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WHAT A HUGE WEIGHT OFF MY SHOULDERS!
Let me start off by saying the DAT was quite a trip! Anyway yadda yadda... Here is my breakdown:
Perceptual Ability: 23 (96.4%)
Quantitative Reasoning: 19 (91.2%)
Reading Comprehension: 24 (94%)
Biology: 19 (76.6%) (knew this was going to happen i am just excited I didn't get a 17 or lower!)
General Chemistry: 24 (97.7%)
Organic Chemistry: 22 (90.4%)
TS: 21 (91.6%)
AA: 22 (97%)
Wow i still can't believe it. Let me first start off by saying I knew my weakest areas were Biology and Math as you can see from my post on these forums a few days ago in desperation of how i was averaging 17-18~BIO and 17~QR on topscore.
Anyways, here is what I used and my comments on each section:
Materials used:
Cliffs AP Bio
Kaplan BB
Chad's Videos (SUBSCRIBE NOW!)
Dat Destroyer
Topscore (Very similar to the DAT in Chem,Ochem,Reading, and QR sections. Pat is different on the real thing than topscore but not necessarily harder. Biology I felt was harder on the real thing than topscore).
Bought ADA sample test (This is very similar to the real DAT!!! unlike the sample test posted online for free. Beware though that there are errors in the test)
I started studying for the DAT on June 1st. I read the Kaplan BB in a week and then soon realized it wasn't enough so for 3weeks after that week i started getting serious and studied 4-8hrs a day 7/days a week and used other resources which I discovered though this forum. In total i studied ~4weeks for the DAT
Well now the test breakdown!:
Biology: Like everyone else I used Cliffs AP bio and Kaplan BB. I do NOT have campbells biology. I read over Cliffs probably 4 times and Kaplan BB about 5 times. This section on the DAT was harder than topscore (not significantly harder but harder). I had about 10 questions of things I had no clue about/ terms I could faintly remember and had a chart of populations of frogs or something that I had no clue what was going on. When i started the test I was so depressed i thought I was going to have to retake because I was so clueless on at least 1/4th of the questions; note to yourselves do NOT let this thought go into your heads that was probably my mistake and cost me some questions I probably could have reasoned. About 1/4th of the questions are easy and are probably high school biology level. Another 1/4th were fair and required a little thought. 1/4th were difficult and required me to think and dig through my head of terms I probably only saw once or twice in cliffs. 1/4th were questions i have never heard of or seen or were graphs or a picture that I just reasoned out by looking at the latin prefixes of the terms and tried to reason with what part of the body they would be a part of!
Basically, I would advise you to use Kaplans BB as a guide, Cliffs AP bio as a main source of information and Campbells as a secondary resource. I am pretty sure if I had Campbells book a few of the terms i have never seen before on the test I would have found in that book. Also when you see a word in the Kaplan BB or Cliffs and it is mentioned once in one sentence...KNOW IT and how it relates to the overall picture. It probably hurt me that I thought "O this term was only given 1sentence not important!"
Chemistry: After the doom that I thought was biology, I was in heaven in Chem. The section was very fair! perhaps even easy. All you need for this is Chad's Videos and the DAT destroyer for practice. The real DAT is much easier than DAT destroyer but DAT destroyer will get you thinking! Do all of Chads quizes! I found that the questions on the DAT were similar to his quizes in the sense of how straight forward they were. I had a surprise lab question in this section that I just guessed on...something about weighing a towel on a scale or some BS. May i repeat, get CHADS VIDEOS! If you understand all his quizes/videos I am certain you can get a 20+. The difficulty of this was topscore level, perhaps a little bit easier.
Organic Chem: Same as above, i only used Chad's videos and destroyer, GET CHADS VIDEOS!!!! The difficulty of this was Topscore level. No surprises here. I missed one question here out of my own stupidty because i forgot if a carboxylic acid or an nitro group was more electron withdrawing on a benzene but whatever!
