Wanted to post a breakdown because I read over the breakdown collection pretty obsessively while studying and found it helpful. Also gonna be honest, this is my only chance to brag because no one IRL wants to hear you brag about your test scores except your parents LOL
PAT 23 (BC Average: 21.4)
QR 30 (BC Average: 25)
RC 25 (BC Average: 23.4)
Bio 30 (BC Average: 25.4) (DATQvault Average: 22.6)
GC 26 (BC Average: 24.8)
OC 30 (BC Average: 25.4)
TS 30 (BC Average: 25.2)
AA 28 (BC Average: 24.8)
As you can see my real score was much higher than my BC averages in basically every category. However I think a lot of that is because I was too lazy to thoroughly check my work when I took the tests while studying, which led to a lot of stupid mistakes. IMO the real thing is definitely easier but I wouldn't bank on getting an improved score if you really feel like you're going 100% on the practices.
Schedule: 2 weeks review, with a chapter of Feralis and Cliff's a day, and half a chapter of Chad's in each Chemistry a day. 4 weeks of practice, split up Destroyer so that I did all of the problems over 14 days and threw in one full length BC test a week and a few Math Destroyer and QVault tests in whenever I felt like it. I originally planned to give myself 9 weeks to study but decided to move it up because I felt like I was just spinning my wheels, which I think helped a lot. I think there's definitely a point of diminishing returns where more time will just tire you out.
Bio: About the same as BC in difficulty, questions are worded more like QVault. Most of the questions are easy but there's a few tricky application style questions and 2-3 extremely obscure questions, which I got lucky on because I remembered 1 from Destroyer and 1 from my Bio class in undergrad. Most important section of Destroyer IMO since the breadth of information covered maximizes your chances of getting the crazy obscure questions. Feralis is good for the basics, didn't like Cliff's as much.
GC: Actually thought this was the easiest section overall EXCEPT I got the stupid pipet/buret question! About the same as BC except BC usually had 1-2 tricky/obscure conceptual questions and I don't remember any on mine. Destroyer calculations are way overkill: anything with over 2 variables will have the equation set up in the answer choices. Chad's covers basically everything, Destroyer is good reinforcement of concepts.
OC: Closest science section to BC in terms of question style and difficulty I think. Honestly all of the Destroyer questions involving obscure reactions and reagents are skippable in hindsight, you won't see anything like that. Roadmaps are worth doing repeatedly for practice, but I didn't see anything that wasn't covered in Chad's. Conceptual questions in Destroyer are definitely worth doing though. Overall I think really understanding how the basic reactions work (stereochemistry, rates of rxn, etc.) is more important than knowing every crazy reaction possible. Lab technique is also important for both chems, similar questions show up on both sections for this stuff.
PAT: Pretty much the exact same as BC, except all of the pictures are smudgy and low quality. You should be able to get close to 100% accuracy on Hole Punching and Cube Counting, so I would prioritize that. Then in terms of yield per time invested I think I improved the most on Pattern Folding with practice. TFE was one of the ones I "got" so I didn't spend much time on it. Also good to practice Keyholes on BC since you start to spot the tricks they throw in after a while. Angle Rankings sucks and even during the test I felt like I was mostly making 50/50 guesses, despite practicing it the most by far. Most important thing I would say is to focus on eliminating wrong choices, not finding the right one.
RC: Used to love to read a lot as a kid, still read articles online pretty regularly just as part of my daily routine so I didn't practice this section except for the BC tests. My test was much much easier than BC, most of the questions are direct search and destroy style, and on mine they were also all in order that the info appeared in the passage...so yeah idk if every DAT is like that or I got lucky but that made this section pretty easy.
QR: Took a ton of math courses in undergrad so I didn't feel like I needed to study much for this section either. Did the first 7 BC tests and the first 4 Math Destroyer tests and like 20 problems out of DAT Destroyer. Honestly I think people should shoot for higher scores on this section, it can raise your AA just as much as any of the sciences but has by far the lowest amount of material covered. If you do enough problems you should be able to recognize the type of problem on sight and convert it into an algebraic expression, which will solve 80% of the problems. The rest are geometry, stats, and probability, which are usually just plug and chug into a memorized formula. Chad's videos are good because he goes over every major problem type, his QR quizzes are the only ones that are actually similar to the real DAT also IMO so definitely use those if you need them.
Anyways, pretty ecstatic with my score and definitely glad to be done. This forum is a great resource and I wouldn't have scored nearly as well without it. Hope this helps people out.
