Okay, so I'll try to break a few things down about how I studied and what I saw on the test. Just remember, what worked for me may not work for you, and I'm sure there's lots of ways to skin this cat.
Anyway, I started studying about 2-3 hours a week in January, and kicked it up to 2-3 hours a day in April, and in June made it about 5 hours a day. I work full time, so I tended to break that up half before work and half after.
Achiever and topscore were priceless for all sections, again I saw several Bio questions from achiever and I beleive some very similair to topscore. Unfortunately, I don't remember to many specific questions for everyone who's asking, and I can barelyremember taking either of the chem sections!
SNS
For SNS I started out with Kaplan, read through the book twice taking notes the second time. Like most I saw that the Bio section wasn't going to be enough, so I supplemented that with Schaum's and then Campbell once I had gone through Schaum's twice. Also invaluable to me were the MCAT Audio Osmosis mp3s, because I'm an auditory learner, and listening to these in the car was great!
For Gchem Kaplan didn't do it for me, so I went to Schaum's and this website (
http://www.wwnorton.com/chemistry/home.htm) which was awesome. Not sure why I was having such trouble with Gchem in my practices considering I just took and aced Pchem.
To be honest, for Ochem I didn't do too much. I've always been sort of an Ochem savant, so after going over Kaplan I just brushed up on substitution and elimination from Bruice, and a few nitpicky things that didn't actually show up on the test.
SNS was crazy for me, it's important to have an answer prepared for the question before you look at the choices, except make sure you're getting the right
type of answer. A few times in Gchem I calculated out an answer when all they wanted was a setup. It was a total blur though, and I finished with 40 minutes to spare, and 2 questions marked, both in Bio, and I'm sure both of the questions I missed.
PAT
My strategy for Pat was to grind practice problems pretty much, just did everything I could get my hands on. I wasn't having trouble with angles, but when I started hearing they were 800000 times harder on the real test I started practicing angles without wearing my glasses
🙂 Personally, the angles were harder on the real thing but they certainly weren't impossible.
Break
Peed like a madman, wolfed down a few handfuls of trail mix, a bottle of vitamin water and a caffeine pill!
RC
Just started answering questions, it wasn't too hard to find them in the excerpts. If I came to a "What's the intent of this passage" type question, I skipped it until I was done and had a better idea of what was going on. Please note though, I'm a ridiculously fast and accurate reader. I finished the section in 25 minutes, went to the bathroom again, talked to the proctors for a minute, then went back over all my answers again
🙂
QR
I didn't really study for QR. Last week a bought a GRE book to look at some geometry stuff I didn't know, but it didn't really help. I was scoring around 20 on practices so I figured that would be alright...
Well, that's pretty much my DAT story, I'm insanely excited abolut my prospects now that I can
sort of compete in a numbers game with other applicants!
Anyway, if anyone has anymore questions just post them in this thread, don't PM me. This way everyone gets to see the answers!
