The Survey of the Natural Sciences is one section on the clock but three subjects on your score report. Its 100 questions run in fixed blocks — Biology first, then General Chemistry, then Organic Chemistry — and produce four separate reported scores.
Test Ninjas Research · Updated September 11, 2026
Survey of the Natural Sciences — at a glance
Attribute
Value
Questions
100
Time
90 minutes
Average per question
54 seconds
Reported scores
Survey of Natural Sciences, Biology, General Chemistry, Organic Chemistry
Score scale
200–600
How the section is built
Composition
Part
Detail
Biology
Questions 1–40
General Chemistry
Questions 41–70
Organic Chemistry
Questions 71–100
What it asks of you
Cell and molecular biology, including structure and metabolism
Genetics, inheritance and molecular genetics
Diversity of life, taxonomy and evolution
Anatomy and physiology of the major organ systems
Stoichiometry, gases, solutions and thermochemistry
Acids and bases, equilibrium, kinetics and electrochemistry
Functional groups, mechanisms and stereochemistry
Organic reactions, synthesis and spectroscopy
How to approach it
The clock is shared, the blocks are not
You get 90 minutes for all 100 questions — roughly 54 seconds each — but the subjects arrive in fixed order and you cannot borrow time from a subject you have not reached yet without passing through it. Students who run out of time almost always overspend in Biology and then rush Organic Chemistry, which is the block where careful reading pays off most.
Breadth beats depth here
This section rewards recognising a great many topics quickly rather than reasoning deeply about a few. Biology in particular spans the entire introductory sequence, and questions tend to be recall-weighted rather than multi-step. That makes systematic review genuinely effective — unlike sections where extra content study plateaus.
Four scores, one section
Because Biology, General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry are reported separately as well as combined, a weak block is visible to admissions committees even when the combined Natural Sciences score looks reasonable. It is worth knowing which of the three is dragging before you plan your revision.
This section reports 4 separate scores on the 200–600 scale. See where any score falls with the DAT score calculator.
There are 100 questions in 90 minutes: 40 Biology, 30 General Chemistry and 30 Organic Chemistry. They always appear in that order and in discrete blocks, so you know exactly where each subject starts and ends.
No. The Survey of Natural Sciences score is scaled from your combined performance across all 100 questions, while Biology, General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry are each scaled separately. Averaging the three subject scores will not reproduce it, and admissions committees see all four numbers.
No. The DAT provides a basic on-screen calculator in the Quantitative Reasoning section only. Any arithmetic in Natural Sciences has to be done mentally or on the scratch material provided.
Thirty questions, the same as General Chemistry, and it carries its own reported score. The emphasis falls on functional groups, reaction mechanisms, stereochemistry and spectroscopy rather than on long multi-step syntheses.