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whateveryoulike
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hey guys, for those that didnt read my other thread, I got a perfect score on chem, orgo, and PAT yesterday. I just wanted to give advice on chem and orgo in a thread to bypass PMs ive been getting.
for both sections, I think the best method would be to make sure you have your old orgo and chem text books so that you can use them to review material you dont fully grasp. To determine what material you dont fully grasp, purchase the American Chemical Society's review books for both subjects. ACS has a few diff books so to clarify, these are the thin white books with practice questions (with explanations for the first 10 or so per subject) broken into different subject areas. The reason I recommend this is because the questions in the review books are very similar in style to the questions (per my test experience) found on the actual DAT (and I wouldnt be suprised if ACS is where they outsource the questions from either).
step by step process:
1)go through ACS book and write down your answer choices in a notebook and be organized enough to keep track of which chapter and which subject book the answer choices are from. it is very important to stay organized so you will stay efficient. DO NOT WRITE IN YOUR ACS BOOK! If you are not 100% confident in your answer then put a question mark there and go to the next question. DO NOT MAKE EDUCATED GUESSES! If you get the answer right based on an educated guess, you will be masking a weakness because then you wont review a potential problem area. If there is ANY doubt in your mind AT ANY LEVEL then you should put a question mark for that problem number and move on.
2)once you complete first chapter questions, check your answers and circle in red any question marks or wrong answers. Do this neatly so you can keep track of answers you missed for later reference.
3)if you can clearly determine why you missed it, go to another page in your book and write down review area topics. for example, if you had a problem in chem that asked about vapor pressure above a solution and you missed it because you confused some of the gas properties then you need to objectively ask yourself if it is a specific mistake on your part or an overall uncomfortable feeling with that subject. for example, if you feel uncomfortable with gas properties/laws, dont tell yourself you missed it because of a particular property when the real problem is your much more broad and overall understanding of gases as a whole. the first assumption only requres review of THAT law which may be 1 page in your book. if you are lacking in that overall subject then you are better off reading ANYTHING/EVERYTHING related to vapor pressure. so if it is an overall lack you might write down in your TOPICS TO REVIEW page "review gas properties and then review vapor pressure properties specifically" as a note that you need to review ALL that material and then AFTER you feel good there, review vapor pressure specifically.
4)once youve written down review topics for all wrong/questionable answers for a particular chapter in the acs review book you want to start addressing them one at a time in your class text book. DO NOT USE REVIEW BOOKS FOR SPECIFIC AREAS OF WEAKNESS. most review books are littered with errors, if you arent strong enough in that subject area to catch them then you will be teaching yourself bad information. an example of this is in Kaplans review book they say that melting point decreases with increased branching (orgo) and that is CLEARLY wrong. there is much more error checking in text books since there are usually alot more names/reputations on the line. use this to your advantage since that means that review material is much more likely to be accurate.
5)once youve read through and feel comfortable with the weak points youve written down, start doing practice problems at the end of the sections/chapters for those review points. DO NOT DO THE PRACTICE PROBLEMS IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING! try to put some reading time in other areas before doing practice problems for the previous reading. I say this because many people have good short term retention and will get the problems right immediately after reading it, but if you make them wait 3-4 hours and put some other material in between that previous material and its questions, they will perform lower. you dont want to get a false sense of confidence about a section so I cant stress this part enough.
6)be prepared to make the same mistakes a few times. this is an opportunity to reinforce the proper concepts since every time you repeat the same mistake you will get more frustrated about screwing it up repeatedly and will be more likely to not make that mistake on the real thing since youll have a lot of practice on that one problem area.
7)once you have done this for every chapter in both ACS books, go back and redo both books from start to finish and keep track of the problems you missed and start the process all over. if you did your job right the first time around, you should only miss a couple and upon reviewing your mistakes you will probably find that most of the mistakes made were careless ones and not ones directly related to your lack of knowledge. this gives you a chance to address any careless habits you may have. as an example, i repeatedly missed osmotic pressure and boiling/melting point changes when involving molecules that dissociate because I always forgot to account for their dissociation and immediately jumped to calculations. this drilled into my head that i needed to pay very close attention to that area since i habitually skipped over that. I HAD 2 QUESTIONS ON THE DAT CHEM SECTION THAT INVOLVED CALCULATIONS WHERE MOLECULES DISSOCIATED. I dont think thats normal but I do think it points out just how lucky I was to actually make sure I took the time to repeatedly drill the correct method into my head.
LAST NOTE: the chem and orgo sections are not hard. to be perfectly honest, they were both a bit of a joke. i had 1-2 legitimately hard questions in both sections and then the rest of the questions were very basic. i think a lot more people would get 27-30 on these 2 sections if they just took the time to actively learn material and feel comfortable with it instead of learning it enough so that they didnt feel uncomfortable. working until you dont have negative feelings isnt sufficient to be truly competitive. you need to work until you have not only gotten rid of the negative feelings but have actually replaced them with positive ones. if at any time on any of the practice tests (topscore and kaplan are very representative) you reach ANY questions that dont make you think "what? what a f*cking joke! a 5 year old could do this!" then you dont know the material at the level of someone who will score a 27-30.
