- Joined
- Jun 16, 2012
- Messages
- 13
- Reaction score
- 0
PAT: 24 (97.2)
QR: 23 (97.0)
RC: 25 (97.2)
BIO: 23 (96.1)
GC: 24 (96.1)
OC: 29 (99.3)
TS: 24 (98.6)
AA: 25 (99.8)
Hello all!
I just took my DAT yesterday and overall, I was in disbelieve and am very happy with my scores!
I had to do well to make up for my below-average GPA.
Here is my breakdown!
MATERIALS:
BIO: Campbell's, Destroyer, Princeton's
GC: Chad's Videos, Destroyer
OC: Destroyer, KBB
PAT: CDP, KBB
RC: (just Topscore)
QR: Destroyer, KBB
PRACTICE TESTS:
KBB:
PAT / BIO / GC / OC / RC / QR
25 / 18 / 18 / 25 / 22 / 24
Topscore: PAT / BIO / GC / OC / RC / QR
Test #1: 23 / 18 / 19 / 18 / 21 / 22
Test #2: --- / 21 / --- / --- / 20 / ---
(Note: dashes mean I didn't do them. I also didn't have time to do anything from Topscore Test #3.)
I took my practice tests throughout the week before my test. Also I'm not going to lie, my practice tests were a bit of a downer because I was shooting for 20+ on everything. I took too much time on GC and also ran out of time on RC and QR, but finished them with overtime anyways and calculated these score with the extra time included. This helped me assess my timing and better my time management on the real DAT.
CDP: 23 / 22 / 25 / 23 / 26 (only did tests 1-5)
STUDYING:
(Studying time: 2 months)
PAT:
First I used KBB to get familiar with the type of PAT questions. KBB is great for starting because their questions are ridiculously easy. Next I bought CDP and started doing the practice mode problems first. I started doing the CDP's practice tests through out the last month of studying. Also, I would not recommend going through Topscore's PAT section because it has terrible graphics and outdated pixelations. CDP is definitely the way to go if you want to practice PAT because their format is almost exactly like the real test.
BIO:
For Bio, I first went over Campbell's accompaniment study guide and used the Textbook as a reference. Then I started doing Destroyer, but I only did about half of the Bio on Destroyer before my test date came
, though I would've done more if I had more time. I also didn't bother to memorize any of the weird phyla or any of the diseases that were present in Destroyer. Nonetheless, I think Destroyer and Topscore are the best materials to study with, although I didn't really check out any of Chad's Bio videos or look in KBB's Bio section.
GC:
For GC, I watched all of the Chad's GC videos and took notes. He is great at explaining things and also tells you what you need to memorize for the real thing, which helped a lot. After Chad's videos, I started doing Destroyer. GC was the only section in Destroyer that I actually finished.
OC:
OC is probably my strongest science subject, so I wasn't too worried about it. I went over KBB's OC section, but I didn't find it to be too helpful. KBB was definitely missing a lot of key things you needed to know, such as relative boiling point or reactivities, etc. They also kind of expected you to know most of the reactions and were just stating them out, rather than trying to teach it to you. I started doing Destroyer after that and, again, I didn't finish and did about 80% of the problems because of my horrible time management. Also just noting that I did not memorize the roadmaps in Destroyer.
RC:
First off, I wanna say that my reading skills are terrible and I am a super slow reader. Secondly, I had no idea how to study for RC so I kind of just put it off until literally three days before my test date, when I did my first RC section in the KBB practice test. Honestly, I think I got lucky on my RC section because my second passage was not very scientific at all.
QR:
I have a pretty strong background in algebra and geometry, so I didn't worry too much about this section. The only thing I had to brush up on was trigonometry, I think. I went through KBB's QR section, which was very short. Then I started doing Destroyer, but I stopped because I was getting a pretty good amount of them right and wanted to do more Bio.
TEST DAY:
PAT:
Keyhole on the real PAT was definitely A LOT harder than anything I have ever encountered in CDP, Topscore, or KBB. I had to spend more time than I planned to get through this section. And I don't know if it's just me, but I felt like the lengths of the sides were all off compared to my answer choices. I usually whip through CDP's keyholes like nothing, so this section tripped me up the most.
TFE was a bit harder than CDP and Topscore, but other than my brain fart during this section, it wasn't too bad.
