DAT experience, from a civil engineer

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

fujindesu

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Aug 8, 2010
Messages
195
Reaction score
0
First thing first, thank you SDN, the community is the only thing holding me up from all the tedious studying.

PAT 23 96.4%
QR 24 99%
Reading 18 38%
Bio 20 88%
GC 21 87%
OC 20 79.9%
TS 20 85.2%
AA 21 93.4%


I'm a non traditional student I guess. I got my BS last year, and I'll be getting my MS sometimes this year, both in civil/structural engineering. overall and science GPA should be around 3.6

School ended in June, and I finally decided that I want to be a dentist. So I had about 5 weeks to prepare for the DAT. In between studying I had to do shadowing and play Starcraft 2. I probably ended up studying for about 6-7 hours a day.

I went in to the DAT without taking the first quarter of Biology and the last two quarters of Ochem, and I'm also missing all the labs. If I can get a 20, I am confident that with dedication and conviction, everyone can succeed.

prep materials:

BIO: I spent a week studying bio, skimmed through Kaplan Blue and i told myself "wtf did I just read?" and I moved on the Cliff AP. I think Cliff is good if you have a solid Bio background, and you can just use it to reinforce your knowledge. But, I had no idea what cliffs was talking about either because I was missing some bio classes. What saved me was discovering predds.net. It had links to Hippocampus, which has videos that explained every single bio concept in flash cartoons. I've always been a visual learner, think HippoCampus videos as Chad of Biology.

Also get DATQVAULT to practice bio, destroyer bio made me puke on myself.


Gchem: Chad, enough said. Destroyer is good for Gchem too.

Ochem: Chad again. I took 1 ochem class, which covered up to E1 E2 reactions. I was able to learn everything else I needed to know on DAT by watching Chad 3 times. Destroyer Ochem is overkill in my opinion.

PAT: I got the 10 CDP tests. TFE is easier on real dat, keyhole is about the same, mebe slightly slightly harder. hole punch is easier, very few half punches. cube count is easier, all my cubes were under 15 in total. pattern is harder, on CDP the main shape is usually symmetrical, but on DAT the main shapes were usually not identical,

Math: I did not study for this section. the calculator has lag, I couldn't click the keys more than once per second.

Reading: I did not study for this section, English is not my native language either. I tried reading the question first, but I didn't know there's like 15 questions per passage, I tried writing down questions first before reading the passage, but it was a waste of time. If I flip back and forth between questions, the passage resets to the beginning, and I would have to scroll down to find the answer again. I had to revert back to Search and Destroy, basically read the whole passage again and again for every single questions. I wasted 30 minutes on the first passage, and I had to guess on at least 15 answers.


I hope this helped, I'll submit my application sometimes this weekend. I applied to 31 schools because I have a lot of pre-reqs that's not completed, I know everyone hates this question, but WHAT ARE MY CHANCES????



Also I would like to add, don't eat unfamiliar food on exam day, I went to a Chinese place, and had massive diarrhea minutes before the exam. AC is pretty cold in my testing room as well, bring a jacket. Ear plug is probably good too, the people around me were typing like crazy, and it was distracting.

Members don't see this ad.
 
Last edited:
Nice scores. Don't worry about getting interviews -- as long as you don't mention that you play Starcraft lol!
 
Last edited:
great score fuji! I'm headed down the homestretch and was gonna burn through destroyer bio this week. What didn't you like about it? Would you advise skipping it altogether?
 
@rmm, destroyer bio questions are too specific. Go through it if you have time, otherwise check out datqvault, the range of questions and level of difficulties were very similar to the real DAT. They also explain answers better than destroyer, plus you get to practice under DAT like conditions with datqvault, the scoring is pretty similar as well. I sound like a sales man, but I truely believe that's what saved me, a couple questions on my DAT were almost word for word from vault.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
@Lets I'm missing about 25 quarter units of pre req classes/labs, would that deter D school from taking me seriously? lol maybe I can meet a student interviewer that also games. I also play World of Warcraft and Yu Gi Oh cards on my spare time LOLOL
 
@Lets I'm missing about 25 quarter units of pre req classes/labs, would that deter D school from taking me seriously? lol maybe I can meet a student interviewer that also games. I also play World of Warcraft and Yu Gi Oh cards on my spare time LOLOL

I didn't realize you had so many missing pre-reqs. I'm assuming you will complete them before matriculation? You may want to talk to your schools and inform them. You need a girlfriend so you'll stop playing so many video games haha.
 
Top