- Joined
- Jun 21, 2008
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Hey all, Just finished my DAT finally!! Haha, what a day it was. The prometric center I went to actually had technical difficulties so I had to sit there for an hour and wait. The whole time I was thinking *gasps* a message from god telling me that I'm not ready and that I might get the chance to reschedule! But alas, the servers were fixed and I took my test after psyching myself out for an hour :/ I ended up just listening to my ipod for the hour but the coffee and redbull I drank right before I got there probably wore off by the time I started my test 
I feel like the percentiles are a lot different (ie a AA of 21 is different percentiles for me and someone else) than the other people who took theirs on the same day, perhaps someone could inform me on how these numbers work? Anyways, on to the stuff you came here for....
PA 25 (99.1)
QR 20 (95.1)
RC 23 (96.1)
Bio 20 (91.8)
GC 22 (95.2)
OC 20 (84.4)
TS 21 (96.2)
AA 21 (97.2)
Started studying exactly a month ago (summer school ended June 4th and I flew home June 5th). I used kaplan online resources and DAT destroyer. For studying, I went through all the kaplan online questions and redid the bio subject tests multiple times (though I can't say that I retained a lot of the information by test day time). I didn't manage to go through the ochem material more than once but felt like I probably should have seeing as how I felt the least prepared for it. I went through the destroyer's bio and chem sections once about 2 weeks before my test and went through half of the chem problems about 5 days before my test. I didn't manage to do all the orgo problems (I got through half, I think?) but I glanced over the road maps and read some gen chem solutions of some conceptual questions the night before my DAT. I actually should've done through the destroyer problems all again the couple days before the DAT but I somehow lost a lot of my drive to study at that point
PA: Pretty happy with my score. The highest I've ever scored on kaplan was a 26 and seeing as how Kaplan is notorious for being "easier" than the actual DAT, I was glad I got pretty close to what I got on the Kapaln. I thought the keyholes were A LOT easier than the kaplan ones and were pretty straight forward (although keyhole is usually my weakest section due to careless errors and what not). Hole punching was a tad bit more difficult. there were also times when I felt like the paper in the problem and answers were of different sizes but I was probably just mentally tired? I chose to double check my cube counting and pattern folding with my 12 minutes of extra time only to find that I got all of them correct :/ I rushed through the hole punching part so I think I could've gotten a higher score if I had chose to double check that section instead of cube counting and pattern folding. Oh, and angles were ok. I can see why people say that kaplan's ones were useless but it wasn't like impossible or anything I feel like. Normally I get angle rankings 100% on kaplan but I probably got a few wrong on the real thing.
QR: Pretty straight forward section, though I think I was a bit mentally exhausted and couldn't quite think straight for a lot of the problems. There was this one question on %ages that I still remain adamant that the answer choices given were wrong haha but who knows, I ended up guessing on it and probably got it wrong. There were some conversions and trig identities, none of which I really studied for, I was lucky to remember sin^2 + cos^2 = 1 and that 3 ft = 1 yard and roughly 5600some feet are in a mile. I think I could've scored higher if I wasn't so hung over on that one percentage problem. I think I might've spent a good 7 or 8 minutes on that one haha.
RC: I think this section was not too bad. I think I finished with 10 minutes of extra time and had time to go through the first passage which I spent less time on relative to the 2nd and 3rd passage. I managed to correct 3 answers, though I can't say for sure if they were right or not. I have no idea what being piano'd or frapp'd means but I had questions that were asking about tone and other literary elements like that which were exactly what I didn't want to see on the DAT seeing as how I am a poor reader and writer edit: for RC, I skimmed through the passage, took notes on dates, persons and few keywords. Once I was able to grab 2-3 key words I'd just skip the rest of the paragraph and move onto the next. This way was very time efficient, minimized writing/reading. Once I got to answering questions, if I saw stuff I didn't write down/didn't read in the questions, I'd go to the paragraph that related to it the most and read the rest of the passage. I actually just developed this strategy the night before and it seems like a pretty nice strategy as it gave me plenty of time to double check or read carefully if necessary. Obviously the strategy could use more refining but I feel like it is a pretty good one. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM or whatever.
Bio: I was hit with a bunch of non-human questions and a few ecology questions but I really can't complain because I can't say that I spent a lot of time on bio. I read through the kaplan BB once 4 weeks ago and relied on doing kaplan bio questions and reading explanations for studying. I was pretty bummed that I didn't get any hormone, circulation, kidney, parthenogenesis or ecto/endo/mesoderm questions which I spent the most time learning (and reviewed it lightly this morning via flashcards) and was so sure that I'd get a good hand full of questions on those subjects. Okay, the parthenogenesis one was a joke, because for the longest time I was convinced that that was the only thing that the kaplan BB taught me
GC: Again, I was hit with a bunch of stuff that I didn't particularly study for, mainly bond angles (yes, I didn't bother to memorize the VSEPR theory =_=) and a couple questions on nuclear fission stuffs. I thought I nailed all the calculation questions but maybe I was wrong, or maybe I just got a lot of conceptual questions wrong. I felt like I had scored higher but a 22 is not bad I suppose.
OC: This was my weakest section probably. I left this for the last week and a half of my studies and couldn't get myself to buckle down and memorize all the reactions. There were a few reaction problems where I had to totally just try to reason it out and guess but there were also some reactions where I just totally did not know what was going on. I remember one question in particular that I had not seen in Kaplan or the destroyer (though granted, I never got through the entire OC section of destroyer). But for those of you who spent the time to memorize all the reactions, this section should be pretty easy for you guys.
