- Joined
- Jun 19, 2016
- Messages
- 551
- Reaction score
- 507
First off, I am so glad to be done. While studying, I always spent some time each day reading the newest breakdowns. It was good to hear their tips and tricks. Now here are mine!
23AA/24TS/24Bio/22GC/25OC/22PAT/23RC/23QR
This was my second time taking the DAT. For those going in for round 2+, it is possible to improve!
First round was a few years ago during junior/senior summer.
19AA/19TS/17Bio/19GC/20OC/20PAT/20RC/18QR
I spent about 10ish weeks studying. There were about 2 weeks near the beginning that I didn't get too much done. Other than that, I spent about of 6-8 hours, 6 days a week. During the last two weeks, I have spent 10-12 hours everyday. I more or less followed Ari's 10 week study guide. The changes I made included trimming down the last 5 weeks to about 3 and I did not ready any of the articles as suggested.
Materials:
The Exam:
Shout out to @Ari Rezaei, @FeralisExtremum, and @orgoman22. Each of your resources are excellent, and I always appreciate your help when I had questions. Thanks to all the others out there who answered my questions and those who went before me with their breakdowns!
Attached is the proof and my spreadsheet of BC scores/averages. I took 6-10 first then did 1-5 with those.
23AA/24TS/24Bio/22GC/25OC/22PAT/23RC/23QR
This was my second time taking the DAT. For those going in for round 2+, it is possible to improve!
First round was a few years ago during junior/senior summer.
19AA/19TS/17Bio/19GC/20OC/20PAT/20RC/18QR
I spent about 10ish weeks studying. There were about 2 weeks near the beginning that I didn't get too much done. Other than that, I spent about of 6-8 hours, 6 days a week. During the last two weeks, I have spent 10-12 hours everyday. I more or less followed Ari's 10 week study guide. The changes I made included trimming down the last 5 weeks to about 3 and I did not ready any of the articles as suggested.
Materials:
- DAT Bootcamp - $197 - I used a coupon. I cannot say enough about Ari and his team. For anyone taking the DAT, if you have to pick a single preparation material, this is it! This is probably the key piece that helped me to be the most prepared. I took exams 6-10 in every subject (except RC) and studied my answers very closely. If there were answer choices that I was unsure of, I would make note in addition to the questions that I had to guess or got wrong. I kept a sheet of notes that I would add to for each subject after I took another test. This really helped me to minimize the little mistakes and to not repeatedly miss the same types of questions. I took all 5 full length exams and treated them as if it actually was my test day. This helped me to be a little less nervous. I also did the same thing of making note of my mistakes and unsure answers. Before I took a subject test or a full length test, I would read all my notes (~6pgs/subject). For QR I would wait to read over those notes until my 30 minute break during the full length tests. I was able to exactly do this during my real DAT.
- Mike's Videos - $ - Included with BC^ - I used Mike's videos for OC only. I liked them a lot. I'm sure his GC videos are just as good. I wouldn't hesitate to call Mike the new Chad and just start using him only. Every video has lots of good questions to make you think about the concepts and apply them. I think that practicing in the videos and Bootcamp, is where my OC score came from. I don't think there was anything on the test that wasn't covered by Mike. You'll never forget what SOCl2 does...
- Chad's Videos - $42 - Also found a coupon. I used Chad's videos last time I took the DAT a few years ago. I just used his GC videos. I feel like I learned everything that I needed to in addition to the practice in BC, this is where my score came into play. When comparing Mike and Chad, they both provide you with everything you need. BC is a must anyways, doing it over again, I would save the money and just use Mike for both GC and OC. Chad is a little more entertaining, but not worth spending the extra money.
- DAT Destroyer - $217 - I went through all of OC, about 80% of GC, and about 50% of Bio. I am glad that I had this material. There were probably 3-4 bio questions that I only knew because of destroyer. I used this in a similar way as I did with BC except everything was untimed. I do think there are several types of questions in each section that would come up every 20-40 questions that were way out of scope. Usually I would just skip those honestly. I went through the road maps 1x. They were helpful but I knew the stuff well enough through Mike's videos that I didn't need to go over them too many more times. I don't know that I would call destroyer a necessity, but it was definitely nice to have extra questions to look at to keep my memory fresh on all of the material.
- Math Destroyer - $ - Bought the pack^ - I did about 8 tests. The 2017 version didn't include any quantitative comparison (my weakness) so I was able to go through these only missing 3-4 questions. I haven't taken any math since high school. I was shocked to see my score at the end of the test. I definitely attribute my QR score to math destroyer.
- Khan Academy - FreeHundred$ - I watched the videos on the playlist in Ari's study guide. They were good but I didn't find them overly helpful.
