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- Feb 17, 2011
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To those of you who have put their sanities on hiatus in preparation for this demon: HANG IN THERE, because this test is not as crazy as people on here make it out to be. And you should listen to me, of all anonymous posters, because when it comes to gchem/orgo, I am the freaking Kate Middleton of sdn. I had absolutely no business getting scores anywhere near these!
How awesome is it that all I wanted to do after the DAT was report back to the sdn community I've been tracking for so long?? 😀 Lol months ago, I had literally printed out DAT posts from top-scoring members and cross-checked them to see how the best got to be the best. For the chemistries at least, I wanted to share a (slightly) different approach from the Destroyer!
BIO - 18
GCHEM - 25
ORGO - 28
PAT - 20
RC - 21
QR - 18
TS 21/ AA 22 (98.9%)
Now, I know my scores are nowhere near home runs, but literally the highest I ever tested using Kaplan/TopScore/CDP (across all tests) was: Bio 19/GC 18/ Org 23/ PAT 21 / RC 25/ QR 19. So first bit of advice: don't stress yourself out too much if even Kaplan is kicking your butt. Just keep reviewing your mistakes. The questions that show up on Gchem and orgo are practically formulaic. As for bio...unless you majored in invertebrate bio, good luck!! 😉
I doubt anyone wants to hear about bio/qr, so I'll skip to the better stuff:
GC - Guys, I am 3 years out of college, and the last time I took gchem was in AP Chem, SEVEN YEARS AGO. I barely knew how to figure out electron configurations! Take the leap of faith, and join the masses, because CHAD will get you there. With every new breath of understanding, I would be so overwhelmed with appreciation for Chad that I'd imagine hugging him, or at least blogging praise for him. Take good notes while watching the videos. It's okay if it takes you longer to cover what Chad does in one 'day.' (Some units took me about 3-4 days of taking crazy notes and pausing after every sentence - don't compare yourself to miscreants who say they finished the videos in 4 days, watched them twice, did destroyer twice, blahblah.) And please believe me -- on my first Kaplan diag, I got a 13 on gchem (!!), so maybe if you're already quite good at chem, Chad will get you to that 30. This man is not only crazy smart and organized, he has the gift of explaining things in interesting ways that don't go into more depth than you need for the DAT. Plus, he has tons of calculations/mental math tricks that surpass anything Kaplan ever tried by >>>>>. (Come on, admit it's confusing to divide by decimals or do log math in your head!)
After watching the videos, I studied my notes and transferred only the most important points to Chad's outlines (which are amazing!). Nothing will stick unless you do all the quizzes -- excellent, excellent test of conceptual understanding + the important calculations. I even repeated quizzes (don't worry you won't remember the acid-base q's). Lastly, I only did 28 Destroyer q's. They were helpful, but I know I was totally panicking before the DAT because everyone said that you couldn't score over a 20 without Destroyer. It's not about having all the available materials to study from. You know what you understand, and you know what you don't. And you do not need to know anything outside the realm of what Chad covers for Gchem. I'd say gas laws & thermodynamics & pH q's were the topics tested with the highest frequency on my DAT.
ORGO - I used EK orgo to review and quickly went through KBB's orgo section (which is appallingly bad -- so many conceptual mistakes 😡). I'd say it's best to do well in your undergrad orgo class, because for me anyway, this info stuck with me (waaay more than bio facts ever did!). I used Chad for the nomenclature lesson and aromaticity (both of which will be tested on your dat!). The DAT writers love KMnO4, Grignards, and radical rxns, so be very familiar with those. I did like 10 Destroyer q's.
PAT - As compared to CDP: Keyholes were on par/harder on real DAT; TFE on par; Angles def easier; Hole punching def easier; Cube counting on par; Pattern folding slightly easier. I thought PAT was pretty challenging and only had like 1.5mins to review the ~15 q's I marked! You can definitely prepare for this section -- don't listen to the haters who say it's naturally ability. Do a little CDP every day for the 2 weeks before your test (it's fun!) and learn how to keep intense visual focus for an hour. You should work on timing - that is huge. And ladies, don't actually internalize when people say men are better at spatial tasks! 😱
RC - This is actually my strongest section, and I had consistently gotten 25's on both Kaplan & TopScore. This point is to stress that you can't control the testing environment, but you can control your emotions. I shouldn't have been so fumingly angry at the stupid mcat nerd across from me who was typing so freaking hard on his keyboard that the keyboard was leaping up and down and you could feel the vibrations throughout the table. No, I shouldn't have, but I let that get to me, and it significantly impacted my score. Moral of the story: don't lose focus over what you can't control, and bring earplugs to wear under your noise-cancelling headphones. I wish I could go back to the testing center and just rail on that kid.
Most importantly, work slowly through calculation problems a couple times, then do lots of timed section tests/full lengths, go through your mistakes, and extrapolate your notes on the overarching areas you are constantly missing questions on. The score reports nicely break down the q's by subject so you can see that all your mistakes are on photosynthesis and solubility, for example. Oh, and you won't remember a thing about the excretory vs digestive vs respiratory systems of cnidarians/arthropods/etc. if you don't even know really what animals those include, so do some wikipedia sleuthing for fun. 😕
I hope this helps some of you. I'm really trying to be as honest as possible, because I was a nervous wreck before my exam, and I know some things I read on here only made it worse. Chin up, and best of luck!!
