But as far as studying wooo let me tell you first of all never give up on this fricken thing and dedicate yourself 100% to this test. I am by no means a genius and would have been happy just getting an 18 and hopefully making it into my state school. I guess what I'm saying is hard work really does pay off in the end, and no matter what people tell you or how many times you fail, just get back up again and go harder.
Bio- Started with the general Kaplan book to refresh my memory and took copious notes so I could reference things and review. Moved on to destroyer went through destroyer biology probably 3 or 4 times, took every single Qvault bio test and reviewed every single test leading up to my exam later. Went through the first 8 tests in Crack DAT biology and then took every Bootcamp biology test once a month prior to my exam and again a week prior. Lastly, I went through feralis notes once, wrote down all of my weak concept areas and reviewed them two days prior to my DAT by using control+F key to scan through feralis.
Essentially in my opinion… Qvault>Bootcamp+Destroyer>Feralis>Crack DAT>Kaplan. ALL Combined=Success, but many long hours of grueling study(if you want it bad enough this doesn't matter) The DAT testers are tricky bastards they won't present you with normal questions, a lot of application biology and it can be frustrating. Feralis, Bootcamp,
Detsroyer and Qvault will send a big… Child please (chad ochocinco voice) to these testers.
Organic- Destroyer is the bees knees and knowing the roadmaps will help you destroy this section literally. Most reactions on the DAT are straightforward and plain as day and studying destroyer helped me tremendously. I also used Bootcamp, Crack DAT, and took kaplan notes for this section as well. Destroyer>Bootcamp>Crack DAT>Kaplan.
Gen Chem- Same as organic materials and I also used Chads videos, went through every video took tons of notes on his videos, reviewed the notes three times and took all of the quizzes three times. I'm not great at Gen Chem so chads really helped me out on this section. In my opinion you can fly through Bio and Orgo on the actual DAT. My strategy was go through Biology skip to organic and then finish off with Gen Chem. I got to the Gen Chem section with 54 minutes left which really allowed me time to think things through and decipher problems.
Chads>Destroyer>Crack DAT>Bootcamp>Kaplan (in my humble opinion)
Reading Comprehension- I read very fast got a 36 on my act in high school for reading so I barely studied for this section. I think I took 2 Crack DAT reading tests and got 24's so I figured whatever. My strategy has always been read the entire passage, answer everything I can from memory where im 100% positive on the question and if I'm not positive go back search and destroy that mother. I'll be honest though hope for a passage with a subject you are familiar with because this can go a long way and also be super detrimental if you aren't familiar with it. I'll give you and example, my first passage was on fiber optics (whoa no idea what was going on and got freaked out because I was reading nonsense), second passage was prions (boom know prions, studied prions, hope I don't get prions for real though yuhhh knoww. I could literally have answered 3/4 the questions without reading. So essentially if you've always been good at reading no worries here this will be no different don't sweat it. If you're not good go through Crack DAT software for reading perfect your skills and don't sweat it.
Quantitative Reasoning - I blow at math seriously blow haha don't take any advice from me and if you do then god help you. I had math destroyer, regular destroyer, Crack DAT, Kaplan all the above but I know my weaknesses and decided not to focus on math because frankly I would have gotten a 16 if I studied my ass off and a 16 if I didn't. My overall idea was why waste time spending time things I will never figure out when I could be perfecting other sections. So all I did was memorize the equations, trig functions, and some algebra and geometry rules and went with the flow. I went through the test marking and skipping every word problem that looked tough and answered all algebra and calculations problems I could, then went back and tried some marked problems. Again if you are still reading this, may god have mercy on your soul.
PAT- This takes practice and time, more practice, more time, then once your down you can sprinkle and dust on a little extra practice and time. Seriously though this section needs the most preparation in my opinion outside of Biology because you just simply aren't familiar with these types of problems. I used crack DAT PAT went through every test 1-10 twice or three times, untimed first and reviewed every single answer until I knew why it was right and why it was wrong, and then went through the tests again timed to work on pacing. Use crack DAT to get a handle on the questions but not to do well on the PAT!!!! I repeat using only CRACK DAT PAT WILL CAUSE YOU DOOM! Why? because the real pat is all about proportions and correct orientation and lengths rather than pure shapes as crack dat is. Once you finish with this move on to bootcamp and go through every single test and and do the same thing reviewing and understanding why each answer is right and wrong. Bootcamp is in my opinion the most similar to the real thing because it focuses on the proportions, however these are the only two materials I used and you can do just fine studying these. Side note make sure you find the LOS method for hole punching will get you 15/15 every time, and perfect cube counting. right off the bat you know you got 30/30 right. Keyholes will get better and be perfected by the time you are done with bootcamp, and T.F.E will start to seem like childs play. In my opinion it is super helpful to go through the answer videos for T.F.E. on Crack DAT PAT the girl explains it super well and after you have done this you'll start picking up on T.F.E. (same with pattern folding). Take it from someone who had no idea what was going on for a while in pattern folding or T.F.E. and was a lost soul… practice and exposure is everything for these two sections. My strategy on the real test was this: go through keyhole and TFE and skip angles right to hole punching and cube counting where you can save loads of time. Get to pattern folding with like 23 minutes left go slow and try to figure each one out to the best you can. I left pattern folding with 8 minutes and then just fly through the angles section. I did this because I would get stuck looking at angles for way longer than I should have and then not be able to finish and get to pattern questions I could have gotten right. Angles will always come down to two really similar choices and going with your gut with limited time is the best strategy for this because your gut feeling is usually the right one and you don't over think these problems you just do.
All in all for anyone who reads this I would like to point out again I have always studied my ass off because frankly I don't have that natural ability to just know things like some people do. I studied hard for three months. 7 hour days at the library took weekends off sometimes, chilled, got back to studying my ass off and hoped that preparation would take me where I wanted to go. My main point is never underestimate yourself if you put in the work, don't listen to the naysayers, the people who everything comes easy too and get 25's because it is their god given right and why are you even trying. These are distractions and there can be no distractions when trying to give a child please to this test. This test material isn't just god given knowledge for most and I think my work and a lot of others in this forum are a testament to that fact. Work hard. Work harder. never give up no matter how many times you fall. Then tell yourself you can only do what you can do and preparation prevents poor performance. Uhhhh roll tide?
Peace Yall
