5/8/12 DAT Done!!!

Just got back from the testing center a few hours ago and I've just been overwhelmingly happy. Hopefully I've gathered myself enough to write this breakdown (and it might be a little long)! As is standard around here, I absolutely could not have achieved my scores without the help of the SDN community and I feel I owe it to you guys to share my advice and experiences from this journey. So here are my scores:

PAT: 24 (98.1%)
QR: 19 (91.2%)
RC: 24 (94.0%)
Bio: 26 (99.5%)
GC: 23 (95.4%)
OC: 27 (98.7%)
TS: 25 (99.5%)
AA: 24 (99.6%)

Before the breakdown I want to point out that I am nothing special! I am very happy with my scores but I feel that anyone can succeed at this test if they put in the work and determination. Throughout your study schedule, don't just memorize facts! Try to understand the information in the greater sense--learn how and why things happen. A lot of breakdowns say biology is breadth over depth, don't read too much into detail, etc., but for me it was the details that helped me to understand the concepts, and then was able to apply my understanding of those concepts to solve obscure problems. More on that later!

Also, massive credit to dentalWorks for the 8 week study plan! I followed it pretty religiously the first month and then modified it in the second month to better address my weaknesses. I didn't know where to start and it's one of the many awesome resources available from SDN. I studied for 8 weeks, 6-8 hours a day every single day except for two days I just wasn't feeling it. I also had a full schedule of courses and was tutoring 20 hours a week (I tutor for my school and they let me study when it was slow). My resources were:

Kaplan White Book-- I only used this for bio and it's really not that great in my opinion. It does cover some things that Cliffs doesn't like physiological systems, but even that is really lacking. I mostly just used Wikipedia to refresh my A&P because KWB was so disappointing.
Cliffs AP Biology-- The best source by a mile. I can't recommend it enough. This $10 bad boy will cover 90% of the bio questions you'll see on the DAT.
Chad's GC, OC and QR videos--He gives a great condensed review and his videos are cheap. The chemistry videos are especially helpful for learning tricks and shortcuts to work faster. The QR series also offers a few shortcuts but it's nowhere near the quality of the chemistries. If you're good at math you don't need the QR.
DAT Destroyer-- Such a love/hate relationship! I love how this book makes you think about every answer choice and tries to trick you into picking the wrong one at every opportunity. It really taught me to read questions and answers carefully on the real thing and I learned a lot of information, though I can't pinpoint a single question from the test where I said "oh! I know that because I saw something similar on Destroyer!" It is far more difficult than the real test, but despite how frustrated I was with this book I am certainly thankful that it prepared me for any possible question I might encounter. The roadmaps are useful too; I didn't fully memorize them but I would look over them from time to time to keep things fresh.
MATH Destroyer-- Ehhh. I have mixed feelings. If you study this book, you will crush the QR section, hands down, so I'll say that. But for me it was too difficult. It was taking me 2 hours to do 40 question tests and I just gave up in frustration after deciding there was no way the real DAT would be so difficult. More on me being terrible at math later.
Crack DAT PAT-- The only PAT source I used and I would have failed without it. I wouldn't' have been able to nail my timing if it weren't for CDP, and the questions were very similar on the real thing. More later.
datQvault-- I didn't use TopScore or Achiever because I saw some people saying they weren't really representative. My funds have been really low for this whole thing so I thought this would be a good bang for my buck, and I'm sure glad I bought them. I STRONGLY RECOMMEND THESE TESTS. There are a few errors on some of the questions, but this is 10 tests for each subject and the questions aren't all that far from the DAT. More than just the bio is good for qvault, it is ALL good! I personally thought the QR was identical in difficulty and question style. I would do a "full" DAT every other day for the last few weeks by just taking the bio test, then GC, then OC, do a CDP, then QR on qvault all back to back. I averaged about a 22-23 for each science and averaged 19-20 for QR.
Alan's Notes-- These are great for reviewing material so you don't forget it. I saved them until the day before the test but I'm glad I looked over everything because I had indeed forgotten some details that I thought would be worth looking over.
2007 ADA Sample Test-- I attempted some of these problems before I even began studying and found it difficult. I retook it recently and as others have said, it's just hilariously easy. For the most part it's not even close to the real thing, but the OC was similar and the QR was very, very comparable. It's worth looking into, and I will say that one or two questions from my test were taken, seemingly verbatim, from the 2007 sample...

