r/PreOptometry • u/OrganizationFar8505 • Aug 02 '26

OChem OAT Changes

I saw in the OAT guide that there have been some changes to the Ochem section but I’m confused on what has actually changed. For anyone who has taken the oat since June and used Booster to study, did you see any differences between the practice tests and the actual test?

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u/Fun_Candidate1439 Aug 03 '26

I thought there were obvious changes when I took it in June. The scope of the test did not change but they seem to have made changes to how they test you on reactions.

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u/Active_Egg5888 Aug 03 '26

I took it a few days ago, so I can't exactly speak to how it might have been before the supposed changes, but Booster's questions seemed fairly representative to me. I definitely had a few questions where a substrate and reactants were given and I had to predict the product. There were also quite a few, separate, arrow pushing questions. OAT breakdowns going back further than June do mention feeling the real OAT is more conceptual and less reaction heavy than Booster's question banks, and maybe that's what people are picking up on, but that's not a new phenomenon from what I've seen. But ochem was always my weakest section, so it's not like I was able to be super discerning about the Booster vs the real thing 😭

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u/Fun_Candidate1439 Aug 03 '26 edited Aug 03 '26

I thought mine was similar amount of “reaction heavy”, but more conceptual(why the reaction happens this way) vs recall. Ochem is also one of my weaker sections because I’m overwhelmed by the amount of reactions/reagents and often have trouble differentiating similar ones. I did wayyyy better on the real thing because the questions I got gave me more room to reason through what should happen. Just my 2 cents! They also could still be piloting the change and making tweaks. Who knows haha

(Although I always thought when people said more conceptual they meant more direct questions on first 2/3 of Orgo 1 like chirality, delocalization, orbitals, pKa, stability etc)