your analysis.
Just studying for the test is one way to actually learn half of what you need. The other half comes from learning about the answers you got wrong in the mock tests you take. Often times these provide better lessons for our progress.
You must stay active in preparation for your DAT. Feel free to modify our DAT study schedule to include exercise and other activities. This also counts as preparation since it prevents you from overstudying and burning yourself out.
You don’t have to sacrifice your social life or even sleep hours if you plan accordingly to what your needs are. One of those needs is to stay healthy before, during and after your Dental Admission Test.
The actual outline of our DAT study schedule can be modified to serve your particular needs, as mentioned several times now. The main objective of this schedule plan is to provide a basic plan that can be adapted to every need you have for your DAT preparation. The subjects listed are based on the difficulty and length of the material.
You should be focusing on one section at a time per material and subject, only move on to a different point in the subject once you’ve finished one of its points. You should also go through the section one more time once you’ve finished a point.
Also, be sure to have an overview of the entire material before you reach week number six in our schedule. The last two weeks should be to spend focusing on practice tests and mock questions. These last weeks are also a great chance to review the material that you still feel as your weak point. We recommend taking at least three different DAT practice tests before finishing with the schedule. Ultimately the more practice tests you take, the better results you can expect from your study. You will find some practice test scheduled in our planning.
Though it is advisable to actually take mock tests and practice question during your whole period of preparation. You get the last work on this subject. We would recommend taking a few practice questions after finishing every two-hour block on the schedule. This is also a great time to find your deficiencies in any pertinent topic. Of course, this is during and after week number six in our planning. Do remember that the most important part of the practice questions is to learn why you got some answers wrong if any.
The parts of the DAT regarding the PAT, reading comprehension test and quantitative reasoning, are not as demanding of study hours as the rest. This is the main reason you’ll find these have a lower number of hours in our DAT study schedule.
When it comes to the Perceptual Ability Test or PAT, the main factor is practice and experience solving these problems. We can recommend a great service that can help you out with that, PATCrusher. This service guarantees a higher score for all its users and with a long list of students helped, this is one service that we can confidently recommend.
The reading comprehension test is mostly based on experience with the reading material. If you have never read a scientific article, you should get a few and see if you can understand and analyze the material. As for the quantitative reasoning test, this one also depends on how much practice you get. The best way to be well-balanced in every subject of the DAT is to follow a good study schedule, like the one below.
Following our basic DAT study schedule, you should be able to pass the DAT with a sufficiently high score. This is regardless of how many weak points you have and the amount of material that you need to review.
As you might have seen there’s no schedule for Sundays and for a good reason. You should consider taking Sundays off to rest and take in all that you’ve studied each week. Getting proper rest is also a very important part of the learning process.
Based on our schedule this is the number of hours per subject:
We’re pretty confident that with the right materials and a good discipline to follow this schedule, you’ll have no problems when taking the DAT. Hopefully, this is enough to convince you that a good study habit is fundamental for dental school and all its courses. You can always use the knowledge you gain from this experience to further prepare yourself for future tests whether in dental school or otherwise.
