DAT done 9/8/08 - advice

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sunshine222

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Score breakdown -

PA - 20
QR - 18
RC - 30
Bio - 29
GC - 27
OC - 26
TS - 28
AA - 26

I've got to say, I did a LOT better than I was expecting - I didn't use topscore or crackDAT so I was a little nervous after seeing all the materials that some other people were using. I took the Kaplan review course (never went to class but studied the book carefully and did all the online materials. Made tons of flashcards. I also used my old bio textbook and the ExamCrackers books for bio, chem and ochem as well as the Cliffs AP bio review. Here's a more detailed breakdown:

PA -
Keyholes are my weakness, I'm just bad at them. They were slightly harder than most of kaplan's online material, although I felt like it was hard not because the structures were complicated (they weren't as bad as some of the ones I'd seen in Kaplan) but because the answer choices were a lot more similar to each other.
Top/Front was comparable to kaplan; cube counting was easier (fewer cubes to count) and paper folding was a lot harder; that's usually the one I have the least trouble with but I really had to work at it. And angle ranking was harder than Kaplan (as some people have noted) but a lot of times you could just do biggest/smallest and narrow it down that way.

QR -
Really, really tough. I'm usually pretty good at math but it seemed pretty much impossible to me - I guessed a LOT of these because I had about 10 minutes left with 15 problems to go still. Every problem pretty much requires thinking and setting up equations, you can't just plug stuff into a formula. Luckily some of them can be guessed just by looking at answer choices - definitely practice using shortcuts because there's no time to do lots of long calculations. Practice permutations/combinations and trig problems, they seem to love those. I consider myself lucky to have gotten an 18 on this section, I was freaking out at the end there.

RC -
This section is the one I always seem to do well with - question difficulty and paragraph length was about what I expected or a little easier. I'm a fast reader and that's a huge advantage when you're skimming these paragraphs trying to find something specific. What I do is read the whole paragraph - actually making myself focus on it instead of just trying to skim through - and make quick notes on what each paragraph is about. That saves time when you're trying to figure out what paragraph you should be looking at to answer a particular question.

BIO-
I studied the most for bio - I made tons of flashcards from the kaplan white book, plus supplemented it with the ExamCrackers bio book, the Cliffs AP book and my bio textbook. Basically went through and read the whole thing, made flashcards on stuff that I thought might be significant. Plus doing the online Kaplan stuff. I felt pretty overprepared for this part, I felt like the DAT was less detailed than the questions that were asked in most of the kaplan materials; I think the DAT detail level was comparable to questions in the Cliff's AP review book.

CHEM, OCHEM -
I used (again) kaplan pretty much exclusively for the material, plus some online research about concepts I didn't understand. I went through the ExamCracker's 1001 questions for chem and ochem and tried to do every problem; that really helped because they're largely conceptual and showed me what concepts I was weak on. I'd definitely recommend those books. I don't think I saw anything on the DAT that wasn't covered in Kaplan though, but in chem/ochem you want to do as many different practice problems as possible.

If anyone has any questions feel free to ask - I used this board a lot to prepare myself mentally so hopefully this helps someone else!

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Achilles - I don't even remember what my paragraphs were anymore, I think all the DAT-related information left my brain about an hour after I finished!

I'm interested to see what you guys think about this; my GPA is super low (2.94) because I didn't give a crap about my grades in college and never went to class. After college I went back and took my sciences (physics, biochem, bio, micro) and have a 3.96 in all those, but it probably won't impact my overall GPA very much. I shadowed all last year (while taking those classes) and I'm working for an orthodontist now... I have a decent amount of volunteering.

Also have a couple of.. quirks.. in my transcript like an academic suspension for failing physics my sophomore year. (Like I said, I was an idiot!). But I did start a business in college, too, so that might help a little.

At this point I think it's basically a crapshoot for me.. especially since I'm applying late in the cycle. I'm only applying to U of Washington this cycle. What do you guys think? Do schools even consider applicants with sub-3.0 GPA's?

Did you check out the stats for Washington?
I think you have a good shot there, but you have a lot of factors working against you.
 
good lord! you pwned it. and your worst score is what.. the least important score? or at least that's what i heard.

i hope i do A LOT better than I expect also :rolleyes:
 
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I would say with the upward trend in grades and those DAT scores you should still get in, but it might not hurt to add more schools 'just in case.' Great job man :)
 
....I'm only applying to U of Washington this cycle. What do you guys think? Do schools even consider applicants with sub-3.0 GPA's?

Wow someone's gotta give you a chance with those DAT scores. Your scores are probably the best i've seen here on SDN and probably one of the best, if not, the best in the nation - including better than that korean kid who was in the newspaper for getting the "highest score" in the nation. It's such a korean thing to do - to brag through the media about that kinda stuff.
 
