6/16 DAT done! With Breakdown

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b0110

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I just got done with the test and overall I thought it was good. For the past month and a half I really only studied for 30 minutes a day maybe 3 days a week(on a good week). I unfortunately just didn't have much time.I was only able to really start studying for it about 5 days ago (I started on monday). I put in about 6 hours on monday, 7 hours on tuesday, 7 on wed, 7 on thurs, and about 2 on friday. I took 3 practice tests, one about 2 months ago(got 16 AA,19 PAT), one on monday (17 AA, 20 PAT) and one on thursday (18 AA, 20 PAT). The only resource that I used was Kaplans book and online resources.


PA 18
QR 19
RC 25
BIO 20
GC 19
OC 20


TS 20
AA 20

Perceptual Ability- By far the hardest for me on this test. I was relieved to have gotten an 18....and that says a lot because I was shooting for lower 20's. I didn't really study this section(Which is why this took me by surprise), other than the practice tests. This was mainly because I was getting around 20 without a problem. Kaplans TFE, keyhole, folding, and cube counting were all pretty similar to the test. The 2 huge differences though were angle ranking and hole punch. At times I thought all 4 of the angles were the exact same...I never seemed to have this problem on my kaplan tests. Also, the hole punch was much harder. There were folds I didn't think they could even do on my test....I really should have gotten crackdat PAT but with my limited time, I was focusing much more on my sciences. I wasn't able to finish the section and was left with about 15 problems. (I bubbled them in, but I did so randomly)

Quantitative Reasoning- I was a little surprised by my 19. I normally got at least a 20 on my tests and the kaplan tests seemed pretty representative of the test. I didn't feel the section was especially difficult but I still didn't do very well in it. One area I think I could easily improve on.


Reading Comprehension- This was something I never have had an issue with. I always got around a 25 on my tests, and sometimes higher. This was pretty much exactly like the kaplan tests.

Biology- I studied this Friday night. Skimmed through the Kaplan book and took a few practice questions. I have a good biology background so I wasn't too worried. I actually thought that the kaplan practice tests were harder than the real DAT. I'm a little surprised I only got a 20 because there weren't really any questions that truly stumped me.

Gen Chem- This was the science that I was most worried about. I studied this on mainly on tuesday. The Kaplan test was pretty representative of the real test though. There seemed to be more calculations on kaplan than the real DAT though.

Organic Chem-I studied this mainly on wednesday. I thought the kaplan test was harder than the test as well. The DAT didn't really have many hard problems.



Overall I'm happy. It could have gone much much worse with only 5 days of studying. I also had some timing issues that I never had with the practice tests. I wasn't able to look over any questions in the science and PAT sections and I think some of the questions may have went unanswered(not on purpose). The only reason I think this may have happened because in the RC section I got done with 5 minutes left and there were 3 questions that I know I answered but were left blank. This happened with 2 question on the math section as well. Unfortunate but nothing you can do about it.

The kaplan materials were great. The only thing that I think kaplan materials did not do a good enough job with is the Angle ranking and hole punching. So getting crackdat PAT would be one thing I wish I would have done if I had the time. Other than that it was really good. I'm thinking about retaking it in 3 months though. The main reason being the 18 on the PAT. I was hoping I would get a little higher than that. There also really weren't many questions that I had no idea about in the science section and I think I could raise the Bio, orgo and especially gen chem up at least a point. I think the RC would stay relatively the same and my qr I could probably get up a point or two. Are there any negatives to retaking the test? Does it look bad to the schools if you retake the DAT and and it stays the same (or goes down)?

Now its off to finish all of the supplemental applications. Goodluck to everyone else!

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For putting in a fraction of the time that a lot of people on here do, and doing just as well as people who prepare for 8+ weeks, you did great! I would be happy with those scores! Yeah, PAT might not be where you wanted it, but your RC score says a lot about a person in my opinion too. Good Job!!
 
That's crazy you did that well with not that much studying. Imagine what you could score if you studied 7 hours a day for a whole month :eek:

Congrats and good luck!
 
That's crazy you did that well with not that much studying. Imagine what you could score if you studied 7 hours a day for a whole month :eek:

Congrats and good luck!

For putting in a fraction of the time that a lot of people on here do, and doing just as well as people who prepare for 8+ weeks, you did great! I would be happy with those scores! Yeah, PAT might not be where you wanted it, but your RC score says a lot about a person in my opinion too. Good Job!!


Thanks to both of you! I really wish I could have put in 2 months of studying, but unfortunately there was no way I could do that with my schedule(which made me really worry I was going to do bad). I had about a 6 day span that I could study and take the test. I wouldn't be able to study again for a retake until about late august /early september, and I'm not sure if getting a higher score that late would even be that beneficial.
 
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getting a score like that with only a week to study is really impressive. you should be really proud of your scores.
 
Congrats! What technique did you use for RC?

The way I went about it was to quickly skim the passage taking only about 4 minutes per passage. I got a basic idea of what was in the passage and where everything was. I then went straight to the questions. I read the question then searched for the answer. By the second half of the questions(for each passage) I had already pretty much learned the whole passage so I could answer most of the last half of the questions for the passage by memory. I marked the answers that I thought may have possibly been wrong so I could go back when I was done. I got done with all the questions with about 9 minutes left and then went back to the marked questions (I had about 4) and searched the passage really well to make sure the answers were correct. I got done and had 4 minutes left, which I used to just relax for the last section. The only "practice" I had with RC was the 3 practice tests that I took. It was one thing I didn't think would get much better with practice, and with my limited time I decided it was best spent studying the sciences.

Hey good job, you did great! How did you do on the Kaplan practice tests?