Angles section is very similar to CDP, if not a little easier.
Holepunching was also harder than CDP, i thought. There were a couple funky folds that were questionable, which took me some extra time to look at.
Cube counting is the easiest section for me. I had no trouble zooming through this section. The only thing that might've thrown me off was that the cubes were really big.
Pattern folding is also similar to CDP, with a few exceptional questions being very tricky.
Overall, I had a good amount of extra time left over on the PAT and I got to go back through all my marked questions and count all my cubes again.
BIO:
I had alot of conceptual questions and functional questions. I also thanked God when I didn't see any random phylum or disease questions. I also didn't have any ecto/meso/endoderm questions, which was kind of weird. Oh, and I didn't have any lab questions either, which was awesome because I intended to study them but I think I forgot.
GC:
I thought I would spend the most time in this section, so I made sure I went through Bio a bit fast. However, there weren't as much calculations as shown in Destroyer and Topscore, so I actually finished this section pretty quick, too. There was no lab questions in here.
OC:
OC was super duper easy for me. There weren't any complicated reaction problems and I thought the trick they tried to put in there was pretty easy to spot out. I had a couple lab question, one of which I did not know, so definitely brush up on that because I feel like GC and OC will have the most probability of having lab questions.
RC:
For RC, one of my main goals was not to run out of time, so I marked and skipped a lot of questions that I couldn't search and destroyer immediately. I didn't bother reading the whole passage through, because I read pretty slow, so it would've only hurt my time management. I spent almost exactly 20 minutes on the first two passages and had about 3 minutes left to just go through all my marked questions again and try to guess on a bunch of them. I didn't feel too great about this section, but I must've guessed really well, because, honestly, I wasn't expecting to get the score I did.
QR:
My only problem I knew I had for math (and GC) was that I hate skipping questions because I want to go through everything in one go. However, I said to myself that I would just skip all the ones I thought would take long. I pretty much marked all the trig questions without even looking at them and saved them for last like they were peas on my dinner plate. I love geometry, but I was sad that I only saw about 3 geometry questions. I had a handful of algebra questions and calculating prices and money values. I was thankful to have finished the QR section with just enough time to finish all the questions.
Hope this helps and good luck everyone!
I'll be happy to answer any questions below!
QR: 23 (97.0)
RC: 25 (97.2)
BIO: 23 (96.1)
GC: 24 (96.1)
OC: 29 (99.3)
TS: 24 (98.6)
AA: 25 (99.8)
Hello all!
I just took my DAT yesterday and overall, I was in disbelieve and am very happy with my scores!
I had to do well to make up for my below-average GPA.
Here is my breakdown!
MATERIALS:
BIO: Campbell's, Destroyer, Princeton's
GC: Chad's Videos, Destroyer
OC: Destroyer, KBB
PAT: CDP, KBB
RC: (just Topscore)
QR: Destroyer, KBB
PRACTICE TESTS:
KBB:
PAT / BIO / GC / OC / RC / QR
25 / 18 / 18 / 25 / 22 / 24
Topscore: PAT / BIO / GC / OC / RC / QR
Test #1: 23 / 18 / 19 / 18 / 21 / 22
Test #2: --- / 21 / --- / --- / 20 / ---
(Note: dashes mean I didn't do them. I also didn't have time to do anything from Topscore Test #3.)
I took my practice tests throughout the week before my test. Also I'm not going to lie, my practice tests were a bit of a downer because I was shooting for 20+ on everything. I took too much time on GC and also ran out of time on RC and QR, but finished them with overtime anyways and calculated these score with the extra time included. This helped me assess my timing and better my time management on the real DAT.
CDP: 23 / 22 / 25 / 23 / 26 (only did tests 1-5)
STUDYING:
(Studying time: 2 months)
PAT:
First I used KBB to get familiar with the type of PAT questions. KBB is great for starting because their questions are ridiculously easy. Next I bought CDP and started doing the practice mode problems first. I started doing the CDP's practice tests through out the last month of studying. Also, I would not recommend going through Topscore's PAT section because it has terrible graphics and outdated pixelations. CDP is definitely the way to go if you want to practice PAT because their format is almost exactly like the real test.