How I studied by section:

Bio: For bio I used Kaplan, Cliffs, Destroyer and datQvault. I studied biology far more than any other subject for a few reasons. For one, everyone always says how random the bio is on the DAT and I wanted to make sure I was prepared for anything. I also actually didn't mind studying bio as much as the other subjects because a lot of it is pretty interesting (BUT NOT THE PLANTS). For the first month I just read through Kaplan and Cliffs twice, making sure I fully understood every single concept in the book. I found that once I could explain it to someone else (except I would just sit and lecture to myself because I've had no friends for 8 weeks) I was good. I didn't skip anything. If I felt like the books didn't cover enough, or if I still had questions, I would refer to Wikipedia and YouTube (there are some awesome videos out there that make confusing concepts graspable). In the second month I went through the entire Destroyer twice, again, making sure I fully understood the answers to all the questions (not just the ones I missed). After the second run through, I reworked any questions I missed for a third time. I took datQvault tests about every other day for the last few weeks. The day before the test I spent a few hours thoroughly looking over Alan's notes just to refresh everything.

GC: I tutor chem 1 and that was extremely useful for retaining everything since I'm constantly teaching it to other people. Chemistry has always been interesting for me but I had a really bad chem 2 teacher (she made the course too easy; didn't present all the material she was supposed to). I was pretty shocked at how much material from that course I had never even seen before. I learned everything I needed to know from Chad and by the end of the semester, despite my inability to do math, I was tutoring chem 1 and 2 . Last four weeks I did Destroyer in the same fashion as bio and I took all datQvault tests. Those tests are GOOD practice! I'm surprised that more people don't comment on the quality of those questions for subjects other than bio. Like I said, a couple have errors, but they eerily resembled the difficulty from my DAT.

OC: I love organic and I'm much more comfortable with it than I am with GC (no numbers). I was actually taking orgo 2 this semester while studying for the DAT, so everything was still very very current during the review. Chad presents pretty much every reaction you should be familiar with and he warns you about all the often overlooked things they might use to trip you up. I spent the last four weeks doing the same as I did for GC. It's worth noting that OC was by far the hardest section in Destroyer for me and I missed more of those problems than any other section . But I did the problems and learned from them. I looked through the roadmaps on occasion so I didn't forget anything and skimmed over them once more right before my test. The qvault tests were good practice and were more difficult than the real thing.

PAT: I just used CDP. I thought this would be my best section before I even started studying for anything because I'm pretty good at visual/spacial problems. I took my first test cold, ran out of time and got a 14 with the last two sections completely unanswered. It took me until test 4 to be able to finish one time, but I was still awful at hole punches and pattern folding. Then I discovered the grid method and hole punches became a joke. I never got great at pattern folding (the shaded patterns anyway) but I did the best I could by just trying to mentally fold it. My absolute highest CDP score in all 10 tests was only a 23 so it definitely prepared me well.

RC: lolz. I did not study for this. I did one qvault test two days before my test date and it went pretty well. I've heard RC isn't all that bad so I didn't put much effort into it. I don't recommend doing this as I was putting a lot on the line by not practicing and just hoping for good passages (please no piano, please no physics!).

QR: Guys. Did I mention I'm bad at math? I was really, really unprepared. Like I said, I was frustrated by MATH Destroyer so I got all my QR practice from qvault and I just prayed the questions would be similar in difficulty. I didn't start studying QR until maybe 2 weeks before the exam, and I memorized the 4 big trig identities the day before my test.

As for the test...

Bio: I was actually shocked with my score. I really wanted to do well on bio because I put so much time into it. There were definitely a few very tough questions that I was unsure of my answer but I just narrowed it down and made the best choice I could. I don't recall seeing any question that I wasn't familiar with the information. I understood what every question wanted from me and I'm really glad I used the resources I did. The questions are indeed broad as many say, because biology is an enormous science, so it's important to have a huge exposure to the many things they can throw at you. That said, I wouldn't be so sure that only learning the big picture is the best approach. I think cramming so many details into my head really saved me in a few cases today. Not because the question directly asks you for a very specific answer, but that the details kind of help glue all the pieces together and makes the big picture clearer, if that makes any sense. Even still, I had talked myself into thinking I did really poorly because I was unsure of a few and didn't have time to review them.

GC: Easier than Destroyer for sure, but actually a little harder than I anticipated. Pay attention to things Chad tells you about "exceptions to the rule," because the test writers are definitely aware that many students will fall for tricky questions (I fell for a very tricky question and confirmed it when I came home and googled ). I actually thought my GC would be my highest score because it's so ingrained in my brain at this point from a year of tutoring but a few of those questions threw me off.