PAT: I did not do anything to prepare for this section. The only prep i did was practice tests and since I was averaging 21~ on topscore PAT i thought it would be OK. I was also too lazy /broke to buy CDP and do the tests. Well good it worked out. I actually ENJOY the pat section because I love perceiving things in 3d and love IQ tests! so....this probably helped me here. I don't know what to say about this section because during the test I was just doing the PAT like it was a crossword puzzle like I usually do haha. For others, perhaps CDP is a good resource. This was pretty similar to the PAT on the ADA test you purchase online.
Reading Comprehension: I did nothing to prepare this section and thank gosh i wasn't pianoed. My 3 passages were relatively easy and my first passage was SO easy. It was about herbal medicines and each paragraph talked about an herb pretty much and half the questions asked about a different herb so it was easily referenceable. I actually thought this RC was easier than topscore...I usually use search and destroy but on this test I spent 3-5mins skimming each passage and making a roadmap with 1-3 words per paragraph on my erase board (which I numbered during the break). This roadmap strategy worked better for me than search and destroy! I also did this thing where I would skip the passage first, look at the first question and then read the passage...so once I was done skimming the passage I would have the answer to the first question and save myself a minute or two. Note there are some "tone" questions that topscore lacks...but they are really nothing to worry about if you make sure to skim the passage and get a jist of the author and how the article is written.
Quantitative Reasoning: I was terrified of this section. I only studied for this section for 3 days. In addition I am NOT that good at math (I failed the MATH B regeants twice!...for new yorkers out there that know what regeants are) AND I did not have the MATh destroyer as so many do on this board and only used the QR on DAT destroyer/topscore to prepare. During the break I wrote down everything I knew about trig/conversion on one of my sheets so during the QR I would not have to calculate anything, however I didn't need it. The section was actually VERY fair and the calculator was a HUGE BENEFIT. I had no delay in my calculator either. This section was very similar to topscore and DAT destroyer QR. I read some people on this forum say the QR was way harder than topscore...I don't know i think its BS, it was very managable and on topscore my QR scores were 16,17,19...
All in all i am very excited about my scores because I was aiming for a 20AA!
+++some extra advice:
Learn From my mistakes: do NOT let the DAT ruin your circadian rhythems. This really screwed me over the most in the beginning of the DAT. The 4days prior to the DAT I kept studying until 4am and went to bed around 4am and couldnt sleep until 6-8am because I kept thinking about the DAT/reviewing formulas in my head. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. Because of this last night (the day before my DAT) I did not fall asleep until 7AM! and my DAT was 12:30pm so I woke up around 10am and only had 3hours of sleep. I have NEVER felt so tired in my life I was so scared I wouldn't be able to concentrate that I bought 4 redbulls and drank 2 before the test and 2 during the break. NOTE I do NOT drink caffiene and have never drunk an energy drink in my life but i was desperate! This was probably my biggest mistake and for the first half of the BIO section i was very dizzy until the Redbull kicked in haha.
I was also very nervous during bio because I felt i knew so little and had to retake. DO NOT GIVE UP LIKE THIS no matter how confusing the bio is....I still ended up with a 19 and i don't know how it happened! Also the chem/orgo were very fair so if you are good in those areas DO NOT let these bad thoughts cross your mind. Also, do NOT compare yourself to some people on these forums no matter how amazing or horrible their DAT scores, know that they are NOT you so really just try your best (easier said than done).
Well lastly here is me as an applicant to Dental School Any comments appreciated!:
I have a 3.7~ gpa and an appx. 3.5~ sci GPA and am a Chemistry Major/Bio minor. I go to a really small public college (CUNY to be exact if anyone is in NYC and knows the system) that is probably not well known. I am also in the honors program at my school/on full scholarship.