BIO:
For Bio, I first went over Campbell's accompaniment study guide and used the Textbook as a reference. Then I started doing Destroyer, but I only did about half of the Bio on Destroyer before my test date came
, though I would've done more if I had more time. I also didn't bother to memorize any of the weird phyla or any of the diseases that were present in Destroyer. Nonetheless, I think Destroyer and Topscore are the best materials to study with, although I didn't really check out any of Chad's Bio videos or look in KBB's Bio section.GC:
For GC, I watched all of the Chad's GC videos and took notes. He is great at explaining things and also tells you what you need to memorize for the real thing, which helped a lot. After Chad's videos, I started doing Destroyer. GC was the only section in Destroyer that I actually finished.
OC:
OC is probably my strongest science subject, so I wasn't too worried about it. I went over KBB's OC section, but I didn't find it to be too helpful. KBB was definitely missing a lot of key things you needed to know, such as relative boiling point or reactivities, etc. They also kind of expected you to know most of the reactions and were just stating them out, rather than trying to teach it to you. I started doing Destroyer after that and, again, I didn't finish and did about 80% of the problems because of my horrible time management. Also just noting that I did not memorize the roadmaps in Destroyer.
RC:
First off, I wanna say that my reading skills are terrible and I am a super slow reader. Secondly, I had no idea how to study for RC so I kind of just put it off until literally three days before my test date, when I did my first RC section in the KBB practice test. Honestly, I think I got lucky on my RC section because my second passage was not very scientific at all.
QR:
I have a pretty strong background in algebra and geometry, so I didn't worry too much about this section. The only thing I had to brush up on was trigonometry, I think. I went through KBB's QR section, which was very short. Then I started doing Destroyer, but I stopped because I was getting a pretty good amount of them right and wanted to do more Bio.
TEST DAY:
PAT:
Keyhole on the real PAT was definitely A LOT harder than anything I have ever encountered in CDP, Topscore, or KBB. I had to spend more time than I planned to get through this section. And I don't know if it's just me, but I felt like the lengths of the sides were all off compared to my answer choices. I usually whip through CDP's keyholes like nothing, so this section tripped me up the most.
TFE was a bit harder than CDP and Topscore, but other than my brain fart during this section, it wasn't too bad.
Angles section is very similar to CDP, if not a little easier.
Holepunching was also harder than CDP, i thought. There were a couple funky folds that were questionable, which took me some extra time to look at.
Cube counting is the easiest section for me. I had no trouble zooming through this section. The only thing that might've thrown me off was that the cubes were really big.
Pattern folding is also similar to CDP, with a few exceptional questions being very tricky.
Overall, I had a good amount of extra time left over on the PAT and I got to go back through all my marked questions and count all my cubes again.
BIO:
I had alot of conceptual questions and functional questions. I also thanked God when I didn't see any random phylum or disease questions. I also didn't have any ecto/meso/endoderm questions, which was kind of weird. Oh, and I didn't have any lab questions either, which was awesome because I intended to study them but I think I forgot
.GC:
I thought I would spend the most time in this section, so I made sure I went through Bio a bit fast. However, there weren't as much calculations as shown in Destroyer and Topscore, so I actually finished this section pretty quick, too. There was no lab questions in here.
OC:
OC was super duper easy for me. There weren't any complicated reaction problems and I thought the trick they tried to put in there was pretty easy to spot out. I had a couple lab question, one of which I did not know, so definitely brush up on that because I feel like GC and OC will have the most probability of having lab questions.
RC:
For RC, one of my main goals was not to run out of time, so I marked and skipped a lot of questions that I couldn't search and destroyer immediately. I didn't bother reading the whole passage through, because I read pretty slow, so it would've only hurt my time management. I spent almost exactly 20 minutes on the first two passages and had about 3 minutes left to just go through all my marked questions again and try to guess on a bunch of them. I didn't feel too great about this section, but I must've guessed really well, because, honestly, I wasn't expecting to get the score I did.
QR:
My only problem I knew I had for math (and GC) was that I hate skipping questions because I want to go through everything in one go. However, I said to myself that I would just skip all the ones I thought would take long. I pretty much marked all the trig questions without even looking at them and saved them for last like they were peas on my dinner plate. I love geometry, but I was sad that I only saw about 3 geometry questions. I had a handful of algebra questions and calculating prices and money values. I was thankful to have finished the QR section with just enough time to finish all the questions.
Hope this helps and good luck everyone!
I'll be happy to answer any questions below!
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