Haha. What is it with this board and koreans?
I don't have the best scores (someone else got a 27, and one person got a 26 but had everything over 20) - but yeah I feel like I should be able to at least get an interview. And AASDAS recalculated my GPA, it's actually more like 3.17. So that's a little better than 2.94.
 
Haha. What is it with this board and koreans?
I don't have the best scores (someone else got a 27, and one person got a 26 but had everything over 20) - but yeah I feel like I should be able to at least get an interview. And AASDAS recalculated my GPA, it's actually more like 3.17. So that's a little better than 2.94.

Sure but your 26+ in sciences and especially your 30 in RC is not to be messed around with and none of the others had that. An adcom i talked to said it's the most impressive to her if she sees the perfect or extremely high RC than anything else. QR - who cares? PAT - i don't think it matters much as long as you get at least 18, 19. So I vote for you to have the best score on SDN thus far.
 
Well, thanks :) I HAVE been getting the impression from reading SDN that RC is pretty important... interesting, because I would have thought that they'd look most closely at PA or the sciences. But hey, I'm not complaining! It's at least reassuring to know that other people don't think I'm being completely delusional.
 
wow those are amazing scores! congratz on your hard work!:thumbup:

30 on RC... may i ask how you studied and what kind of materials you used to study RC??
 
Thanks :) I didn't really study for RC besides doing the kaplan stuff; I'm not even sure it helped that much. I think its important to do at least 3-4 timed practice tests to get the timing down and to get an idea of the sort of questions they'll be asking; other than that I don't have any very helpful suggestions! It's one of those sections - like QR - that's really hard to study for.
 
Wow someone's gotta give you a chance with those DAT scores. Your scores are probably the best i've seen here on SDN and probably one of the best, if not, the best in the nation - including better than that korean kid who was in the newspaper for getting the "highest score" in the nation. It's such a korean thing to do - to brag through the media about that kinda stuff.

Korean kids at my school are extremely nerdy and not outgoing. One of the Korean fob told me that they are the smartest asian :laugh:
 
Korean kids at my school are extremely nerdy and not outgoing. One of the Korean fob told me that they are the smartest asian :laugh:

D*** koreans. They think they're the best in all of asia. Some even try to claim that sushi is from korea! They steal other foreign foods and claim it's their own! Watch out, they'll start calling pho (a very popular viet noodle soup for those who don't know) - "korean pho".
 
Korean kids at my school are extremely nerdy and not outgoing. One of the Korean fob told me that they are the smartest asian :laugh:

:thumbup: You are right sir! Oh and hey are all the white kids frat boys who are dumb as f**k??


Please. I expected better from a Bruin.

The other guy can keep his sushi and pho. LOL, I'm not sure what that's about...
 
:thumbup: You are right sir! Oh and hey are all the white kids frat boys who are dumb as f**k??


Please. I expected better from a Bruin.

The other guy can keep his sushi and pho. LOL, I'm not sure what that's about...

why so serious
 
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This doesn't prove anything (see above) but whatever. If I was going to make up a score I would have given myself a little boost in PA! Like I said, my GPA sucks so I needed this bad. Thanks for all the congratulations :)

pft it's photoshopped..lol, kidding.

Can you post your kaplan practice test scores? And if the DAT sciences were 100% difficulty level, how would you rank kaplan's practice tests overall?
 
My kaplan access expired so I can't check the scores.. but I scored lower on all their practice tests than on the actual DAT. I think my first one (the diagnostic) was an 18; midterms were 20, 22 and 21. Here's what I was scoring (approximately) in each section:

RC: 24-27
QR: 20-22
PAT: 22-23

I don't remember my science grades well enough to give an exact range; they were nowhere near what I got on the actual test though, maybe 20-22 and slightly higher in bio than gchem and ochem. So definitely don't freak out if your kaplan scores aren't as high as you'd like - as long as you know it cold and have used some other resources for bio (like cliffs AP and campbell's) you'll be fine.
 
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but with a good dat score like that, you should get at least some interviews.
so don't worry;)
well i have my dat soon, have a question for you..
how did you handle timing during practice? did you just have really good foundation that you didnt have to worry about it?
was kaplan the only source you used for PAT?
 
The only areas where I had timing issues were (surprise!) PAT and QR. For PAT I just practiced a bunch of times; I gave myself 15 min for keyhole, 15 for top/front end, 5-10 for angles and cube counting, and whatever was left over for paper folding and review. I was slower on the actual test though, it's harder than kaplan. Wish I'd done some crackDAT.

For QR I TRIED to time myself - giving myself two minutes to solve each kaplan problem - but even that generally wasn't enough time. And that's way more time than you get on the actual DAT. So no good suggestions there, sorry :)

For everything else, just make sure you know the material well enough that you don't have to spend a long time setting up equations / remembering what normality is / etc...
 
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