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I did ok...nothing spectacular. But I'm freaking done. Not retaking, barely had time to study as it is.
Breakdown:
I'm going to make this as detailed as possible - the detailed ones helped me the most.
Study sources:
Bootcamp (10.5/10)
Chad (10/10)
Destroyer/Math Destroyer (bought orgo odyssey, didn't use it) (8/10)
Clif's AP Bio, 3rd edition (9/10)
Princeton Review: Cracking the DAT (6/10)
Big shoutout to Ari, Chad, and Dr. Romano (dingus). Originally, I had started studying in February to take this thing on May 16. This was the Friday two weeks after my Spring classes ended and immediately before my Summer classes began. I started putting in the work, bought Bootcamp, ordered Destroyer, wife rented Princeton Review from Chegg, I ordered Clif's. I knew all the ideal schedules that others had made previously would never apply to me as I never have 8-10 hours/ day to do nothing but study, let alone 10 weeks (looking at you, Ari). I'm a nontrad. I stretch myself far too thin, so I figured I would take 3 months and give myself 3 months at 3/hours a day. Well, that worked for a while, until I started getting tests back in orgo 2 with low C's!!! In an act of panicked desperation, I gave myself an additional month to study, so I could try to salvage my ochem grade (made a B, in large part, due to the ACS ochem final - her tests were stupid hard). I stopped studying for the DAT around mid April. I resumed on May 9 and studied every day until yesterday where I refused to go in bedroom for fear of opening my books. I'd say I only had about 5.5 weeks of real, hardcore studying. Sometimes I'd only get two hours of sleep a night because I have many obligations to attend to.
DAT Day:
Went to bed at around 11:00pm after taking a drive out to the Prometric Center, just so I'd know where to find it (one less thing to worry about the day of). Got up at 6:00am and my wife cooked me egg whites, turkey bacon, and grits (yeah, I'm from the south). Left at around 6:50 and grabbed some Starbucks. Listened to Vampire Weekend on the car ride there so I could sing along (yeah, I'm a dork) and get my mind off of the unspeakable doom that lay ahead (as I saw it). Arrived early (better than being late) and ate a banana and finished my coffee. Walked in at 7:45, guy at the desk was super nice. Gave me a locker and I waited around for maybe 10 mins.
Bio:
Bootcamp scores: 30/24/25/18/27
DAT: 17
Honestly, not sure what the hell happened. I'm a bio major. I was killing it on Destroyer and Bootcamp. I did have to learn A&P from scratch, and I was nervous as hell as the test started, but I am positive I got the first 5 or 6 questions correct. I marked everything I was unsure of and put down my best guess. I'd say I knew about 25 of them, was able to narrow 10 down to two answer choices, and straight guessed on 5. No plant questions (except one photosynthesis), no Hardy-Weinberg, no microscopes, very little ecology.
Gen Chem:
Bootcamp: 16/17/15/21/24
DAT: 21
Uh...dafuq? This was BY FAR my worst section when I was studying. I hadn't touched this stuff in over 2 years. So I spent the most time with it. I guess it paid off. Bootcamp was more difficult than the actual thing. Destroyer was WAY too difficult. I'm really surprised that this was my highest science score. All that time you practice estimating logs in your head? I only had one question on it, but I nailed it thanks to practicing so much on it. I don't think I had a single straight stoichiometric or solubility question. I completely forgot colligative property calculations which is probably one of the ones I missed. Not much calculation, but you need to know a number of definitions and the really conceptual stuff like periodic trends (Ari was right on the money with this observation). Know how to read a set of experiments and determine rate laws. Acid base chemistry, etc.
Orgo:
Bootcamp: 19/25/29/-/-
DAT: 19
I had just taken orgo 2, so I knew this stuff really well. Not surprised by my score, as nothing caught me off guard, but I didn't study as much as I should have. Know names of reactions (aldol condensation, diels-alder, etc). People who have never taken orgo, I have no idea how you do it - more power to ya. Can't really offer much advice here - straight forward section.
Break!!!! Wait, what? Yes, I have a tendency to finish multiple choice tests quickly (not always, as you'll see later) and I finished the SNS portion with 7 minutes to spare. This was after reviewing all my marked questions and changing (mostly bio, probably came back to bite me) answers. Peed, took a sip of water, stretched and resume.