I have shadowed a dentist for more than a year now and do duties similar to a dental assitant with over 500+hours served. I was also a part of/got accepted to the Project Healthcare Internship at NYUmed if any of you heard of it (there some posts about it in the premed forums).This internship really opened my eyes to how i don't want to pursue medicine. I also volunteered at a few hospitals as a research assistant my early college years. I started my own dance troupe on campus and also train in Contemporary/HipHop Dance (a serious hobby of mine) at my school (and in dance schools around nyc) and have performed four times as a dancer in some reputable theaters/venues (yes! real dudes DANCE) Dance probably helped my creative thought for the PAT too... I've also worked in a lab, done some tutoring yadda yadda the whole nine yards.
My dream school is Stony Brook, mainly because I am BROKE and applying to Dental school without the approval of my parents (Ill figure out how to pay for dental school when i get there!) and it is instate for me but I am worried I may not stand a chance since it is one of the hardest to get into!
I have NOT started my ADEA application yet because I didn't know if i should depending on my DAT but right now I am going to start filling everything out and hopefully send all the materials in by mid July (I have my recommendations on file though already).
I am also going to apply to NYU, UMDNJ, Uconn Buffalo, Umaryland, Havard/Columbia (Only because the dentist I work for said he has a few connections in both schools so he told me to apply lol..hope its not a waste of $) and maybe a few others (I am really limited because I am using my scholarship money to pay for all of this!).
I know this is probably going to sound stupid, but do I stand a chance of getting interviews? Specifically to my instate schools Buffalo/SBrooK?
Anyway, I am very thankful for SDN because without it i probably would never have heard of Chads videos or anything like that...but I am glad I came across these DAT discussion forums! I am probably never gonna be around these forums again since i am finally FREE OF THE DAT👍
and am going to take a vacation now after I fill out my ADEA applcation etc.
So..basically this forums have been great: great people, great advice, Good luck to all future DAT takers, it really IS possible to do well on the DAT! It really isn't that big deal of a test no matter how huge the material load may seem!
Woot summer has begun!
Let me start off by saying the DAT was quite a trip! Anyway yadda yadda... Here is my breakdown:
Perceptual Ability: 23 (96.4%)
Quantitative Reasoning: 19 (91.2%)
Reading Comprehension: 24 (94%)
Biology: 19 (76.6%) (knew this was going to happen i am just excited I didn't get a 17 or lower!)
General Chemistry: 24 (97.7%)
Organic Chemistry: 22 (90.4%)
TS: 21 (91.6%)
AA: 22 (97%)
Wow i still can't believe it. Let me first start off by saying I knew my weakest areas were Biology and Math as you can see from my post on these forums a few days ago in desperation of how i was averaging 17-18~BIO and 17~QR on topscore.
Anyways, here is what I used and my comments on each section:
Materials used:
Cliffs AP Bio
Kaplan BB
Chad's Videos (SUBSCRIBE NOW!)
Dat Destroyer
Topscore (Very similar to the DAT in Chem,Ochem,Reading, and QR sections. Pat is different on the real thing than topscore but not necessarily harder. Biology I felt was harder on the real thing than topscore).
Bought ADA sample test (This is very similar to the real DAT!!! unlike the sample test posted online for free. Beware though that there are errors in the test)
I started studying for the DAT on June 1st. I read the Kaplan BB in a week and then soon realized it wasn't enough so for 3weeks after that week i started getting serious and studied 4-8hrs a day 7/days a week and used other resources which I discovered though this forum. In total i studied ~4weeks for the DAT
Well now the test breakdown!:
Biology: Like everyone else I used Cliffs AP bio and Kaplan BB. I do NOT have campbells biology. I read over Cliffs probably 4 times and Kaplan BB about 5 times. This section on the DAT was harder than topscore (not significantly harder but harder). I had about 10 questions of things I had no clue about/ terms I could faintly remember and had a chart of populations of frogs or something that I had no clue what was going on. When i started the test I was so depressed i thought I was going to have to retake because I was so clueless on at least 1/4th of the questions; note to yourselves do NOT let this thought go into your heads that was probably my mistake and cost me some questions I probably could have reasoned. About 1/4th of the questions are easy and are probably high school biology level. Another 1/4th were fair and required a little thought. 1/4th were difficult and required me to think and dig through my head of terms I probably only saw once or twice in cliffs. 1/4th were questions i have never heard of or seen or were graphs or a picture that I just reasoned out by looking at the latin prefixes of the terms and tried to reason with what part of the body they would be a part of!