I took 3 practice Kaplan tests. I got 16 AA 19 PAT, 17 AA 20 PAT, and 18 AA 20 PAT. The first one was about 2 months ago without any studying. The 17 was on monday and the 18 was on thursday. They seemed very representative of the test, and they were actually probably slightly harder than the real thing.
 
The way I went about it was to quickly skim the passage taking only about 4 minutes per passage. I got a basic idea of what was in the passage and where everything was. I then went straight to the questions. I read the question then searched for the answer. By the second half of the questions(for each passage) I had already pretty much learned the whole passage so I could answer most of the last half of the questions for the passage by memory. I marked the answers that I thought may have possibly been wrong so I could go back when I was done. I got done with all the questions with about 9 minutes left and then went back to the marked questions (I had about 4) and searched the passage really well to make sure the answers were correct. I got done and had 4 minutes left, which I used to just relax for the last section. The only "practice" I had with RC was the 3 practice tests that I took. It was one thing I didn't think would get much better with practice, and with my limited time I decided it was best spent studying the sciences.



I took 3 practice Kaplan tests. I got 16 AA 19 PAT, 17 AA 20 PAT, and 18 AA 20 PAT. The first one was about 2 months ago without any studying. The 17 was on monday and the 18 was on thursday. They seemed very representative of the test, and they were actually probably slightly harder than the real thing.


Did ya take notes for each paragraph or write down keywords? or did you just remember where everything was? Also, were the topics that you got really dense? I know some of the kaplan practice ones are sooo detailed with lots of scientific terms
 
I just got done with the test and overall I thought it was good. For the past month and a half I really only studied for 30 minutes a day maybe 3 days a week(on a good week). I unfortunately just didn't have much time.I was only able to really start studying for it about 5 days ago (I started on monday 6/11). I put in about 6 hours on monday, 7 hours on tuesday, 7 on wed, 7 on thurs, and about 2 on friday. I took 3 practice tests, one about 2 months ago(got 16 AA,19 PAT), one on monday (17 AA, 20 PAT) and one on thursday (18 AA, 20 PAT). The only resource that I used was Kaplans book and online resources.


PA 18
QR 18
RC 25
BIO 20
GC 18
OC 21


TS 20
AA 20

Perceptual Ability- By far the hardest for me on this test. I was relieved to have gotten an 18....and that says a lot because I was shooting for lower 20's. I didn't really study this section(Which is why this took me by surprise), other than the practice tests. This was mainly because I was getting around 20 without a problem. Kaplans TFE, keyhole, folding, and cube counting were all pretty similar to the test. The 2 huge differences though were angle ranking and hole punch. At times I thought all 4 of the angles were the exact same...I never seemed to have this problem on my kaplan tests. Also, the hole punch was much harder. There were folds I didn't think they could even do on my test....I really should have gotten crackdat PAT but with my limited time, I was focusing much more on my sciences. I wasn't able to finish the section and was left with about 15 problems. (I bubbled them in, but I did so randomly)

Quantitative Reasoning- I was a little surprised by my 18. I normally got at least a 20 on my tests and the kaplan tests seemed pretty representative of the test. I didn't feel the section was especially difficult but I still didn't do very well in it. One area I think I could easily improve on.


Reading Comprehension- This was something I never have had an issue with. I always got around a 25 on my tests, and sometimes higher. This was pretty much exactly like the kaplan tests.

Biology- I studied this Friday night. Skimmed through the Kaplan book and took a few practice questions. I have a good biology background so I wasn't too worried. I actually thought that the kaplan practice tests were harder than the real DAT. I'm a little surprised I only got a 20 because there weren't really any questions that truly stumped me.

Gen Chem- This was the science that I was most worried about. I studied this on mainly on tuesday. The Kaplan test was pretty representative of the real test though. There seemed to be more calculations on kaplan than the real DAT though.

Organic Chem-I studied this mainly on wednesday. I thought the kaplan test was harder than the test as well. The DAT didn't really have many hard problems.



Overall I'm happy. It could have gone much much worse with only 5 days of studying. I also had some timing issues that I never had with the practice tests. I wasn't able to look over any questions in the science and PAT sections and I think some of the questions may have went unanswered(not on purpose). The only reason I think this may have happened because in the RC section I got done with 5 minutes left and there were 3 questions that I know I answered but were left blank. This happened with 2 question on the math section as well. Unfortunate but nothing you can do about it.

The kaplan materials were great. The only thing that I think kaplan materials did not do a good enough job with is the Angle ranking and hole punching. So getting crackdat PAT would be one thing I wish I would have done if I had the time. Other than that it was really good. I'm thinking about retaking it in 3 months though. The main reason being the 18 on the PAT. I was hoping I would get a little higher than that. There also really weren't many questions that I had no idea about in the science section and I think I could raise the Bio, orgo and especially gen chem up at least a point. I think the RC would stay relatively the same and my qr I could probably get up a point or two. Are there any negatives to retaking the test? Does it look bad to the schools if you retake the DAT and and it stays the same (or goes down)?

Now its off to finish all of the supplemental applications. Goodluck to everyone else!
If you don't mind me asking, what's your GPA like?
 
I made 3 errors when transcribing my scores onto here(not sure how). I actually got a 19 in both the QR and GC but only got a 20 in OChem.

Did ya take notes for each paragraph or write down keywords? or did you just remember where everything was? Also, were the topics that you got really dense? I know some of the kaplan practice ones are sooo detailed with lots of scientific terms

I didn't take any notes. I had a vague mental map when starting the questions and by half way through the questions for the passage I had a very strong mental map. I had 1 really dense subject that was on a hard science and was pretty technical. One was a little less technical and the third one wasn't technical at all.

If you don't mind me asking, what's your GPA like?

My GPA is currently about a 3.55. I wish it was a little higher (3.6 would be nice), but I won't complain too much about it.
 
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