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- Feb 7, 2012
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Hey everyone, I am new to the boards but have read a lot on this site, especially the DAT section. Thanks to you all I found the right resources and didn't buy Kaplans program. I ended up doing well on the real deal, so I thought I would give a quick little breakdown of materials that I used.
Chad's videos - best suggestion I took from this site was getting his videos. It saved me a lot of time and helped me feel confident in material I hadn't see for a little while or at all. I really liked the quizes he has on the site as well, good representation of the real questions. It really is the best foundation I found for general and organic chemistry.
DAT Destroyer - I branched out from Chad's videos w/ DAT Destroyer. I thought Destroyer was great, especially organic chemistry...being able to do every problem in Destroyer for organic chemistry meant being able to do every problem for the real DAT correctly. It seemed a little too hard for general chemistry, a little too complex. For general chemistry I thought chad's quiz questions were a better use of time. For Biology DAT Destroyer was a good way to study on the last day. Good explanations, but you should have learned the fundamentals before doing these questions.
Cliffs AP bio and Barrons AP Bio were how I prepared for the biology section. I also used DAT Q-vault. I re-read both AP bio books several times and did all the questions in both. They were both great prep. I did q-vault in between. Q-vault had material that I don't think the real DAT covers...it had too many anatomy questions (like about bones) but overall it was great. It underestimated my real score by about 3 points.
Crack DAT PAT - this was all I did for the PAT and it was fine. My average score over the last 5 tests was the score I got on the real DAT.
Math Destroyer - I used this as my only prep for math (I didn't use QR in DAT Destroyer) and that was plenty. I have always been average at math, but this helped me be quicker and it got me a good score on test day. I took all the tests in 45 minutes even if I couldn't finish them and used that to estimate my progress then I would finish the problems I didn't have time for after.
RC - I didn't prepare for except using Topscore Pro
Topscore Pro - I did these 3 practice tests. I thought they were too hard on biology, too hard on GC, just right on OC, too easy on PAT, just right on QR and RC. That is not to say they are a perfect representation of the real test, but the scores that I got were pretty close to the real thing except for the sciences. Overall, since the sciences were too low, my real score ended up being 2 points higher than my best topscore for AA and 3 points higher than my best topscore for TS.
I hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know...but otherwise thanks for the advice you gave me even if you didn't know you were giving it to me!
Edit: Thought I would add in my scores since this dude linked me to a blog, might as well make the breakdown more useful.
Chad's videos - best suggestion I took from this site was getting his videos. It saved me a lot of time and helped me feel confident in material I hadn't see for a little while or at all. I really liked the quizes he has on the site as well, good representation of the real questions. It really is the best foundation I found for general and organic chemistry.
DAT Destroyer - I branched out from Chad's videos w/ DAT Destroyer. I thought Destroyer was great, especially organic chemistry...being able to do every problem in Destroyer for organic chemistry meant being able to do every problem for the real DAT correctly. It seemed a little too hard for general chemistry, a little too complex. For general chemistry I thought chad's quiz questions were a better use of time. For Biology DAT Destroyer was a good way to study on the last day. Good explanations, but you should have learned the fundamentals before doing these questions.
Cliffs AP bio and Barrons AP Bio were how I prepared for the biology section. I also used DAT Q-vault. I re-read both AP bio books several times and did all the questions in both. They were both great prep. I did q-vault in between. Q-vault had material that I don't think the real DAT covers...it had too many anatomy questions (like about bones) but overall it was great. It underestimated my real score by about 3 points.
Crack DAT PAT - this was all I did for the PAT and it was fine. My average score over the last 5 tests was the score I got on the real DAT.
Math Destroyer - I used this as my only prep for math (I didn't use QR in DAT Destroyer) and that was plenty. I have always been average at math, but this helped me be quicker and it got me a good score on test day. I took all the tests in 45 minutes even if I couldn't finish them and used that to estimate my progress then I would finish the problems I didn't have time for after.
RC - I didn't prepare for except using Topscore Pro
Topscore Pro - I did these 3 practice tests. I thought they were too hard on biology, too hard on GC, just right on OC, too easy on PAT, just right on QR and RC. That is not to say they are a perfect representation of the real test, but the scores that I got were pretty close to the real thing except for the sciences. Overall, since the sciences were too low, my real score ended up being 2 points higher than my best topscore for AA and 3 points higher than my best topscore for TS.
I hope this helps, if you have any questions let me know...but otherwise thanks for the advice you gave me even if you didn't know you were giving it to me!
Edit: Thought I would add in my scores since this dude linked me to a blog, might as well make the breakdown more useful.
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