I guess the whole time I didn't really have a clue of where I stand in terms of my preparedness for the real thing since I didn't do topscore and achiever like many people did on this site. I was super nervous the night before and the day of but I guess I did good enough to not have to take it again so I'm content with the scores!
I feel like the percentiles are a lot different (ie a AA of 21 is different percentiles for me and someone else) than the other people who took theirs on the same day, perhaps someone could inform me on how these numbers work? Anyways, on to the stuff you came here for....PA 25 (99.1)
QR 20 (95.1)
RC 23 (96.1)
Bio 20 (91.8)
GC 22 (95.2)
OC 20 (84.4)
TS 21 (96.2)
AA 21 (97.2)
Started studying exactly a month ago (summer school ended June 4th and I flew home June 5th). I used kaplan online resources and DAT destroyer. For studying, I went through all the kaplan online questions and redid the bio subject tests multiple times (though I can't say that I retained a lot of the information by test day time). I didn't manage to go through the ochem material more than once but felt like I probably should have seeing as how I felt the least prepared for it. I went through the destroyer's bio and chem sections once about 2 weeks before my test and went through half of the chem problems about 5 days before my test. I didn't manage to do all the orgo problems (I got through half, I think?) but I glanced over the road maps and read some gen chem solutions of some conceptual questions the night before my DAT. I actually should've done through the destroyer problems all again the couple days before the DAT but I somehow lost a lot of my drive to study at that point
PA: Pretty happy with my score. The highest I've ever scored on kaplan was a 26 and seeing as how Kaplan is notorious for being "easier" than the actual DAT, I was glad I got pretty close to what I got on the Kapaln. I thought the keyholes were A LOT easier than the kaplan ones and were pretty straight forward (although keyhole is usually my weakest section due to careless errors and what not). Hole punching was a tad bit more difficult. there were also times when I felt like the paper in the problem and answers were of different sizes but I was probably just mentally tired?
I chose to double check my cube counting and pattern folding with my 12 minutes of extra time only to find that I got all of them correct :/ I rushed through the hole punching part so I think I could've gotten a higher score if I had chose to double check that section instead of cube counting and pattern folding. Oh, and angles were ok. I can see why people say that kaplan's ones were useless but it wasn't like impossible or anything I feel like. Normally I get angle rankings 100% on kaplan but I probably got a few wrong on the real thing.QR: Pretty straight forward section, though I think I was a bit mentally exhausted and couldn't quite think straight for a lot of the problems. There was this one question on %ages that I still remain adamant that the answer choices given were wrong haha but who knows, I ended up guessing on it and probably got it wrong. There were some conversions and trig identities, none of which I really studied for, I was lucky to remember sin^2 + cos^2 = 1 and that 3 ft = 1 yard and roughly 5600some feet are in a mile. I think I could've scored higher if I wasn't so hung over on that one percentage problem. I think I might've spent a good 7 or 8 minutes on that one haha.
RC: I think this section was not too bad. I think I finished with 10 minutes of extra time and had time to go through the first passage which I spent less time on relative to the 2nd and 3rd passage. I managed to correct 3 answers, though I can't say for sure if they were right or not. I have no idea what being piano'd or frapp'd means but I had questions that were asking about tone and other literary elements like that which were exactly what I didn't want to see on the DAT seeing as how I am a poor reader and writer
edit: for RC, I skimmed through the passage, took notes on dates, persons and few keywords. Once I was able to grab 2-3 key words I'd just skip the rest of the paragraph and move onto the next. This way was very time efficient, minimized writing/reading. Once I got to answering questions, if I saw stuff I didn't write down/didn't read in the questions, I'd go to the paragraph that related to it the most and read the rest of the passage. I actually just developed this strategy the night before and it seems like a pretty nice strategy as it gave me plenty of time to double check or read carefully if necessary. Obviously the strategy could use more refining but I feel like it is a pretty good one. If you have any questions, feel free to shoot me a PM or whatever. Bio: I was hit with a bunch of non-human questions and a few ecology questions but I really can't complain because I can't say that I spent a lot of time on bio. I read through the kaplan BB once 4 weeks ago and relied on doing kaplan bio questions and reading explanations for studying. I was pretty bummed that I didn't get any hormone, circulation, kidney, parthenogenesis or ecto/endo/mesoderm questions which I spent the most time learning (and reviewed it lightly this morning via flashcards) and was so sure that I'd get a good hand full of questions on those subjects. Okay, the parthenogenesis one was a joke, because for the longest time I was convinced that that was the only thing that the kaplan BB taught me
GC: Again, I was hit with a bunch of stuff that I didn't particularly study for, mainly bond angles (yes, I didn't bother to memorize the VSEPR theory =_=) and a couple questions on nuclear fission stuffs. I thought I nailed all the calculation questions but maybe I was wrong, or maybe I just got a lot of conceptual questions wrong. I felt like I had scored higher but a 22 is not bad I suppose.
OC: This was my weakest section probably. I left this for the last week and a half of my studies and couldn't get myself to buckle down and memorize all the reactions. There were a few reaction problems where I had to totally just try to reason it out and guess but there were also some reactions where I just totally did not know what was going on. I remember one question in particular that I had not seen in Kaplan or the destroyer (though granted, I never got through the entire OC section of destroyer). But for those of you who spent the time to memorize all the reactions, this section should be pretty easy for you guys.
I guess the whole time I didn't really have a clue of where I stand in terms of my preparedness for the real thing since I didn't do topscore and achiever like many people did on this site. I was super nervous the night before and the day of but I guess I did good enough to not have to take it again so I'm content with the scores!
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