- Joined
- Apr 4, 2008
- Messages
- 115
- Reaction score
- 0
Bio 24 - 98.7%
GC 22 - 90.1%
OC 22 - 91.5%
RC 23 - 94.5%
QR 21 - 93.3%
PAT 24 - 99.0%
TS 23 - 98.2%
AA 22 - 96.4%
I attempted to study during SMDEP at CWRU Dental, but that didn't work out too well, and I had to reschedule my DAT. After SMDEP, I studied for about ~3 weeks, 2-4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I used Kaplan Blue Book 2009/2010, DAT Destroyer 2009, ACS General Chemistry, Cliffs AP Biology 3rd ed, and flashcards made from Destroyer road maps and KBB reactions. In the end, I was extremely satisfied with the score's I got. I was awfully nervous for the exam as it was my first time taking it and because it also had to be my only time too if I didn't want an even more delayed application. Here's my breakdown:
Biology
As a biology major with 2 years of various biology courses, I believe I had a broad and solid foundation for this section. Nonetheless, I used KBB which was overly simplified and skipped over many important topics and details. It's a great introduction and review of the biological sciences, but should certainly not be your only resource. Cliffs AP Bio was a much more comprehensive guide. The amount of detail it went into could possibly even be excessive, but in the end, it's only for your good. Biology is a large part pure memorization, and using diagrams, charts, mechanisms, and photos helped bring in visual cues to help remember and understand concepts better (Wikipedia and Google Images is your best friend here). Cliffs' practice AP exam and DAT Destroyer are excellent resources for practice, and reinforcement of materials. DAT Destroyer especially covered a few topics missed or not well covered in KBB or Cliffs.
General Chemistry
General Chemistry was pretty basic. I studied the least for GC, and managed to understand how to do most of the questions. To my surprise, most of my GC questions were conceptual questions instead of calculating questions. The calculations in which they give you numerical answers that were already set up were simple, however, the questions that gave you exact numerical answers were a little tricky. I'm not good at mental math or simplifying equations, so I did waste time doing arithmetic trying to get the exact answer, and sometimes I got answers that weren't in any of the answer choices! Kaplan is a good starter to review for GC, but I must say that it was overly conceptual. ACS General Chemistry was my best resource. It's not much of a review, but it did have plenty of practice questions that covered many topics. Destroyer was pretty hard, though completely doable. The trick to Destroyer is to understand the concepts and how to set up each question/equation. It's also quite comprehensive, so if you can do all of Destroyer, I can say with confidence that you can do all of DAT GC. Just wish I put in more time into studying for this section.
Organic Chemistry
I had just finished O Chem in school so much of the basics were fresh in my mind. I used KBB and Destroyer for OC. The difficulty of the DAT is on par with Kaplan materials, but Destroyer goes in depth and gives you more of a variety to learn and study from. I made flashcards of all of the reactions in both books, and studied them first. It helps to understand why reactions happen, and to understand the mechanics of at least the basic reactions, because if you might notice, OC reactions are almost all based on the same core principles, and it's easy to identify patterns and relationships among say 100+ reactions. I focused largely on reactions, and that came back to bite me on my DAT as most of my questions were conceptual questions of which I did not study much of. I was also a little lucky because there were no IR, NMR, or lab technique questions that I barely studied for.
Perceptual Ability
PAT was my favorite section (it's almost like a game to me). CDP is the best prep for this section. I did all 10 CDP tests in a week, mastered the tricks and ins and outs of the PAT, and stopped. By the time I tested myself again right before that DAT, I was awfully rusty which goes to show that PAT requires continual practice. Angles I felt were ridiculously hard, and were most likely the only reason I didn't get a higher score. Cube counting was surprisingly frustrating as I did get 7 structures to count cubes on, and I just thought it was a bit unfair and out of the norm to have so many...
Reading Comprehension
Passages were about 14-17 paragraphs long. All of my passages were mostly S&D applicable. What I did was went through all of the questions first, then read the passage, skipping over sentences I didn't recognize from the questions. This way, I reduced time used looking for answers, as I already knew what I'm looking for. Also, by reading most of the passage, you can also answer tone questions, and others not S&D applicable. I also used CDR and thought it was a good representation of the real thing. The only thing CDR could be criticized about is its utilization double negatives like "not undisputed" in their questions and using non-science related passages.