ACTUAL LAST NOTE (related to review materials): DAT Achiever=worthless pile of crap. DAT Destroyer=very good in some areas but riddled with errors. Only purchase Destroyer if you can get it used, it isnt worth anywhere near what Dr. Romano asks for it new. DAT Destroyer's Odyssey (complementary orgo book)= this book is essentially a direct knockoff of ACS review book. difference? its 5 times the price and is littered with errors just like Destroyer.
for both sections, I think the best method would be to make sure you have your old orgo and chem text books so that you can use them to review material you dont fully grasp. To determine what material you dont fully grasp, purchase the American Chemical Society's review books for both subjects. ACS has a few diff books so to clarify, these are the thin white books with practice questions (with explanations for the first 10 or so per subject) broken into different subject areas. The reason I recommend this is because the questions in the review books are very similar in style to the questions (per my test experience) found on the actual DAT (and I wouldnt be suprised if ACS is where they outsource the questions from either).
step by step process:
1)go through ACS book and write down your answer choices in a notebook and be organized enough to keep track of which chapter and which subject book the answer choices are from. it is very important to stay organized so you will stay efficient. DO NOT WRITE IN YOUR ACS BOOK! If you are not 100% confident in your answer then put a question mark there and go to the next question. DO NOT MAKE EDUCATED GUESSES! If you get the answer right based on an educated guess, you will be masking a weakness because then you wont review a potential problem area. If there is ANY doubt in your mind AT ANY LEVEL then you should put a question mark for that problem number and move on.
2)once you complete first chapter questions, check your answers and circle in red any question marks or wrong answers. Do this neatly so you can keep track of answers you missed for later reference.
3)if you can clearly determine why you missed it, go to another page in your book and write down review area topics. for example, if you had a problem in chem that asked about vapor pressure above a solution and you missed it because you confused some of the gas properties then you need to objectively ask yourself if it is a specific mistake on your part or an overall uncomfortable feeling with that subject. for example, if you feel uncomfortable with gas properties/laws, dont tell yourself you missed it because of a particular property when the real problem is your much more broad and overall understanding of gases as a whole. the first assumption only requres review of THAT law which may be 1 page in your book. if you are lacking in that overall subject then you are better off reading ANYTHING/EVERYTHING related to vapor pressure. so if it is an overall lack you might write down in your TOPICS TO REVIEW page "review gas properties and then review vapor pressure properties specifically" as a note that you need to review ALL that material and then AFTER you feel good there, review vapor pressure specifically.
4)once youve written down review topics for all wrong/questionable answers for a particular chapter in the acs review book you want to start addressing them one at a time in your class text book. DO NOT USE REVIEW BOOKS FOR SPECIFIC AREAS OF WEAKNESS. most review books are littered with errors, if you arent strong enough in that subject area to catch them then you will be teaching yourself bad information. an example of this is in Kaplans review book they say that melting point decreases with increased branching (orgo) and that is CLEARLY wrong. there is much more error checking in text books since there are usually alot more names/reputations on the line. use this to your advantage since that means that review material is much more likely to be accurate.
5)once youve read through and feel comfortable with the weak points youve written down, start doing practice problems at the end of the sections/chapters for those review points. DO NOT DO THE PRACTICE PROBLEMS IMMEDIATELY AFTER READING! try to put some reading time in other areas before doing practice problems for the previous reading. I say this because many people have good short term retention and will get the problems right immediately after reading it, but if you make them wait 3-4 hours and put some other material in between that previous material and its questions, they will perform lower. you dont want to get a false sense of confidence about a section so I cant stress this part enough.
6)be prepared to make the same mistakes a few times. this is an opportunity to reinforce the proper concepts since every time you repeat the same mistake you will get more frustrated about screwing it up repeatedly and will be more likely to not make that mistake on the real thing since youll have a lot of practice on that one problem area.
7)once you have done this for every chapter in both ACS books, go back and redo both books from start to finish and keep track of the problems you missed and start the process all over. if you did your job right the first time around, you should only miss a couple and upon reviewing your mistakes you will probably find that most of the mistakes made were careless ones and not ones directly related to your lack of knowledge. this gives you a chance to address any careless habits you may have. as an example, i repeatedly missed osmotic pressure and boiling/melting point changes when involving molecules that dissociate because I always forgot to account for their dissociation and immediately jumped to calculations. this drilled into my head that i needed to pay very close attention to that area since i habitually skipped over that. I HAD 2 QUESTIONS ON THE DAT CHEM SECTION THAT INVOLVED CALCULATIONS WHERE MOLECULES DISSOCIATED. I dont think thats normal but I do think it points out just how lucky I was to actually make sure I took the time to repeatedly drill the correct method into my head.
LAST NOTE: the chem and orgo sections are not hard. to be perfectly honest, they were both a bit of a joke. i had 1-2 legitimately hard questions in both sections and then the rest of the questions were very basic. i think a lot more people would get 27-30 on these 2 sections if they just took the time to actively learn material and feel comfortable with it instead of learning it enough so that they didnt feel uncomfortable. working until you dont have negative feelings isnt sufficient to be truly competitive. you need to work until you have not only gotten rid of the negative feelings but have actually replaced them with positive ones. if at any time on any of the practice tests (topscore and kaplan are very representative) you reach ANY questions that dont make you think "what? what a f*cking joke! a 5 year old could do this!" then you dont know the material at the level of someone who will score a 27-30.
ACTUAL LAST NOTE (related to review materials): DAT Achiever=worthless pile of crap. DAT Destroyer=very good in some areas but riddled with errors. Only purchase Destroyer if you can get it used, it isnt worth anywhere near what Dr. Romano asks for it new. DAT Destroyer's Odyssey (complementary orgo book)= this book is essentially a direct knockoff of ACS review book. difference? its 5 times the price and is littered with errors just like Destroyer.