PAT 23 (BC Average: 21.4)
QR 30 (BC Average: 25)
RC 25 (BC Average: 23.4)
Bio 30 (BC Average: 25.4) (DATQvault Average: 22.6)
GC 26 (BC Average: 24.8)
OC 30 (BC Average: 25.4)
TS 30 (BC Average: 25.2)
AA 28 (BC Average: 24.8)
As you can see my real score was much higher than my BC averages in basically every category. However I think a lot of that is because I was too lazy to thoroughly check my work when I took the tests while studying, which led to a lot of stupid mistakes. IMO the real thing is definitely easier but I wouldn't bank on getting an improved score if you really feel like you're going 100% on the practices.
Schedule: 2 weeks review, with a chapter of Feralis and Cliff's a day, and half a chapter of Chad's in each Chemistry a day. 4 weeks of practice, split up Destroyer so that I did all of the problems over 14 days and threw in one full length BC test a week and a few Math Destroyer and QVault tests in whenever I felt like it. I originally planned to give myself 9 weeks to study but decided to move it up because I felt like I was just spinning my wheels, which I think helped a lot. I think there's definitely a point of diminishing returns where more time will just tire you out.
Bio: About the same as BC in difficulty, questions are worded more like QVault. Most of the questions are easy but there's a few tricky application style questions and 2-3 extremely obscure questions, which I got lucky on because I remembered 1 from Destroyer and 1 from my Bio class in undergrad. Most important section of Destroyer IMO since the breadth of information covered maximizes your chances of getting the crazy obscure questions. Feralis is good for the basics, didn't like Cliff's as much.
GC: Actually thought this was the easiest section overall EXCEPT I got the stupid pipet/buret question! About the same as BC except BC usually had 1-2 tricky/obscure conceptual questions and I don't remember any on mine. Destroyer calculations are way overkill: anything with over 2 variables will have the equation set up in the answer choices. Chad's covers basically everything, Destroyer is good reinforcement of concepts.
OC: Closest science section to BC in terms of question style and difficulty I think. Honestly all of the Destroyer questions involving obscure reactions and reagents are skippable in hindsight, you won't see anything like that. Roadmaps are worth doing repeatedly for practice, but I didn't see anything that wasn't covered in Chad's. Conceptual questions in Destroyer are definitely worth doing though. Overall I think really understanding how the basic reactions work (stereochemistry, rates of rxn, etc.) is more important than knowing every crazy reaction possible. Lab technique is also important for both chems, similar questions show up on both sections for this stuff.
PAT: Pretty much the exact same as BC, except all of the pictures are smudgy and low quality. You should be able to get close to 100% accuracy on Hole Punching and Cube Counting, so I would prioritize that. Then in terms of yield per time invested I think I improved the most on Pattern Folding with practice. TFE was one of the ones I "got" so I didn't spend much time on it. Also good to practice Keyholes on BC since you start to spot the tricks they throw in after a while. Angle Rankings sucks and even during the test I felt like I was mostly making 50/50 guesses, despite practicing it the most by far. Most important thing I would say is to focus on eliminating wrong choices, not finding the right one.
RC: Used to love to read a lot as a kid, still read articles online pretty regularly just as part of my daily routine so I didn't practice this section except for the BC tests. My test was much much easier than BC, most of the questions are direct search and destroy style, and on mine they were also all in order that the info appeared in the passage...so yeah idk if every DAT is like that or I got lucky but that made this section pretty easy.
QR: Took a ton of math courses in undergrad so I didn't feel like I needed to study much for this section either. Did the first 7 BC tests and the first 4 Math Destroyer tests and like 20 problems out of DAT Destroyer. Honestly I think people should shoot for higher scores on this section, it can raise your AA just as much as any of the sciences but has by far the lowest amount of material covered. If you do enough problems you should be able to recognize the type of problem on sight and convert it into an algebraic expression, which will solve 80% of the problems. The rest are geometry, stats, and probability, which are usually just plug and chug into a memorized formula. Chad's videos are good because he goes over every major problem type, his QR quizzes are the only ones that are actually similar to the real DAT also IMO so definitely use those if you need them.
Anyways, pretty ecstatic with my score and definitely glad to be done. This forum is a great resource and I wouldn't have scored nearly as well without it. Hope this helps people out.
. It's the internet you never know with ppl xDD. Feralis 2.0 should have evidence just saying.