How awesome is it that all I wanted to do after the DAT was report back to the sdn community I've been tracking for so long?? 😀 Lol months ago, I had literally printed out DAT posts from top-scoring members and cross-checked them to see how the best got to be the best. For the chemistries at least, I wanted to share a (slightly) different approach from the Destroyer!
BIO - 18
GCHEM - 25
ORGO - 28
PAT - 20
RC - 21
QR - 18
TS 21/ AA 22 (98.9%)
Now, I know my scores are nowhere near home runs, but literally the highest I ever tested using Kaplan/TopScore/CDP (across all tests) was: Bio 19/GC 18/ Org 23/ PAT 21 / RC 25/ QR 19. So first bit of advice: don't stress yourself out too much if even Kaplan is kicking your butt. Just keep reviewing your mistakes. The questions that show up on Gchem and orgo are practically formulaic. As for bio...unless you majored in invertebrate bio, good luck!! 😉
I doubt anyone wants to hear about bio/qr, so I'll skip to the better stuff:
GC - Guys, I am 3 years out of college, and the last time I took gchem was in AP Chem, SEVEN YEARS AGO. I barely knew how to figure out electron configurations! Take the leap of faith, and join the masses, because CHAD will get you there. With every new breath of understanding, I would be so overwhelmed with appreciation for Chad that I'd imagine hugging him, or at least blogging praise for him. Take good notes while watching the videos. It's okay if it takes you longer to cover what Chad does in one 'day.' (Some units took me about 3-4 days of taking crazy notes and pausing after every sentence - don't compare yourself to miscreants who say they finished the videos in 4 days, watched them twice, did destroyer twice, blahblah.) And please believe me -- on my first Kaplan diag, I got a 13 on gchem (!!), so maybe if you're already quite good at chem, Chad will get you to that 30. This man is not only crazy smart and organized, he has the gift of explaining things in interesting ways that don't go into more depth than you need for the DAT. Plus, he has tons of calculations/mental math tricks that surpass anything Kaplan ever tried by >>>>>. (Come on, admit it's confusing to divide by decimals or do log math in your head!)
After watching the videos, I studied my notes and transferred only the most important points to Chad's outlines (which are amazing!). Nothing will stick unless you do all the quizzes -- excellent, excellent test of conceptual understanding + the important calculations. I even repeated quizzes (don't worry you won't remember the acid-base q's). Lastly, I only did 28 Destroyer q's. They were helpful, but I know I was totally panicking before the DAT because everyone said that you couldn't score over a 20 without Destroyer. It's not about having all the available materials to study from. You know what you understand, and you know what you don't. And you do not need to know anything outside the realm of what Chad covers for Gchem. I'd say gas laws & thermodynamics & pH q's were the topics tested with the highest frequency on my DAT.
ORGO - I used EK orgo to review and quickly went through KBB's orgo section (which is appallingly bad -- so many conceptual mistakes 😡). I'd say it's best to do well in your undergrad orgo class, because for me anyway, this info stuck with me (waaay more than bio facts ever did!). I used Chad for the nomenclature lesson and aromaticity (both of which will be tested on your dat!). The DAT writers love KMnO4, Grignards, and radical rxns, so be very familiar with those. I did like 10 Destroyer q's.
PAT - As compared to CDP: Keyholes were on par/harder on real DAT; TFE on par; Angles def easier; Hole punching def easier; Cube counting on par; Pattern folding slightly easier. I thought PAT was pretty challenging and only had like 1.5mins to review the ~15 q's I marked! You can definitely prepare for this section -- don't listen to the haters who say it's naturally ability. Do a little CDP every day for the 2 weeks before your test (it's fun!) and learn how to keep intense visual focus for an hour. You should work on timing - that is huge. And ladies, don't actually internalize when people say men are better at spatial tasks! 😱
RC - This is actually my strongest section, and I had consistently gotten 25's on both Kaplan & TopScore. This point is to stress that you can't control the testing environment, but you can control your emotions. I shouldn't have been so fumingly angry at the stupid mcat nerd across from me who was typing so freaking hard on his keyboard that the keyboard was leaping up and down and you could feel the vibrations throughout the table. No, I shouldn't have, but I let that get to me, and it significantly impacted my score. Moral of the story: don't lose focus over what you can't control, and bring earplugs to wear under your noise-cancelling headphones. I wish I could go back to the testing center and just rail on that kid.
Most importantly, work slowly through calculation problems a couple times, then do lots of timed section tests/full lengths, go through your mistakes, and extrapolate your notes on the overarching areas you are constantly missing questions on. The score reports nicely break down the q's by subject so you can see that all your mistakes are on photosynthesis and solubility, for example. Oh, and you won't remember a thing about the excretory vs digestive vs respiratory systems of cnidarians/arthropods/etc. if you don't even know really what animals those include, so do some wikipedia sleuthing for fun. 😕
I hope this helps some of you. I'm really trying to be as honest as possible, because I was a nervous wreck before my exam, and I know some things I read on here only made it worse. Chin up, and best of luck!!
