My areas of weakness. Suggestions?

[NDPitch]

I'm weak in IR spec. For some reason, each problem just looks like a big squiggly line. Even if I remember the stretch positions, it seems like the spectrum is too varied for me to dial in on what kind of molecule it could be.

Top front end. Oh dear. I don't know what it is. I just can't wrap my brain around these things. I feel like just guessing on all of them and doing better on the other sections.

I'm feeling overwhelmed at biology! There's just a never ending slew of material. Especially biological diversity and evolution chapters in Cliff's. Yuck.


Any words of wisdom to help?!

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[LSDP]

For IR spectrum memorize all the strong signals. There are only 5. And then memorize the medium signals. There are like 6. If they give you a graph looks for the strong then medium. For instant c=o is strong at 1710 and if it have two medium peaks at 2710 and 2810 then is an aldehyde. Unfortunately the IR, cnnr, and hnmr are the only thing that only memorization can help.

 

[toothfairy19]

For IR spect just memorize the important signs like already suggested.

For top/front there are some really good posts on SDN that walk you through how to solve it using different techniques. Also just practice with Crack DAT and go through their explanations.

Bio is overwhelming but just keep reading and targeting the topics you struggle with. The more you read and the more practice questions you do the more confident you'll be!

Good luck and don't worry you'll do great!

 

[mario0923]

for IR as the two above said memorize the important peaks there are not that many
carboxylic group, amide, ketone, aldehyde, ester, terminal alkyne, alkene, aromatic, alkane, alcohol
and that is it. with this in you head you can figure out all the functional groups asked in DAT.

for TFE, there are so many different methods proposed by people, try to google the methods. What I do is try to get the 3D picture in my head and narrow down the answer choices according to the image in my head. when I can't figure out the 3D image, I do line counting to narrow down the answer choices.

for biology, in order to get a high score, need to memorize them. if you don't then that is how much you will get on your test. yes you can be lucky and get only the questions that you know or you guess right but I don't know how you will overcome the course load of dental schools....
use flashcards to memorize.

if you need more motivation come and see my breakdown (TS 25 AA 23 PAT 23)
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=927264