- Cliff's/Feralis' Notes - Also FreeHundred$ - I used these pretty much as stated in Ari's study guide. One day I would read Cliff's without taking notes. The next day I would read through Feralis' notes, either copying, summarizing, or just writing *by hand* things that I didn't have a solid basis with. My biology background is fairly strong already. I was mainly lacking in the non-human biology subjects. After going making notes, I would take the tests after Cliff's. I would usually only miss 2-3 questions per chapter. Obviously reviewing what I got wrong and why. This is IMO the best bio preparation that anybody can do. Besides the 3-4 questions mentioned above in destroyer, every single question could be answered with the knowledge provided by these materials.
- YouTube - I would often watch other random videos from people to learn the other math stuff. I watched a short series on GRE QC questions. This helped me out quite a bit.
The Exam:
- Biology (24) - This really wasn't too bad. I would say it was a little bit easier than BC but still pretty similar. There were more freebie questions than the typical BC test. There were probably only like 2-3 that I needed to mark/thinking twice about. In terms of content, it was all over the board. Probably at least one question from every Cliff's chapter. 2 questions on X-linked diseases and 1 Hardy-Weinberg.
- General Chemistry (22) - I know I can't be mad about that score, but I literally didn't mark any questions. I was expecting this to be my best section, as it had been on BC. For all of them I was confident in my answer and I was able to solve all the questions quickly. I'm not sure where I went wrong. All calculations were simple, for every thing that I actually had to solve. I would say that difficulty was again slightly easier than BC. Just commit this to memory: 0.08206*300 =~24. That saved me on the test for one question that required solving and on multiple BC exams. So much faster to just memorize 24 than trying to solve that.
- Organic Chemistry (25) - Same as above. Know everything in all 10 of the BC exams along with Mike's videos and you should be fine! Know the concepts and why things work the way they do. I honestly don't know any mechanisms. I only had one mechanistic question asking for an intermediate. I think I got it right, but that may have been one of the questions I missed.
- Perceptual Ability (22) - Again like I said for GC, I can't be mad about the score, but I expected better. I think that my missed questions came from keyholes and angle ranking, and maybe a couple from TFE. Keyholes - about 50% harder/on par with BC and the other 50% were much easier than BC. TFE - maybe slightly harder than BC. Usually I could get like 14/15 or 15/15 on BC but I could never tell how good I was doing during the actual test. Angle Ranking - similar to keyholes where about 50% were on par/harder than BC while 50% were giveaways. Hole Punch - I would say that my hole punching was about the same difficulty as the beginner setting in BC. Cube Counting - Again, easier than BC. Only one figure was a little bit hard to see. Weird thing here - I had 1 figure with only 2 questions and the other figure with 4 questions. Threw me for a loop lol. Pattern Folding - Easier/On par with BC. I never really struggled with pattern folding, I just kinda see them I guess.
- Reading Comprehension (23) - If you've made it this far, odds are you will do just fine in the RC section! The only preparation that I used for RC was my 5 full length practice exams. Started at 18 on BC and worked up to 23 on BC. I would say that the sections were all pretty similar. My questions were for the most part in order. There were very few tone questions, which were probably the ones I got wrong. I used a strategy similar to the method explained by BYU4you. I would read 2-3 paragraphs. Then start answering questions. As I read, I would highlight 2-3 WORDS per paragraph just to point out the key topics. This helped a lot during the later questions while I was S&D'ing.
- Quantitative Reasoning (23) - This was the biggest surprise of all. My BC score were progressively decreasing with more practice 🙁. I was seriously debating delaying my test further because of QR. I ended up sucking it up and hoping that my other scores would make up for any lacking here. I just could not get the hang of quantitative comparison questions. I probably had a total of 8 or so on my test. They weren't nearly as hard as the BC questions, but the BC questions set me up to be able to think about them in the correct way. The rest of the math was normal stuff seen in BC or destroyer tests. Some geometry, some trig... A little bit of everything.
I used the 5 full length BC test to help hone in my timing. They were vital to my success. I finished natural sciences with about 15 minutes to spare. After about 5 minutes of review and a couple minutes preparing my grids and what not for PAT, I just got right into PAT. Every other section I was able to finish with about :45-1:20 to spare. I tried to review questions but for the most part, I had spent enough time on each question in the first go-around that I was pretty comfortable. Note: BC's tests let you skip questions pretty quickly. On the real DAT, the software is kinda slow. It takes about .5 sec to skip a question. When I skipped on PAT from 15 to 45 (End of keyholes to start of hole punch) it took about 2 seconds in total off my test time. I thought it was worth it... Anyways. Timing is important, learn it and be comfortable by taking the 5 full length exams from BC and simulate real testing conditions. During my test, it kind of just felt like I was taking another one of the full length BC tests (with a little bit more pressure).
Thanks for reading! I hope this helps you future DAT takers and gives hope to those re-takers! Please ask questions, I'll try to answer asap.
Shout out to @Ari Rezaei, @FeralisExtremum, and @orgoman22. Each of your resources are excellent, and I always appreciate your help when I had questions. Thanks to all the others out there who answered my questions and those who went before me with their breakdowns!
Attached is the proof and my spreadsheet of BC scores/averages. I took 6-10 first then did 1-5 with those.
Attachments
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