About to start studying...help!

[FutureDentist17]

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I will begin studying for the DAT in a few days and was wondering how much time I should allot for going through Chad's videos? For example, I know that all of the videos in the QR section total around 5 hours and 25 minutes...but how much time should I factor in for note taking/taking the quizzes?

Also, I know people say to expose yourself to PAT every day, but how do you go about doing this? I have six weeks to study and have 10 CDP tests plus the practice problems for Angle ranking/hole punching/cube counting, but would love to know how often I should take tests!

Finally, for RC I've heard mixed reviews on DAT Edge, qVault and CDR...what are everyone's thoughts on each of these programs.

Thank you all so much in advance, I look forward to posting a solid breakdown with (hopefully) high scores in July!

 

[J777]

It depends on where you are. For example, if you recently took ochem, you may be able to go through Chad's material more quickly than if you haven't seen ochem for several years. I had taken ochem last summer. I started studying ochem for the DAT in the middle of February. It took me about one week to get through his videos and do the quizzes. I watched at fastspeed (but probably ended up spending more time pausing and rewinding than had I viewed at normal speed).

FYI, Chad's videos are great for QR, but they are incomplete. Make sure you expose yourself to other material as well when you study for QR. Math Destroyer comes highly recommended by most.

For PAT, I don't think it is completely necessary to expose yourself every day. However, it couldn't hurt if this is something you plan to do. Get your technique down with CDP and perfect it with Achiever. The difficulty of the real test is somewhere between CDP and Achiever.

I found the RC on the real exam to be representative of a mix between CDR and Topscore. CDR was good for the big picture/tone questions, but the passages were not science-based, for the most part. I felt that the TS passages were more similar to my real exam, and the search and destroy questions were a little more similar to TS. With that said, I found that TS was still a little easier than the real thing. In short, try to fit a practice RC test every now and then. Experiment with different techniques early on during your studies. Find one that you like best and keep practicing that technique. It is not the best idea to jump around from technique to technique because you probably won't see as much improvement.

Best of luck to you!

 

[IsaacYankem]

It depends on where you are. For example, if you recently took ochem, you may be able to go through Chad's material more quickly than if you haven't seen ochem for several years. I had taken ochem last summer. I started studying ochem for the DAT in the middle of February. It took me about one week to get through his videos and do the quizzes. I watched at fastspeed (but probably ended up spending more time pausing and rewinding than had I viewed at normal speed).

FYI, Chad's videos are great for QR, but they are incomplete. Make sure you expose yourself to other material as well when you study for QR. Math Destroyer comes highly recommended by most.

For PAT, I don't think it is completely necessary to expose yourself every day. However, it couldn't hurt if this is something you plan to do. Get your technique down with CDP and perfect it with Achiever. The difficulty of the real test is somewhere between CDP and Achiever.

I found the RC on the real exam to be representative of a mix between CDR and Topscore. CDR was good for the big picture/tone questions, but the passages were not science-based, for the most part. I felt that the TS passages were more similar to my real exam, and the search and destroy questions were a little more similar to TS. With that said, I found that TS was still a little easier than the real thing. In short, try to fit a practice RC test every now and then. Experiment with different techniques early on during your studies. Find one that you like best and keep practicing that technique. It is not the best idea to jump around from technique to technique because you probably won't see as much improvement.

Best of luck to you!

👍 This is excellent advice.