- Joined
- Feb 28, 2003
- Messages
- 457
- Reaction score
- 23
OK, I just got back from Prometric and wanted to post about my experience for those who have yet to take it.
Scores:
Academic 28
Perceptual 20
Quantitative 25
Reading 29
Biology 26
Chemistry 29
Organic 29
Total Science 29
Needless to say, I am pumped!
First off, I felt like crap when I got to the testing center. I slept 3 hours last night and felt sick and nasty. The testing center was nice and the lady was helpful. Oh - they don't let you use pens, which annoyed me. The computer format is identical to topscore, so you should feel right at home.
Biology - some of these questions were ridiculously easy (every section seemed to have a few insanely simple questions) I had a few about evolution, excretion of arthropods, etc. A handful of random questions in other words, just like everyone else. Surprisingly, no questions on human excretion or kidney stuff.
Chemistry - Pretty easy, a few wierd questions, and some where the formatting of the question made it confusing. I had this problem on one or two Ochem questions as well, where the reactions were packed close together and it was hard to tell what compound belonged with what part of the reaction. General chem had less calculations than I was used to from practice test (esp. Barrons) so that was nice.
OChem - aicd/base, sn2, sp3, etc. All of the normal stuff with a few tricky reactions.
PAT - The resolution does suck. Once you accept that fact and just realize that you can miss lots of angle ranking and still do fine, it becomes more relaxing. However there were two hole punching questions that didn't seem to be possible to fold the paper the way they indicated. And there were a few paper folding that were so small I could barely see them.
Reading - I was stunned to see I did this well. I was probably a little too laid back on this section (because it's such busywork), and I just plugged in the answer that looked good, often without referring back to the text.
Quant - I really like this section, but it is FAST. Just brush up on trig and some of those Kaplan tricks like pythagorean triples: 3,4,5, 6,8,10 5,12,13 etc.
Overall thougts - There seemed to be a lot of "What is the BEST answer" type questions, and seem to have two right answers - the one that looks right and the one that you think is "technically" correct. I wish I could offer some good advice on this front, but sometimes they want the "go with your gut" answer and other times it seems to be the picky one. It sure feels nice to have the DAT over with. Being done is almost more enjoyable than doing well.
I studied Kaplan, Barrons, Lippencot or whatever, Organic Edge and a little from Campbell Bio. I did not take Kaplan's course and am obviously glad I didn't. Save yourself a thousand bucks. I went to the library and studied out of some GRE/GMAT math review, and AP Bio and AP Chem books (lots of good practice questions). Topscore of course. I studied about 4-5 hours a day for a month.
Good luck to all of you who have yet to take this beast.
Scores:
Academic 28
Perceptual 20
Quantitative 25
Reading 29
Biology 26
Chemistry 29
Organic 29
Total Science 29
Needless to say, I am pumped!
First off, I felt like crap when I got to the testing center. I slept 3 hours last night and felt sick and nasty. The testing center was nice and the lady was helpful. Oh - they don't let you use pens, which annoyed me. The computer format is identical to topscore, so you should feel right at home.
Biology - some of these questions were ridiculously easy (every section seemed to have a few insanely simple questions) I had a few about evolution, excretion of arthropods, etc. A handful of random questions in other words, just like everyone else. Surprisingly, no questions on human excretion or kidney stuff.
Chemistry - Pretty easy, a few wierd questions, and some where the formatting of the question made it confusing. I had this problem on one or two Ochem questions as well, where the reactions were packed close together and it was hard to tell what compound belonged with what part of the reaction. General chem had less calculations than I was used to from practice test (esp. Barrons) so that was nice.
OChem - aicd/base, sn2, sp3, etc. All of the normal stuff with a few tricky reactions.
PAT - The resolution does suck. Once you accept that fact and just realize that you can miss lots of angle ranking and still do fine, it becomes more relaxing. However there were two hole punching questions that didn't seem to be possible to fold the paper the way they indicated. And there were a few paper folding that were so small I could barely see them.
Reading - I was stunned to see I did this well. I was probably a little too laid back on this section (because it's such busywork), and I just plugged in the answer that looked good, often without referring back to the text.
Quant - I really like this section, but it is FAST. Just brush up on trig and some of those Kaplan tricks like pythagorean triples: 3,4,5, 6,8,10 5,12,13 etc.
Overall thougts - There seemed to be a lot of "What is the BEST answer" type questions, and seem to have two right answers - the one that looks right and the one that you think is "technically" correct. I wish I could offer some good advice on this front, but sometimes they want the "go with your gut" answer and other times it seems to be the picky one. It sure feels nice to have the DAT over with. Being done is almost more enjoyable than doing well.
I studied Kaplan, Barrons, Lippencot or whatever, Organic Edge and a little from Campbell Bio. I did not take Kaplan's course and am obviously glad I didn't. Save yourself a thousand bucks. I went to the library and studied out of some GRE/GMAT math review, and AP Bio and AP Chem books (lots of good practice questions). Topscore of course. I studied about 4-5 hours a day for a month.
Good luck to all of you who have yet to take this beast.