Basically, I would advise you to use Kaplans BB as a guide, Cliffs AP bio as a main source of information and Campbells as a secondary resource. I am pretty sure if I had Campbells book a few of the terms i have never seen before on the test I would have found in that book. Also when you see a word in the Kaplan BB or Cliffs and it is mentioned once in one sentence...KNOW IT and how it relates to the overall picture. It probably hurt me that I thought "O this term was only given 1sentence not important!"
Chemistry: After the doom that I thought was biology, I was in heaven in Chem. The section was very fair! perhaps even easy. All you need for this is Chad's Videos and the DAT destroyer for practice. The real DAT is much easier than DAT destroyer but DAT destroyer will get you thinking! Do all of Chads quizes! I found that the questions on the DAT were similar to his quizes in the sense of how straight forward they were. I had a surprise lab question in this section that I just guessed on...something about weighing a towel on a scale or some BS. May i repeat, get CHADS VIDEOS! If you understand all his quizes/videos I am certain you can get a 20+. The difficulty of this was topscore level, perhaps a little bit easier.
Organic Chem: Same as above, i only used Chad's videos and destroyer, GET CHADS VIDEOS!!!! The difficulty of this was Topscore level. No surprises here. I missed one question here out of my own stupidty because i forgot if a carboxylic acid or an nitro group was more electron withdrawing on a benzene but whatever!
PAT: I did not do anything to prepare for this section. The only prep i did was practice tests and since I was averaging 21~ on topscore PAT i thought it would be OK. I was also too lazy /broke to buy CDP and do the tests. Well good it worked out. I actually ENJOY the pat section because I love perceiving things in 3d and love IQ tests! so....this probably helped me here. I don't know what to say about this section because during the test I was just doing the PAT like it was a crossword puzzle like I usually do haha. For others, perhaps CDP is a good resource. This was pretty similar to the PAT on the ADA test you purchase online.
Reading Comprehension: I did nothing to prepare this section and thank gosh i wasn't pianoed. My 3 passages were relatively easy and my first passage was SO easy. It was about herbal medicines and each paragraph talked about an herb pretty much and half the questions asked about a different herb so it was easily referenceable. I actually thought this RC was easier than topscore...I usually use search and destroy but on this test I spent 3-5mins skimming each passage and making a roadmap with 1-3 words per paragraph on my erase board (which I numbered during the break). This roadmap strategy worked better for me than search and destroy! I also did this thing where I would skip the passage first, look at the first question and then read the passage...so once I was done skimming the passage I would have the answer to the first question and save myself a minute or two. Note there are some "tone" questions that topscore lacks...but they are really nothing to worry about if you make sure to skim the passage and get a jist of the author and how the article is written.
Quantitative Reasoning: I was terrified of this section. I only studied for this section for 3 days. In addition I am NOT that good at math (I failed the MATH B regeants twice!...for new yorkers out there that know what regeants are) AND I did not have the MATh destroyer as so many do on this board and only used the QR on DAT destroyer/topscore to prepare. During the break I wrote down everything I knew about trig/conversion on one of my sheets so during the QR I would not have to calculate anything, however I didn't need it. The section was actually VERY fair and the calculator was a HUGE BENEFIT. I had no delay in my calculator either. This section was very similar to topscore and DAT destroyer QR. I read some people on this forum say the QR was way harder than topscore...I don't know i think its BS, it was very managable and on topscore my QR scores were 16,17,19...
