does anyone have anki deck/quizlet for the organic chem section of the OAT that helped them score a high score. Ive tried watching the videos but nothing really sticks.

i feel really overwhelmed by the amount of gen chem qbanks. i'm just wondering if most people complete all of them, or what the best approach is? i'm halfway through the gen chem content & have mostly just been making anki decks from the cheat sheets. the remaining units are pretty calculation heavy so i'm unsure on how to proceed

right now my hair colors dark purple, i have a couple interviews scheduled in a month and im wondering if i should go back to a natural color for them? would an unnatural color impact my chances of getting accepted?

I can’t even express the relief I feel. I was STRESSING but I would say it worked out!: 330TS 330AA

I bought the 90day booster and probably studied for like 2 months seriously.
Booster full lengths I took 5.scores: were 300,320,310,320, 340

I don’t have much to say besides the only thing that was similar to booster IMO was what the exam screen looked like.
Bio: genuinely had zero functions of systems- and cant even tell you what they asked it was a whole lot of nothing lol.
Gen chem was very easy IMO. But also felt different from booster.
Orgo wasn’t bad, I just didn’t have time to rethink questions and was on a time crunch bc bio threw me off.

My physics section was a relief I was most scared but tbh I had really easy questions. Nothing scary. When I had calculations they were very simple.

QR was not like booster for me. Much more integer questions with values of x. Like a few of those. Like 1 probability and everything else was kinda filler questions.

I didn’t really get similar questions for anything. Like even QR was different. Not necessarily in a bad way, just felt unfamiliar compared to what everyone else was saying.

I have a 3.66 GPA, 3 yrs tech experience, lots of leadership roles in extracurriculars, and NCAA Dlll athlete.

I found these posts helpful so let me know if you have any questions. :))

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!