PAT:
Bootcamp: 21/16/19/17/19
DAT: 19
About what I expected, nothing too fancy. One poster mentioned something about a rock shape. I loled (more like a muffled guffaw) as my first shape looked like a freaking rock! I set up my grids for hole punching and charts for cube counting. EVERY PART WAS EASIER THAN BOOTCAMP. I was surprised at how much easier angle ranking (wider angles, sometimes all four were aligned parallel to the bottom of the computer screen!) and TFE (my nemesis) were in comparison to bootcamp. Pattern folding was extremely similar to bootcamp.
Scheduled Break:
Ate a banana, took a five hour energy, drank half a bottle of water, urinated again, ate some peanuts. Got back with 5 minutes remaining - eff it lets do this thang!
RC:
Bootcamp: -/-/-/-/-
DAT: 21
Did not study for this. Not even a little. English is my native tongue and I am literate. Seriously not even sure what the big deal is. 3 articles - 2nd one was super interesting (gecko adhesion). I used search and destroy, but ended up reading the 2nd article because I'm a nerd. Read the whole paragraph for the approximately 2 tone and inference questions in the entire section.
Finished with 10 mins left. Another unscheduled break? You bet ya! The water had somehow gotten through my body (not a single kidney question - I studied the hell outta kidneys!) and I knew I needed focus on QR.
QR:
Bootcamp: 15/17/19/21/17
DAT: 16
I guess I should have expected this, as I didn't do great on Bootcamp, either. There seriously is just not enough time for this section. I thought the questions were easy, but I just started solving them, and realized after the 5th or 6th one that I was taking far too much time (what was I thinking?!) I had already burned 10 minutes of this thing! I'm not bad at math, in fact I have taken a few semesters of calculus. I just like to think it all through and work at my own pace - the DAT just didn't agree. The math on here is simple, it trips me up. The real DAT was much easier than bootcamp, but same style of problems (if that makes any sence), I had 3 or so trig problems (my favorite precalc subject). When I got towards the end I saw I had 10 minutes left and 13 problems remaining, so I scrambled to get them all done, chose a random answer for the last 3 and picked the easiest one to actually attempt to solve, as I only had a minute left. I'm still uncertain as to whether my final answer selection made it in time.
TL;DR: DAT is not fun, isn't that hard, but you need to study and not be nervous (maybe my biggest downfall).
I'm not incredibly impressed with myself, but not that disappointed. These scores are good enough to get me in somewhere, but not Columbia as I was dreaming. Oh, well. It's over now, good riddance and I'm NOT retaking.
Breakdown:
I'm going to make this as detailed as possible - the detailed ones helped me the most.
Study sources:
Bootcamp (10.5/10)
Chad (10/10)
Destroyer/Math Destroyer (bought orgo odyssey, didn't use it) (8/10)
Clif's AP Bio, 3rd edition (9/10)
Princeton Review: Cracking the DAT (6/10)
Big shoutout to Ari, Chad, and Dr. Romano (dingus). Originally, I had started studying in February to take this thing on May 16. This was the Friday two weeks after my Spring classes ended and immediately before my Summer classes began. I started putting in the work, bought Bootcamp, ordered Destroyer, wife rented Princeton Review from Chegg, I ordered Clif's. I knew all the ideal schedules that others had made previously would never apply to me as I never have 8-10 hours/ day to do nothing but study, let alone 10 weeks (looking at you, Ari). I'm a nontrad. I stretch myself far too thin, so I figured I would take 3 months and give myself 3 months at 3/hours a day. Well, that worked for a while, until I started getting tests back in orgo 2 with low C's!!! In an act of panicked desperation, I gave myself an additional month to study, so I could try to salvage my ochem grade (made a B, in large part, due to the ACS ochem final - her tests were stupid hard). I stopped studying for the DAT around mid April. I resumed on May 9 and studied every day until yesterday where I refused to go in bedroom for fear of opening my books. I'd say I only had about 5.5 weeks of real, hardcore studying. Sometimes I'd only get two hours of sleep a night because I have many obligations to attend to.
DAT Day:
Went to bed at around 11:00pm after taking a drive out to the Prometric Center, just so I'd know where to find it (one less thing to worry about the day of). Got up at 6:00am and my wife cooked me egg whites, turkey bacon, and grits (yeah, I'm from the south). Left at around 6:50 and grabbed some Starbucks. Listened to Vampire Weekend on the car ride there so I could sing along (yeah, I'm a dork) and get my mind off of the unspeakable doom that lay ahead (as I saw it). Arrived early (better than being late) and ate a banana and finished my coffee. Walked in at 7:45, guy at the desk was super nice. Gave me a locker and I waited around for maybe 10 mins.