All in all i am very excited about my scores because I was aiming for a 20AA!
+++some extra advice:
Learn From my mistakes: do NOT let the DAT ruin your circadian rhythems. This really screwed me over the most in the beginning of the DAT. The 4days prior to the DAT I kept studying until 4am and went to bed around 4am and couldnt sleep until 6-8am because I kept thinking about the DAT/reviewing formulas in my head. DO NOT LET THIS HAPPEN TO YOU. Because of this last night (the day before my DAT) I did not fall asleep until 7AM! and my DAT was 12:30pm so I woke up around 10am and only had 3hours of sleep. I have NEVER felt so tired in my life I was so scared I wouldn't be able to concentrate that I bought 4 redbulls and drank 2 before the test and 2 during the break. NOTE I do NOT drink caffiene and have never drunk an energy drink in my life but i was desperate! This was probably my biggest mistake and for the first half of the BIO section i was very dizzy until the Redbull kicked in haha.
I was also very nervous during bio because I felt i knew so little and had to retake. DO NOT GIVE UP LIKE THIS no matter how confusing the bio is....I still ended up with a 19 and i don't know how it happened! Also the chem/orgo were very fair so if you are good in those areas DO NOT let these bad thoughts cross your mind. Also, do NOT compare yourself to some people on these forums no matter how amazing or horrible their DAT scores, know that they are NOT you so really just try your best (easier said than done).
Well lastly here is me as an applicant to Dental School Any comments appreciated!:
I have a 3.7~ gpa and an appx. 3.5~ sci GPA and am a Chemistry Major/Bio minor. I go to a really small public college (CUNY to be exact if anyone is in NYC and knows the system) that is probably not well known. I am also in the honors program at my school/on full scholarship.
I have shadowed a dentist for more than a year now and do duties similar to a dental assitant with over 500+hours served. I was also a part of/got accepted to the Project Healthcare Internship at NYUmed if any of you heard of it (there some posts about it in the premed forums).This internship really opened my eyes to how i don't want to pursue medicine. I also volunteered at a few hospitals as a research assistant my early college years. I started my own dance troupe on campus and also train in Contemporary/HipHop Dance (a serious hobby of mine) at my school (and in dance schools around nyc) and have performed four times as a dancer in some reputable theaters/venues (yes! real dudes DANCE) Dance probably helped my creative thought for the PAT too... I've also worked in a lab, done some tutoring yadda yadda the whole nine yards.
My dream school is Stony Brook, mainly because I am BROKE and applying to Dental school without the approval of my parents (Ill figure out how to pay for dental school when i get there!) and it is instate for me but I am worried I may not stand a chance since it is one of the hardest to get into!
I have NOT started my ADEA application yet because I didn't know if i should depending on my DAT but right now I am going to start filling everything out and hopefully send all the materials in by mid July (I have my recommendations on file though already).
I am also going to apply to NYU, UMDNJ, Uconn Buffalo, Umaryland, Havard/Columbia (Only because the dentist I work for said he has a few connections in both schools so he told me to apply lol..hope its not a waste of $) and maybe a few others (I am really limited because I am using my scholarship money to pay for all of this!).
I know this is probably going to sound stupid, but do I stand a chance of getting interviews? Specifically to my instate schools Buffalo/SBrooK?
Anyway, I am very thankful for SDN because without it i probably would never have heard of Chads videos or anything like that...but I am glad I came across these DAT discussion forums! I am probably never gonna be around these forums again since i am finally FREE OF THE DAT👍
and am going to take a vacation now after I fill out my ADEA applcation etc. So..basically this forums have been great: great people, great advice, Good luck to all future DAT takers, it really IS possible to do well on the DAT! It really isn't that big deal of a test no matter how huge the material load may seem!
Woot summer has begun!
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