3 DAT Achiever tests with no improvement?

[Lou42]

I've been studying for the DAT for a few months now and recently cranked it up to 8-10 hrs/day. I took my 3rd achiever exam this morning and scored a AA 13 , same as I scored on the first two. I know people say that Achiever is much harder than the actual exam but I'm starting to stress that I will never be ready.

I started my studying with Kaplan BB, Cliff's AP bio, and Crack PAT. Lately I've been studying with more audio and video because I was getting burnt out on the other material. The video series from The Teaching company on (the Science of Life and MCAT audio osmosis) are really good and what I've been concentrating on lately. I have also gone through most of Chad's video's and some of Freelance teacher. Completed 4 practice exams in Math Destroyer. The problem is I have all this material and too little time to get through it all.

To give you a little background- I took the DAT back in the summer of 2006 and scored a 16. At the time I wasn't very serious about pursuing dentistry and really didn't study much. This time around there is no plan B and I'm really focused (it's all I do). My exam date is July 16 and I have no distractions except for 15 hrs of work on the weekends.

I feel like I'm back up to speed with Bio, but need a lot of help in chemistry as a whole. My thinking is that if I can go through destroyer twice before the test date the chemistry will come together?


Any advice is greatly appreciated?

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[Blarelli]

I went through the chemistry parts of destroyer several times and it worked great for me. Do a block of 25 problems, then go back and learn from what you got wrong. Make notes, and do the problem again the next day.

 

[i4everpaki]

IMO each achiever test gets harder. so if you are consistent with your grade its a good thing. my TS actually were lower for the second and third test compare to the first one. so keep it up.

 

[americanpierg]

hmm. 13 AA... thats very very bad. that means youre getting roughly 2 out of every 3 science question wrong, and less than 1/4 of your math/reading questions right. you might wanna look at your study methods

 

[IdahoDoc]

hmm. 13 AA... thats very very bad. that means youre getting roughly 2 out of every 3 science question wrong, and less than 1/4 of your math/reading questions right. you might wanna look at your study methods

I would have to agree a 13 is very low. I was in a similar case with my acheiver test my best test was the first one and I got an 18 then 17 and 17 on the last two. While I did manage to get a 22 on the real DAT I don't think that kind of jump on scores is common. Even if you get the same results you're looking at about an 18 which won't do much for you atleast it didn't for me. Look at how you are studying and make some changes and don't be afraid to push your date back till you are ready. Nothin worse then jumping I to early and haveing 90 days to think about it.

 

[mprs]

Section Test1|Test2|Test3|||||RealThing

PAT 16|18|16|||||22
QR 19|17|18|||||19
RC 15|17|15|||||22
Bio 15|16|15|||||18
GC 16|15|16|||||23
OC 15|15|17|||||21
TS 16|16|16|||||20
AA 16|xx|16|||||21

I wrote test 3 about 3 days before the actual DAT. I didn't really learn much more. Test 2 I did in 2 parts so it didn't calculate an AA For me. While 13 is still on the low side, if you can consistently get 15-17, it is probably "okay". I don't think the achiever is a good test for the DAT mainly because the questions are too detailed and it doesn't really tell you what you need to know.

13 is a little low though. Try to figure out which questions you're getting wrong. If they are really detailed and long questions, chances are you won't encounter them. But if they are short general questions, then obviously that would be worrisome (as most of the bio questions are general and broad with a few exceptions).

 

[Pennpaki]

Section Test1|Test2|Test3|||||RealThing

PAT 16|18|16|||||22
QR 19|17|18|||||19
RC 15|17|15|||||22
Bio 15|16|15|||||18
GC 16|15|16|||||23
OC 15|15|17|||||21
TS 16|16|16|||||20
AA 16|xx|16|||||21

I wrote test 3 about 3 days before the actual DAT. I didn't really learn much more. Test 2 I did in 2 parts so it didn't calculate an AA For me. While 13 is still on the low side, if you can consistently get 15-17, it is probably "okay". I don't think the achiever is a good test for the DAT mainly because the questions are too detailed and it doesn't really tell you what you need to know.