Quantitative Reasoning
QR was supposed to be one of my stronger sections, but there were so many word problems! I've had my fair share of upper level calculus/D.E./L.A. classes, but the DAT QR is all about speed and not skill or knowledge set. On my DAT, I had 10 minutes left with 15 problems to go! I panicked and randomly answered the rest and all those I skipped, then went back and did all the ones I guessed on that seemed short and easy. I'm definitely surprised that I managed to get a 21 on this section. CDM was a good practice resource. Problems were similar, and timing is key. I will say this though, QR isn't the most important section for the DAT, and it's rightly so because I feel like this was a test of how fast you can do math, and not how well you can do math.
Here are my practice scores for various programs:
Achiever - Hard but still good for time management practice
1: Bio 19, GC 20, OC 14, QR 18, RC 17, PAT 20, TS 18, AA 18
2: Bio 19, GC 18, OC 16, QR 20, RC 17, PAT 20, TS 18, AA 18
3: Bio 18, GC 18, OC 19, QR 21, RC 18, PAT 21, TS 19, AA 19
KBB - I used Kaplan practice exams before I really started to study hence lower scores relative to actual DAT scores
Bio 20, GC 18, OC 19, QR 25, RC 19, PAT 23, TS 19, AA 20
KBB Free Online:
Bio 22, GC 16, OC 16, QR 25, RC 22, PAT 21, TS 18, AA 20
CDP, CDM, CDR
CDP: 21, 23, 23, 21, 24, 25, 23, 21, 22, 23
CDM: 19, 21, 20, 22, 20, 20, 22, 23, 21, 20
CDR: 20, 21, 21, 21, 21
CDS (TS, Bio, Chem, Orgo) - Hated this. CDS was way harder than Achiever, and ultimately a waste of money. I want a partial refund Crack DAT!
1: 16, 17, 14, 14
2: 16, 17, 11, 15
3: 17, 16, 13, 18
GC 22 - 90.1%
OC 22 - 91.5%
RC 23 - 94.5%
QR 21 - 93.3%
PAT 24 - 99.0%
TS 23 - 98.2%
AA 22 - 96.4%
I attempted to study during SMDEP at CWRU Dental, but that didn't work out too well, and I had to reschedule my DAT. After SMDEP, I studied for about ~3 weeks, 2-4 hours a day, 5 days a week. I used Kaplan Blue Book 2009/2010, DAT Destroyer 2009, ACS General Chemistry, Cliffs AP Biology 3rd ed, and flashcards made from Destroyer road maps and KBB reactions. In the end, I was extremely satisfied with the score's I got. I was awfully nervous for the exam as it was my first time taking it and because it also had to be my only time too if I didn't want an even more delayed application. Here's my breakdown:
Biology
As a biology major with 2 years of various biology courses, I believe I had a broad and solid foundation for this section. Nonetheless, I used KBB which was overly simplified and skipped over many important topics and details. It's a great introduction and review of the biological sciences, but should certainly not be your only resource. Cliffs AP Bio was a much more comprehensive guide. The amount of detail it went into could possibly even be excessive, but in the end, it's only for your good. Biology is a large part pure memorization, and using diagrams, charts, mechanisms, and photos helped bring in visual cues to help remember and understand concepts better (Wikipedia and Google Images is your best friend here). Cliffs' practice AP exam and DAT Destroyer are excellent resources for practice, and reinforcement of materials. DAT Destroyer especially covered a few topics missed or not well covered in KBB or Cliffs.
