DAT Done ... Good enough scores for mid-range schools?

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I just took the DAT yesterday and its over thank god and I didn't do as well as I had hoped but here are my scores:
PAT 23
QR 21
RC 22
Bio 20
GenChem 21
OChem 18
TS 19
AA 20

Do i need to be worried about acceptances? I went to a top school and have a ton of extracirriculars and a dec gpa, should i consider a retake?

Thanks for your input; i don't know anyone personally who has taken this test or is going the pre dental route...the only science friends i have are doing the med school or grad school route so i have no one to bounce things off. I appreciate it!

oh and if anyone is curious...to all those strictly kaplan students out there, if you want my input on how i did on practice exams and what i thought of it compared to kaplan, let me know, i don't want to bore people if not lol

Congrats, you did very well. I don't think your TS/OC will really hurt you too much. Broadly your scores are all very good, no worrisome 16 floating around.

I wouldn't retake at this point, I think as long as your word is true regarding your GPA, and you make sure to apply to a fair number of schools, you'll be fine.

Best of luck.

Originally Posted by ucxc

oh and if anyone is curious...to all those strictly kaplan students out there, if you want my input on how i did on practice exams and what i thought of it compared to kaplan, let me know, i don't want to bore people if not lol

Yes i would definetly like to know about your comparison with kaplan. My course finished about 2 weeks ago and my exam is on May 7th

the kaplan live course sucks. buy the course books and save like 1000 bucks

So my Kaplan final exams scores are on the left and my scores on the real deal are in the parenthesis:
Bio - 19 (20)
GC - 17 (21)
OC - 19 (18)
PAT - 23 (23)
RC - 22 (22)
QR - 18 (21)
TS - 18 (19)
AA - 19 (20)

Overall, RC was exactly what you see on Kaplan, passages may have been a bit longer on the real test. QR was much easier. Genchem was easier, not a ton of equations. Ochem is the nail in my coffin and always has been, I will forever suck at ochem and its just something I live with. It sucked but it always does. Bio was kind of the same as Kaplan, there were some really random questions that came out of left field to be honest. I didn't get one plant question and I was pissed because I know plants better than I think I ever should. PAT was a lot harder; hole punching was bizarre and all the angles were so close, in a lot of questions they must have been off by a single degree. Overall, i thought kaplan did an awesome job; i had an amazing teacher which makes a world of difference and he really was motivating and was excellent at making tough concepts really digestible. I personally wanted to do better but it will hopefully do for the schools I want to go to and with my resume and alma mater. good luck on the test in may

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this makes me feel a lot better, I'm going to take the rest of my Kaplan Full lengths now. What did you think about the "workshops"? I think they're kinda worthless... but they may be exactly what you need for the DAT. Any input?

Originally Posted by ucxc

I just took the DAT yesterday and its over thank god and I didn't do as well as I had hoped but here are my scores:
PAT 23
QR 21
RC 22
Bio 20
GenChem 21
OChem 18
TS 19
AA 20

Do i need to be worried about acceptances? I went to a top school and have a ton of extracirriculars and a dec gpa, should i consider a retake?

Thanks for your input; i don't know anyone personally who has taken this test or is going the pre dental route...the only science friends i have are doing the med school or grad school route so i have no one to bounce things off. I appreciate it!

No need to retake. 19 is the average AA score of students that matriculate into dental school if my memory serves me correctly. You are above that

You should have no problem getting into your state school (s) and will probably have a good chance getting in somewhere out of state with your "decent" gpa (prob a 3.99 right? ), and ec's. Make sure to get good LOR's too though!

Congrats, i know the great feeling of being done with the DAT!
Great job!

ahhhh thank you guys so much for the positive feedback. its tough on this site to feel good because most of the scores posted are by people who destroy the exam; not saying that in a negative way at all, most of those scores are wicked impressive and those kids should be proud as hell, its just difficult to set a norm to that lol.
so i only did kaplan, nothing else because i just didn't have the time and i really liked my kaplan course. i seriously did every single thing on that kaplan course; every workshop, every quiz, every exam...everything i could. i did the practice sections 3+ times to review information. i really, really, really suggest doing the PAT section tests and practice things multiple times to get the swing of things and to train your eyes. I loved PAT, I've always thought it was a lot of fun, but if you do those PAT practice things over and over you'll find patterns and know how to really rank those angles because the real angle ranking is not kind. With regards to my other scores on the midterm and 3 other tests, midterm I wasn't happy with, it was ok. I did better on the 1st test, went up in a few sections and down in a few on the 2nd test, found the 3rd test to be the hardest and did the same as the 1st and got really frustrated and then did decent on the final. My final were my highest scores of all the three (minus i got a 25 on the 1st in PAT) and then I went up in most things on the real thing. QR is MUCH easier on the real thing when compared to Kaplan, which was a breath of fresh air; i finished the section 12 minutes early. I'm a fast test taker but I finished the sections of the real exam 5-7 minutes faster than the Kaplan test.

I know people kick the poo out of Kaplan on this site and I know its expensive and that part of it sucks, but I really loved the Kaplan system, it kept me motivated, taught me things I never really understood before and have an excellent system of teaching you the information in specific order so that you really learn them and they all gel together in the end. I highly recommend Kaplan if you need a schedule to keep you in line and are willing to do all the work the course offers. My scores aren't amazing but I definitely couldn't have scored this high without kaplan; genchem and ochem finally made sense lol. anywho good luck to everyone, there is freedom after the test. All I did the day after was watch swamp people, khloe and lamar, parks and rec and fight club and basically kill a wheel of brie. never cared less about being a p.o.s.

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i didn't really use the kaplan method. i kind of did on the first passage, but i barely looked at the roadmap because for me it wastes too much time and i move faster skimming the passage fast for the cue words from the question. i skimmed the passage in 2-3 minutes then after reading each question, searched for the cue words. my RC had mostly detail questions so i moved fast and finished RC with a ton of extra time - like 7 minutes.

2 things:

1) No need for a retake. OChem isn't that important and even then your score isn't bad or worrisome. . AA of 20 and RC/PAT of over 21 is great! If you have a good science GPA it can convince the schools that your TS score isn't indicative of your scientific genius, but regardless a 19 is good. Great job and congrats!

2) Kaplan gets criticized a lot here mainly because of price. For the amount spent there you can do a lot more elsewhere. Of course Kaplan does offer personalized tutoring etc. which no one else does. If that is what one is looking for (and has the requisite amount of funds), there really is no better option. All I am going to say is, I am glad it worked for you and if others want to take that Kaplan course I wouldn't discourage them from doing so.