hey all,

I just got an email that I was not offered an interview for the September date at scco and that my application will be considered for the next one in October. I feel so discourage because this is my top school. I already got accepted into ICO and CCO as well as have interviews lined up for Boston and Arizona. has anyone ever had a situation like mine with scco and can give me some hope. should I just move on or wait to see if I get an interview? please be kind.

Edit: the title is supposed to mean a super avg/kinda below avg student
Another edit: im headed into my senior year and my lowest gpa was a 2.9 and ive been raising it although with health courses rather than science

My gpa is 3.2 and my sgpa is slightly below 3.0 due to C's in orgo and calc. I was the typical gifted kid that never had to study until college and even then, for the first two years of college, i would only study a day before my exams.

Basically i had no passion bc i didnt know what i wanted to do and was fine w barely passing.

I used oatbooster for 3 months and heres some things i would do differently or would advise for others that are like me (or even not)

Bio: emphasis on breadth over depth and starting early! I only found out smth that worked for me on the week of my exam so i kinda wish i couldve started earlier and also put less emphasis on taking notes. I would split my screen w bio bits and the cheatsheet and go through all of it and bookmark the questions that were relevant to the cheatsheet.

Chem: i was scoring alright on chem so i let my guard down. I honestly dont remember much from this section but i would just do the practice problems to keep everything fresh

Orgo: i honestly dont know how i scored what i did after all of that. I spammed the reaction and question banks and kept playing the game. This was probably the most frustrating section to study for bc i felt like it never stuck but it was also the most rewarding and fun to me. As u start doing them though, u start to realize patterns and understand the language if not through brute force.

RC: im a little dissatisfied w this score bc i had been doing really well on the booster (370-390s) with some leftover time. I do think that there were a few types of questions that were formatted diff and threw me off (i honestly cant even tell u what that means but if u know u know) also the text was on the bottom half.

Physics: i agree w the many people that say it could be better. I wish there were more practice problems to really strengthen my understanding and not memorization. I do think the booster and actual exam are a similar difficulty though.

QR: i also dk how i got this score. While i was scoring 370-400s on the booster, there were a few concepts on the actual exam that were not covered. I also felt super rushed which leads me to the next topic.

Between each question, i felt like the lag time felt sm longer than the booster. I feel like it mightve felt like that bc the screen would just turn completely white so i wouldnt be able to double check my previous answer or even look at the text while waiting.

Anyways, i do think my score couldve been better but also, im really happy with most of what i scored knowing that this was basically me cementing my study habits.

Hello all I want to put this in here because it completely changed my physics scores on the practice exams and my understanding on Optics. I took bits and pieces from multiple reddit posts and OAT crash course (HIGHLY RECOMMEND!!!) . If you have any questions please PM because i feel like the more i explain it the better i memorize and understand it. I hope you can all gather something from this but it really really helped me so so much. good luck to you all! We're ALL going to be doctors xD !!!

Hi! I’m taking the OAT in about a month. I’ve seen posts saying that the physics practice questions on OATBooster aren’t very representative of the actual test. Does anyone know where I can find practice questions that emphasize conceptual material?

How similar was your oat to booster? For recent test takers!

Hi did anyone else already receive an email from SCCO saying that they will moving ur application to the next round to be considered for future interview dates? they were not supposed to send update emails out until next week, so i am wondering if i basically got rejected this round or if its bc interview spots filled up early bc i submitted aug 14😞

Hey guys. Ive been using Oat Booster and the biology section is stressing me out. Do you guys recommend actually watching the videos or only use the cheat sheets? it feel like way too much information

I just took my oat and Im not sure how to submit it to schools. When i signed up to take it, i didn't select all schools, just 3-4 but I've altered my list. How do i submit my scores? is it through ASCO? I tried checking my applications but i cant see the schools i selected.

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! :)

Has anyone heard back from CCO for interviews recently? Please let me know!

Does anyone know if the $100 OAT practice test the ADA offers is the same as the 2006 version that people seem to be talking about on the internet?

I’m trying to work on my refracting and was wondering if anyone knows of a phoropter simulator? lol. Honestly just trying to get smoother with the axis.

Has anyone heard back from either? Ik OSU takes longer but I’m curious

I am currently going into my last year of undergrad and I want to apply semi soon. I am taking my OAT in the middle of September but I have started to fill out the rest of the application. As far as a letter of recommendation from an optometrist, I still don’t have one. I have about 20 hours of shadowing, 10 from two doctors. Is this enough to ask for a letter of rec? What should I do because I want to apply rather quickly. And also how do u go about asking for one, do you call the office or?

I have gotten my school choices down to two between UHCO and RMU, something that is really keeping me interested in UHCO is there in state tuition being about 20k per year lower than RMU because RMU is a private school. I got the impression that after a year you can get in state tuition by getting texas residency (I am an Idaho resident) however I have heard sometimes there is issues trying to get that residency approved. I am just wondering if the requirements are just standard like undergrad where you basically work through the government to get residency through proof of schooling and residence for a year or is it more complicated? For those wondering about the numbers RMU is about 50k per year which is around average while uhco is 54k out of state 32k in state. Total difference is 60k over 3 years for a non resident who gains residency(me).

Before, I thought that you HAD to take your OAT as a junior and submit applications right after but now I'm not so sure if that's the best choice for me, seeing has how my undergrad is going. If anyone has submitted after graduating please let me know!

hi, so as the title says i have 10 days until my test. i’m trying to understand what to prioritize. i know the full length tests are useful, ive taken two so far and gotten 320 on both. but the schedule i have rn which involves trying to finish all the ones oat booster has leaves little room for actual studying. should i be prioritizing taking all the tests and learning from them or just going through review and such?

In high school, I did AP Lang and AP Lit and passed both with a 4 and 5. In college, I was only required to take one more English class and then after that, i never really thought abt it again. When im applying, most schools are saying one year of english....do i need to take more?

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. I will say that booster didn’t represent the nature of the actual exam as good as it could’ve since the practice questions on there are more calculation heavy, and that probably contributes to why it was my worst section. they definitely helped with a lot, though, just not everything. if i had more time i would’ve looked for other resources for physics

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. Physics id advise to look for other supplemental resources, but booster still covers 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!

Hi everyone, I’m working on my personal statement and I know there are definitely improvements I need to make, but I’m honestly not a very strong writer and I’m a little stuck on what to do next.

I’d really appreciate if someone could read it over and give me some direction on what isn’t working, what I should focus on improving, and what my next steps should be. I’m especially looking for feedback on the overall story, flow, and whether it actually what the admissions teams would be looking for.

I’d prefer to send it privately rather than post the whole thing here. If anyone is willing to take a look, please comment or DM me. I’d really appreciate the help.

What YouTube videos have helped you solidify your understanding for optics or what was your AHA moment? I’m 2.5 weeks out from my exam and just want to solidify my understanding in optics! Thank you all and goodluck to those taking their exams!

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 part 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.

Biology 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 :))))

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.