Bio:
Bootcamp scores: 30/24/25/18/27
DAT: 17
Honestly, not sure what the hell happened. I'm a bio major. I was killing it on Destroyer and Bootcamp. I did have to learn A&P from scratch, and I was nervous as hell as the test started, but I am positive I got the first 5 or 6 questions correct. I marked everything I was unsure of and put down my best guess. I'd say I knew about 25 of them, was able to narrow 10 down to two answer choices, and straight guessed on 5. No plant questions (except one photosynthesis), no Hardy-Weinberg, no microscopes, very little ecology.
Gen Chem:
Bootcamp: 16/17/15/21/24
DAT: 21
Uh...dafuq? This was BY FAR my worst section when I was studying. I hadn't touched this stuff in over 2 years. So I spent the most time with it. I guess it paid off. Bootcamp was more difficult than the actual thing. Destroyer was WAY too difficult. I'm really surprised that this was my highest science score. All that time you practice estimating logs in your head? I only had one question on it, but I nailed it thanks to practicing so much on it. I don't think I had a single straight stoichiometric or solubility question. I completely forgot colligative property calculations which is probably one of the ones I missed. Not much calculation, but you need to know a number of definitions and the really conceptual stuff like periodic trends (Ari was right on the money with this observation). Know how to read a set of experiments and determine rate laws. Acid base chemistry, etc.
Orgo:
Bootcamp: 19/25/29/-/-
DAT: 19
I had just taken orgo 2, so I knew this stuff really well. Not surprised by my score, as nothing caught me off guard, but I didn't study as much as I should have. Know names of reactions (aldol condensation, diels-alder, etc). People who have never taken orgo, I have no idea how you do it - more power to ya. Can't really offer much advice here - straight forward section.
Break!!!! Wait, what? Yes, I have a tendency to finish multiple choice tests quickly (not always, as you'll see later) and I finished the SNS portion with 7 minutes to spare. This was after reviewing all my marked questions and changing (mostly bio, probably came back to bite me) answers. Peed, took a sip of water, stretched and resume.
PAT:
Bootcamp: 21/16/19/17/19
DAT: 19
About what I expected, nothing too fancy. One poster mentioned something about a rock shape. I loled (more like a muffled guffaw) as my first shape looked like a freaking rock! I set up my grids for hole punching and charts for cube counting. EVERY PART WAS EASIER THAN BOOTCAMP. I was surprised at how much easier angle ranking (wider angles, sometimes all four were aligned parallel to the bottom of the computer screen!) and TFE (my nemesis) were in comparison to bootcamp. Pattern folding was extremely similar to bootcamp.
Scheduled Break:
Ate a banana, took a five hour energy, drank half a bottle of water, urinated again, ate some peanuts. Got back with 5 minutes remaining - eff it lets do this thang!
RC:
Bootcamp: -/-/-/-/-
DAT: 21
Did not study for this. Not even a little. English is my native tongue and I am literate. Seriously not even sure what the big deal is. 3 articles - 2nd one was super interesting (gecko adhesion). I used search and destroy, but ended up reading the 2nd article because I'm a nerd. Read the whole paragraph for the approximately 2 tone and inference questions in the entire section.
Finished with 10 mins left. Another unscheduled break? You bet ya! The water had somehow gotten through my body (not a single kidney question - I studied the hell outta kidneys!) and I knew I needed focus on QR.
QR:
Bootcamp: 15/17/19/21/17
DAT: 16
I guess I should have expected this, as I didn't do great on Bootcamp, either. There seriously is just not enough time for this section. I thought the questions were easy, but I just started solving them, and realized after the 5th or 6th one that I was taking far too much time (what was I thinking?!) I had already burned 10 minutes of this thing! I'm not bad at math, in fact I have taken a few semesters of calculus. I just like to think it all through and work at my own pace - the DAT just didn't agree. The math on here is simple, it trips me up. The real DAT was much easier than bootcamp, but same style of problems (if that makes any sence), I had 3 or so trig problems (my favorite precalc subject). When I got towards the end I saw I had 10 minutes left and 13 problems remaining, so I scrambled to get them all done, chose a random answer for the last 3 and picked the easiest one to actually attempt to solve, as I only had a minute left. I'm still uncertain as to whether my final answer selection made it in time.
TL;DR: DAT is not fun, isn't that hard, but you need to study and not be nervous (maybe my biggest downfall).
I'm not incredibly impressed with myself, but not that disappointed. These scores are good enough to get me in somewhere, but not Columbia as I was dreaming. Oh, well. It's over now, good riddance and I'm NOT retaking.
Last edited:
Can't wait for the breakdown.