13 is a little low though. Try to figure out which questions you're getting wrong. If they are really detailed and long questions, chances are you won't encounter them. But if they are short general questions, then obviously that would be worrisome (as most of the bio questions are general and broad with a few exceptions).

How did your PAT improve so much and why was it so bad on acheiver? Mine is 15 too on achiever... i didnt een finish last two tests, and I cant tell you how worrisome it is with less than 2 weeks to go and apparently no section prepared.

 

[makeyousmile]

you need to be exposed to more practice problems. do all of destroyer and topscore.. then go over what u didnt know. that should be sufficient.

 

[mprs]

How did your PAT improve so much and why was it so bad on acheiver? Mine is 15 too on achiever... i didnt een finish last two tests, and I cant tell you how worrisome it is with less than 2 weeks to go and apparently no section prepared.

I think its more of writing a 90 minute natural science section that really affected my PAT. Also, I thought the achiever was pretty hard (although around the same difficulty of the DAT, maybe a bit harder). My CDP scores were like this:

Test1/10/2/3/4/5/6/7

18/18/18/20/18/22/23/19

I just had a REAL TOUGH time with angles. For example, on test 2 i scored 12/13/4/12/12/13. The angles on the DAT are a little bit more forgiving than CDP. So doing well helped me a lot on that. On the achiever, I was short pressed for time in the PAT (unlike CDP, my 23 I had like 10-15 minutes... was really random). On the DAT I was just BARELY on time (although I'd say behind because I couldn't give the time that 2 questions needed).

All in all, don't underestimate writing 2 sections back to back. It really does take a toll. I think the reason why I finished is probably because the ridiculous amount of adrenaline I had more than anything else. Obviously writing the DAT in my PJ's drinking tea is not a good simulation lol.

 

[happy123]

don't worry too much i was getting like 15-18 range on achiever and i ended up getting at 20 on the real thing. i also studied for only 4 weeks. i think you should just use achiever and topscore to work on timing and endurance but do not take your practice test scores seriously

 

[Lou42]

Thanks for all the responses!! When I typed up that post on Friday I was obviously emotionally knocked down and freaking out. I went for a long run afterwards and after work that night I felt much better.

My weakest parts of the exam are general chemistry and quantitative reasoning. I've always struggled with math and its still an issue today. It's the calculation problems that really get me in G chem, but I know that the math isn't that hard and if I just practice over and over it will click. I still need to go through DAT Destroyer and Chad's videos to work on these.

I completed Crack PAT exam 5 last week and scored a 17 which was a big improvement from where I started. The achiever PAT doesn't appear to be a relevant measure of where you're at. For example, some of the answers for one problem look exactly the same in the top/front/end section. Angles and hole punch are tough IMO.

I'm going to stick with Chad's videos for Organic due to my short amount of time. I am a big fan of Freelance teacher but it would take 3 months to get through his video series. I also plan on reviewing DAT Destroyer twice.

I feel the most comfortable with Bio. Plan on reading Cliffs AP bio one more time and doing exams. The MCAT audio osmosis is also good when I get sick of reading. I've also been watching the Science of Life videos series from the teaching company. I feel like its a good use of my time?

Finally I'm confused on how to approach the reading section. I enjoy reading and would consider myself good at it. On the first two Achiever tests I tried taking the common sense approach and read the entire passage taking notes on each paragraph and then answering the questions. I ended up running out of time and having to guess on the last 10 or so. On my 3rd exam I tried search and destroy or at least I think that's what I did. Basically skimmed the entire passage while making very short key word notes about each paragraph. Again this didn't work all that great because some of the questions required you to comprehend the overall picture and the answer is not directly in the reading. I'm definitely more comfortable with reading the entire thing fist instead of jumping around all over the place. Suggestions please?

Thanks again for the help guys!!

