07/23/15 - DAT complete, breakdown and thoughts

[heartoftheswarm]

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Here is my breakdown and what I thought of every section:

PAT: 24
QR: 18 🤔
RC: 21
BIO: 21
GC: 24
OC: 22
TS: 22
AA: 21

My overall impression was that I thought I was doing worse than I actually did.

I spent 3 weeks studying averaging 8 hours a day. I would take breaks often to break up the day. It also made the quality of my studying significantly better.

Starting with the sciences

BIO: I thought this section was unlike any practice test I have seen. Some questions were basic but for the most part they were questions that caught me by surprise. I guess I was able to reason and get most right, but it was quite disheartening moving to the next sections.

Material used: Barron's AP bio, Feralis, Qvault, Bootcamp, Destroyer (only did half a run through it), Datgenius.

GC + OC: I knew this section was my strongest. Again the questions were still quite different than what I saw on practice tests. However if you understand the fundamentals, you can reason out most problems. I found Chad's videos to be the absolute best for this, just like everyone has mentioned.

Material used: Bootcamp, Datgenius, Chad's videos (a must)

- I know this may go against many people's opinion, but I will state that I found destroyer to be extremely detailed for OC and GC. This may be exactly what you are looking for but I found that is not the best way for me to learn. The real DAT questions are much simpler in nature. If you find the Destroyer easy, then you are absolutely 100% ready for the DAT. I personally found Chad's videos and doing the practice questions, as well as bootcamp and Datgenius to be sufficient. If you are looking for huge scores in this section (25++) then Destroyer may be the way to go.

PAT: I totally sucked at this at first. I was scoring 18's on Crack the Dat PAT. However I took at least 3 tests a week, and really tried to understand my mistakes rather than brush it off. I feel like analyzing my mistakes helped me realize what to look out for in future tests. I started scoring 22's in the final week. Also Bootcamp has amazingly hard PAT tests. Just yesterday I took a practice PAT test and scored an 18. Scores may help you gauge where you are in terms of learning, but its not necessarily indicative of your mark. Focus on LEARNING over anything.

Material used: CDP, Datgenius, Bootcamp

RC: absolutely nothing. I may have done one practice test but that's it. I got lucky and got really interesting passages in my exam and I was able to retain the information pretty well.

QR: The section I neglected the most (after RC ofcourse). I wish I had done more practice here but I pretty much just ran out of time in my studies, and my mark shows. I was able to do 4 tests out of the Math Destroyer and a few tests from bootcamp and dat genius, that's about it. To do well in this section you really just have to practice it. Treat it like the PAT section.... practice practice practice. I thought I had to worry about this the least, but turns out this is what hurt my AA the most.

Material skimmed: Math Destroyer, bootcamp, datgenius

Overall impressions: It is doable. Just learn to critically analyze everything. Whenever you do a problem, especially in orgo, ask yourself -- What would happen if I had these as reagents? What would be the outcome? Even in bio you can do this. Also don't doubt yourself in the actual exam. YOU CAN STILL DO WELL EVEN IF YOU MISS A COUPLE QUESTIONS. If you are perfectionist like I am, this is a hard concept to grasp. In my opinion you can never be 100% ready for this. A certain aspect of the DAT is luck, if you studied and remember the correct material, and you get a question covering that material. You can only get "more" ready, but never be 100% ready. Just believe in yourself, and if you see that in the week before your exam you start to slack, its probably time to write the DAT.


- I am a Canadian student looking to apply into American schools due to my lower gpa (3.6sgpa, 3.7ogpa), and hopefully this helps some of you out.

Goodluck and know that you can do it. 100%.

I'll be happy to help with any questions 🙂

 

[Dwight Beet Farm]

In the RC section, what was the proportion of S&D'able questions as compared with tone questions? Nice scores by the way!

 

[BeaverLover]

Just curious, what exactly caught you by surprise?

 

[Futuredentista62]

Awesome job!!

 

[thegreat267]

How did you compare dat genius to the real exam ? Is there any chance you have your practice test scores?

 

[heartoftheswarm]

In the RC section, what was the proportion of S&D'able questions as compared with tone questions? Nice scores by the way!

I felt like there were more S&D questions than tone. I would say 75% S&D and 25% tone. The tone questions were somewhat easy to deduce I thought.

Just curious, what exactly caught you by surprise?

The way they asked the questions.... it was a different style of wording. Where bootcamp and datgenius seem to be more "do you know this fact," the DAT felt more like "apply these facts to deduce the answer." Similar with DAT destroyer, where I felt a lot of the questions were "all of the above." What I would take from it is that use these tests as a learning tool. The score doesn't mean any thing. A weak score just means you will probably know that fact for future tests if you analyze your mistakes. Think of the destroyer as a fact book, not a MC test. Hope I explained myself well enough.

Awesome job!!

Thank you!! Just diassapointed in my QR score. Knocked my AA lower than I wanted. Don't neglect the section!

How did you compare dat genius to the real exam ? Is there any chance you have your practice test scores?

Datgenius is a really good bang for your buck. $65 for 5 full tests? Sign me up. I felt like it was good practice, but the scores they give are over inflated. Ex: 20 mistakes on QR is an estimate of 20... (don't remember the exact numbers but you get the idea)... As I said before, ignore the scores. But in terms of difficulty I would say it was on par, maybe slightly more difficult for OC and GC. There are a few mistakes here in there but nothing crazy.

I don't have my scores since I pretty much ignored them. But I can tell you that for Qvault bio, I started off in the 19's-20's first round and 25-30 second round 1 week later. for GC, I started off in the 20's and went to the 25's, and OC start off in the 16's then went to the 25's. PAT was 18 to 22. These are earlier weeks compared to last weeks. On the second round I recognized a lot of the questions, but I forced myself to go through all options on the test and tell my self why the answers were wrong, and what reagents or #'s had to change to make them right. I hope this makes sense. I also did the 2009 ADA test, Scored 24 bio, 28 GC, and 18 OC, 22 PAT, but skipped the math and RC.

 

[BYU4you]

I felt my sciences were like none of the practice materials I had seen before. Similar content, but the wording of the questions was so foreign to me. Your test was probably similar!