OC: lol. This section was really easy. I am a very slow test taker so I only had about 20 minutes left to finish this section and I was just flying through it. Not to get anyone's hopes up but if you can manage Chad and Destroyer, you'll be golden. It was like I had been training for 8 weeks doing stadiums with 30lb weights on each ankle just to walk up a small staircase on test day.

PAT: A lot of people here seem to agree that keyholes are a lot harder on the real thing but I didn't really think they were much different. You have to pay a bit closer attention to detail and orientation but CDP was pretty accurate. TFE was almost exactly like CDP. Angles, I felt were actually harder. I felt like I was just guessing on about 7 of the 15. I was also panicking because I was behind on time but still kept spending way too long on each question and the clock pressure was getting to me. Hole punching was much easier than CDP (the folds were really simple) but I did get TWO 1/3 folds which I had never seen before and they slowed me down a little. Cube structures were smaller than what you see in CDP; mine did have some tricky hidden blocks, so be careful. I got to pattern folding with 18 minutes left which is the most time I've ever had remaining at that point (it was either the adrenaline or the easy keyholes), so I was excited! And then I saw the pattern folding. I'm usually good with the shape folding and bad with the shading. The pattern folding on the DAT consisted of very complex shapes with shading. One pattern folded into a sphere which was just blowing my mind for the 3 minutes I stared at it with a sad glaze over my eyes. I was hoping to revisit some of my angles since I made it to the end so quickly (by my standards) but I was stuck on pattern folding until my time ran out Pattern folding was definitely the biggest deviation from CDP for me. I was expecting an 18 or 19 from this so I guess I pulled it out with good guesses on the angles.

RC: Like I said, I didn't really study this... I didn't know what to expect and I was just banking on getting easy passages. I am a very slow reader, and I'm not one of those people that's actually really brilliant and just says they're bad at stuff--I really am an agonizingly slow reader and English is my first language. I did do the one qvault practice test two days before and that taught me that I am not a fast enough reader to read the whole passage. So what I did was read the first two paragraphs, then skim through the whole thing just trying to make mental notes of what each paragraph talked about, and read a little of the last paragraph. That gave me a taste of the author's tone, and then I just searched and destroyed like a champion. I took too long on the first passage so I went a bit faster on the second one, but I still only had 15 minutes left to do the entire 3rd passage. The third one was a topic that was familiar to me from anatomy class thankfully so I could answer some of the questions from past knowledge. It was also interesting stuff (the first two weren't) and I didn't have a hard time staying focused even with cutting the time so close. I feel guilty recommending the S&D method for this section (it kind of feels like "beating" the test rather than "taking" the test) but I honestly feel like it's a waste of time to thoroughly read the passage. The questions were pretty specific and they're things I would have no chance of remembering from a single read; I would have been searching with or without reading it first... But do what works for you!

QR: I was most nervous about this section but at this point I was convinced I had bombed the PAT and had also screwed up my bio, so I kind of just let loose and did my thing. I almost always run out of time on the qvault tests--my strategy is always to skip the wordy problems and do the ones that I can figure out quickly, but I always end up sitting on word problems for 2-3 minutes because I'm just so darn sure I'll figure it out if I just have a few more seconds (I usually don't figure it out). On the actual test I made sure to skip any question that didn't ring a bell immediately. There were a very good number of questions just asking to evaluate an algebraic expression or pick the largest value (hello calculator abuse). I also had 2-3 trig questions which all used the identities I memorized the day before the test, so that was definitely a solid decision. It's worth noting that when I took the QR section today, it felt like I was just taking a qvault test--it really was that similar. Before the test I was expecting a 17 on QR (and just hoping I didn't get a 16 or below) because I've read so many horror stories about how similar it is to MATH Destroyer. I finished with about 20 secs remaining and I actually felt like I did well enough to pull a 19-20, so no complaints from me.

If there's one thing I've learned through this process it's that if you want something bad enough, you'll do what it takes to get there. I have never committed so much effort to anything in my life. My overall GPA is only a 3.1 and my science GPA is a 3.5; my father killed himself shortly before I went off to my university and it caused a world of destruction to my academic motivation and I bombed the entire year of classes by just not attending. I hope the adcoms will be able to look past that first year, especially since I've maintained a very strong GPA since. Even still, going into this process I knew I would have to kill the DAT to really stand out next to my low GPA. Hopefully things work out, and I wish every one of you the very best of luck with your DAT and beyond