 

[mprs]

To my understanding, search and destroy is more about reading a few questions first, then trying to find the answers through the passage. The idea is that most questions are just "refer to the passage" and you should get the majority of them through this method. Then the few tone questions can be done at the end, by which time you should have read most of the passage and can get a fairly decent answer.

It works, and a lot of people did really well using it. I'm a fan of reading questions, then reading passage but not really in a SnDish manner. One thing that is 100% is that you should not really take notes of any kind. Maybe if you want, you can label your scrap paper 1-14 and put a keyword, but even then thats pretty much a waste of time.

 

[americanpierg]

I think the reading part is just how good you really are at RC and its the section where you cannot just suddenly improve out of nowhere, it will take a lot of work and practice. (be glad its more of a "find and locate" reading test and not so much a true reading comprehension test).

There are so many gimicky methods to do RC on this forum that I feel if you rely on any of them without actually "reading" the passage you well never do as well as you can.

The reading questions on my exam was more or less in the order they appeared in the passage (the first few qustions for each passage anyways, by the time i reach the halfway mark or so and they start jumping around the passage, i would have read through it already to have a good idea of where i can find each subsequent answer) I start by reading the first question, then reading the passage and sooner or later ill come by the answer. I answer...then move on to the next question, and continue reading the passage. Usually ill come across a question i remember the answer to, or at least remember where in the passage it is. By the time I finish answering everything I would have gone through the entire passage multiple times. This is good for me because I'm actually reading it and can answer all the inference questions as well as doing so fast enough that I don't waste time. I'm also not just skimming for key words (search and destroy) nor am i reading the entire passage at once and forgetting stuff and having to find certain sections again. i am reading it piece by piece and by the time im done i would have read each piece multiple times. (got a 25 RC on the DAT, ran out of time on the last passage...which had us doing MATH involving interest and crap [another example why search and destroy would fail])

Making notes is the most time consuming and unecessary thing you can do. Make mental notes if you need to. You must be able to read well enough that you can remember where in the passage a certain topic is, or at least remember the general vicinity if you cant remember specifically. writting stuff down wastes time... you write... then you have to go back and read what you wrote... and half the time youll be writing stuff theyre not going to ask you.

 

[i4everpaki]

I think the reading part is just how good you really are at RC and its the section where you cannot just suddenly improve out of nowhere, it will take a lot of work and practice. (be glad its more of a "find and locate" reading test and not so much a true reading comprehension test).

There are so many gimicky methods to do RC on this forum that I feel if you rely on any of them without actually "reading" the passage you well never do as well as you can.

The reading questions on my exam was more or less in the order they appeared in the passage (the first few qustions for each passage anyways, by the time i reach the halfway mark or so and they start jumping around the passage, i would have read through it already to have a good idea of where i can find each subsequent answer) I start by reading the first question, then reading the passage and sooner or later ill come by the answer. I answer...then move on to the next question, and continue reading the passage. Usually ill come across a question i remember the answer to, or at least remember where in the passage it is. By the time I finish answering everything I would have gone through the entire passage multiple times. This is good for me because I'm actually reading it and can answer all the inference questions as well as doing so fast enough that I don't waste time. I'm also not just skimming for key words (search and destroy) nor am i reading the entire passage at once and forgetting stuff and having to find certain sections again. i am reading it piece by piece and by the time im done i would have read each piece multiple times. (got a 25 RC on the DAT, ran out of time on the last passage...which had us doing MATH involving interest and crap [another example why search and destroy would fail])

Making notes is the most time consuming and unecessary thing you can do. Make mental notes if you need to. You must be able to read well enough that you can remember where in the passage a certain topic is, or at least remember the general vicinity if you cant remember specifically. writting stuff down wastes time... you write... then you have to go back and read what you wrote... and half the time youll be writing stuff theyre not going to ask you.

i have been using this method for my practice test and i am scoring 17-19, achiever, cdr, and topscore pro. it helps me out bc i feel know what the passage is about.