Quit Job And Write Oat, Or Not? Help!

[NeuroD]

The situation is this: My fiance dosen't have the greatest grades, but she thinks if she blows the OAT away, Waterloo is within reach (she's got great long term EC's). She wrote the OAT once last year without much preparation and scored ~300. She's preparing to write it again, but has 2 options:

(1) Quit her summer job (at a great opto clinic that she loves) and study full time to write it august and apply this fall

(2) Keep her job and delay writing for a year to get more time to study an get a better grade. 

 

What we're wondering is: is there any implicit or explicit bias against applicants who have written the OAT 3 times? If not, then she would quit job and try to get the best score she could for this year, and if she fails she could just redo it next year. If yes, then she wouldn't risk writing it this summer, keep her job, and delay applying for another year.

 

Thank you so much to anyone who can help us make this decision.

[InstantRamen]

I don't believe they care how many times you write the OAT. They ultimately take the best score! Hopefully others can chime in. I've seriously considered optometry and this is based on my own research!

[NeuroD]

I don't believe they care how many times you write the OAT. They ultimately take the best score! Hopefully others can chime in. I've seriously considered optometry and this is based on my own research!

Thanks! What research did you do? Based off their website I gather that at some point they use a basic algorithm that only takes your highest score into account. But I wonder if, at any level, they penalize you for the number of times you've re-written it?

[InstantRamen]

I feel like if they do look at an applicant differently for multiple writes, then they don't reveal it... They do claim to be quite holistic, so its speculation. I know quite a few people in the program and they wrote the OAT multiple times. Since I've had many pathetic attempts at the MCAT, I was curious as to how Waterloo looks at the OAT, so I asked. My friends told me it doesn't matter, but perhaps I may be misinformed... I do know they take the BEST OAT when I called a couple years ago!

[JohnGrisham]

Handful of close friends in Opt, none of them quit there jobs etc. They all unanimously said the OAT was MUCH MUCH easier than the MCAT, and really 1-2 weeks of intense prep should be more than enough to get a decent score.  

Your fiance should be able to manage studying for it outside of work hours, without necessitating quitting work all together. The OAT is not an exam you need to study 2-3 months full-time to do well in. 

Assuming its a 9-5 job they are working, that leaves at least 3-4 hours every night after work for studying, and a load of hours on the weekends to prep.   If they are aiming to write it at the end of August, that leaves 2 full months to prepare.  Plenty of time.

OATDestroyer is something they used, similiar to the DATDestroyer.

Chad's Videos on Coursesaver.com are well worth the investment, and should cover the majority of Gen Chem, Physics, Ochem and Quant Reasoning.  He is a genius teacher.  I believe the Bio videos aren't as gold as his physical sciences, but he provides them for free anyways. For BIO, just get the AP Biology book - it should have plenty of MCQ in there. Again, do it all.

In fact, the OAT and DAT IIRC are written by the same organization, so much of the content is the same.  Find as many practice questions and practice exams digitally and just do them ad nauseum.

Since your fiance already studied for it before, they really just need to sit down and hammer out as many practice questions as possible. Learn the content as you go, wasting too much time doing "content review" is very inefficient.