General Chemistry
General Chemistry was pretty basic. I studied the least for GC, and managed to understand how to do most of the questions. To my surprise, most of my GC questions were conceptual questions instead of calculating questions. The calculations in which they give you numerical answers that were already set up were simple, however, the questions that gave you exact numerical answers were a little tricky. I'm not good at mental math or simplifying equations, so I did waste time doing arithmetic trying to get the exact answer, and sometimes I got answers that weren't in any of the answer choices! Kaplan is a good starter to review for GC, but I must say that it was overly conceptual. ACS General Chemistry was my best resource. It's not much of a review, but it did have plenty of practice questions that covered many topics. Destroyer was pretty hard, though completely doable. The trick to Destroyer is to understand the concepts and how to set up each question/equation. It's also quite comprehensive, so if you can do all of Destroyer, I can say with confidence that you can do all of DAT GC. Just wish I put in more time into studying for this section.
Organic Chemistry
I had just finished O Chem in school so much of the basics were fresh in my mind. I used KBB and Destroyer for OC. The difficulty of the DAT is on par with Kaplan materials, but Destroyer goes in depth and gives you more of a variety to learn and study from. I made flashcards of all of the reactions in both books, and studied them first. It helps to understand why reactions happen, and to understand the mechanics of at least the basic reactions, because if you might notice, OC reactions are almost all based on the same core principles, and it's easy to identify patterns and relationships among say 100+ reactions. I focused largely on reactions, and that came back to bite me on my DAT as most of my questions were conceptual questions of which I did not study much of. I was also a little lucky because there were no IR, NMR, or lab technique questions that I barely studied for.
Perceptual Ability
PAT was my favorite section (it's almost like a game to me). CDP is the best prep for this section. I did all 10 CDP tests in a week, mastered the tricks and ins and outs of the PAT, and stopped. By the time I tested myself again right before that DAT, I was awfully rusty which goes to show that PAT requires continual practice. Angles I felt were ridiculously hard, and were most likely the only reason I didn't get a higher score. Cube counting was surprisingly frustrating as I did get 7 structures to count cubes on, and I just thought it was a bit unfair and out of the norm to have so many...
Reading Comprehension
Passages were about 14-17 paragraphs long. All of my passages were mostly S&D applicable. What I did was went through all of the questions first, then read the passage, skipping over sentences I didn't recognize from the questions. This way, I reduced time used looking for answers, as I already knew what I'm looking for. Also, by reading most of the passage, you can also answer tone questions, and others not S&D applicable. I also used CDR and thought it was a good representation of the real thing. The only thing CDR could be criticized about is its utilization double negatives like "not undisputed" in their questions and using non-science related passages.
Quantitative Reasoning
QR was supposed to be one of my stronger sections, but there were so many word problems! I've had my fair share of upper level calculus/D.E./L.A. classes, but the DAT QR is all about speed and not skill or knowledge set. On my DAT, I had 10 minutes left with 15 problems to go! I panicked and randomly answered the rest and all those I skipped, then went back and did all the ones I guessed on that seemed short and easy. I'm definitely surprised that I managed to get a 21 on this section. CDM was a good practice resource. Problems were similar, and timing is key. I will say this though, QR isn't the most important section for the DAT, and it's rightly so because I feel like this was a test of how fast you can do math, and not how well you can do math.
Here are my practice scores for various programs:
Achiever - Hard but still good for time management practice
1: Bio 19, GC 20, OC 14, QR 18, RC 17, PAT 20, TS 18, AA 18
2: Bio 19, GC 18, OC 16, QR 20, RC 17, PAT 20, TS 18, AA 18
3: Bio 18, GC 18, OC 19, QR 21, RC 18, PAT 21, TS 19, AA 19
KBB - I used Kaplan practice exams before I really started to study hence lower scores relative to actual DAT scores
Bio 20, GC 18, OC 19, QR 25, RC 19, PAT 23, TS 19, AA 20
KBB Free Online:
Bio 22, GC 16, OC 16, QR 25, RC 22, PAT 21, TS 18, AA 20
CDP, CDM, CDR
CDP: 21, 23, 23, 21, 24, 25, 23, 21, 22, 23
CDM: 19, 21, 20, 22, 20, 20, 22, 23, 21, 20
CDR: 20, 21, 21, 21, 21
CDS (TS, Bio, Chem, Orgo) - Hated this. CDS was way harder than Achiever, and ultimately a waste of money. I want a partial refund Crack DAT!
1: 16, 17, 14, 14
2: 16, 17, 11, 15
3: 17, 16, 13, 18
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