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[drpsuedonym]

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Done! I need to go throw out the small mountain of scratch paper that I've accumulated in the past 5 weeks!!!

I took the DAT in February the first time, and was fine with most of my scores except for PAT. I know UoP (one of my top choices) gives a lot of importance to PAT, and since my GPA isn't great, I wanted to give myself a better shot so I retook.

So I'm posting scores and GPA and hoping you guys will give me feedback about what my chances are.

1st time (%) / 2nd time (%)

PAT 17 (52.4) / 19 (75.2)
QR 22 (94.2) / 22 (94.1)
RC 20 (67.0) / 26 (98.7)
Bio 21 (91.8) / 23 (97.6)
GChem 23 (94.5) / 22 (88.7)
Ochem 21 (87.6) / 22 (95.3)
TS 21 (92.4) / 22 (95.3)
AA 21 (91.5) / 23 (97.9)

GPA:
3.55 overal
3.31 science

I have no idea wtf happened on PAT. Right before I left my house I took an entire full length test with Crack PAT and I got a 21 even though I skipped an entire figure on cube counting because it was an illusion problem and giving me a headache.

So I woke up early this morning to cram (I know they say you should stop studying the day before, but I'm a crammer, I freak out if I don't study till the very end, and I'm also a total procrastinator, so I usually need every last second.) So I'm studying and I get this phone call from Prometric and this lady goes, "I would just like to remind you that you have an appointment at one today for the - the DAT." And I tell her, "Trust me, that's really not something I've forgotten."

Oh also, schools I'm applying to: Arizona, Boston, Columbia, NYU, Nova, Oregon, Tufts, UCSF, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Chicago, Jersey, Vegas, UNC, UPenn, USC, Uop, and UW (So basically, everywhere.)

My dream schools are UCSF, UW, UPenn, and UoP (at this point I don't even know which order I should put them in), so any feedback about my chances for these schools would be awesome. (Does anyone have the ADEA book for 2008 and wouldn't mind posting stats for these schools? I have the 2007 book but I'd like to get the most up to date stats possible.)

Oh and for RC, if anyone was wondering how I owned, it was pure luck. I got the alligator, fungi, and vision perception passages, and the first two were really easy, so I was able to search and destroy. In fact, the fungus one was ridiculously easy. But other than that, if anyone wants to know what I did, let me know.

(I just noticed that I took the two tests exactly 7 months apart. My first time was Feb 4 and now Aug 4.)

I've been reading this forum forever and have gotten a lot of good advice about study materials, but even more than that it's been such a great relief to be able to read about other people who are taking the DAT and are stressed about applying, so thank you to everyone who contributed to distracting me while I was studying! You guys rock!!

For everyone that's still studying, hang on! You're score will be worth all the trouble in the end. And every time you find yourself feeling lazy or tired or discouraged, watch this. Someone posted it here (sorry too lazy to go find the original post, but please claim credit for your link), and I just found it yesterday, but I wish I had had this when I started studying. I would have watched it every single morning. Good luck!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jAOkxgvboPk

 

[polarmolar]

With scores like that we need a materials breakdown buddy!!

 

[TeamGuo]

dangggg retake with a AA21... you show some mad motivation.... kk

Good job!

 

[Mamona]

Excellent scores what did you do for RC????

 

[bigasianpianist]

wow that's ridiculous, your scores were pretty much up there the first time! why the retake? *coming from a guy who took it again too lol

 

[Lazerous]

With scores like that we need a materials breakdown buddy!!

Indeed we do!
A list of the materials and how you would rate each one in terms of preparation for the exam would be more than good, it'd be grrrreat! 👍


😀

 

[drpsuedonym]

I'm going to answer all PM and thread questions all at once, so here it goes:

So for reading I used a combination of strategies. The first one is passage mapping, where you basically read the entire passage and jot down notes for each paragraph as you go along, and then refer back to your map as you do the questions, using it to help you know where to look in the passage. The other method is search and destroy where you basically scan the passage looking for the answers.

When you're taking the real test, you see a screen with just the passage on it, and then after you click next, you see the the question at the top and the passage on the bottom. I never read the passage on the first screen, I always go directly to the screen with the questions. First I look at the question, then start reading the passage and making my map while keeping an eye out for the answer to the question. I keep going with the map, and if I find the answer, I put it in and click next and then keep an eye out for the answer to the next question. The benefit of this is that if lets say I find the answer to the first question in the third paragraph, and then I go on to the next question, I'll be able to tell whether the answer to that question was in any of the first three paragraphs or whether I should keep going.

The reason this works is because you don't waste time doing search and destroy for passages in which it doesn't work, and because you actually end up reading the passage so that you're able to catch any trick questions. The combination also works better than either method by itself because you wont get thrown off if they word things differently.

Someone PM'ed me with this question that I wanted to address specifically: "I feel like i break down in the middle of the test and I let go of my strategy. I usually start by reading the first question and skimming through the passage for the answer. However, I seem to get disorganized as time goes on."

Combining passage mapping with search and destroy I think really takes care of this problem, which is basically what I think we all struggle with. Jotting down (short!) notes for each paragraph keeps you organized, and looking for each answer as you're reading also helps with time management. And because you're reading the passage, you don't waste time searching through the entire passage over and over.

I hope I've explained all of this properly, if something doesn't make sense let me know.

I was also really lucky in that I didn't get the piano or ethics passage (I had the ethics one the first time I took it). I had a passage on motion perception (passage mapping), alligators (combination), and fungi (99% search and destroy). The fungi passage was ridiculously easy, the questions were literally word for word from the passage.

I think what makes the RC so hard is that the writing is really horrible on some of the passages, especially the ethics (last time) and motion (this time) passages. People always say to just practice reading articles, and that's pretty true. Try to read complicated articles about subjects that you're unfamiliar with in order get used to not getting overwhelmed.

Okay, so as to resources.

I mostly used Kaplan, which for most of the sections is golden. The thing is you need the subject tests, not just the blue book (let me know if you want to buy those). Kaplan is excellent for gchem, ochem, and math. Like, tres magnifique. For Gchem it covers all the conceptual things, it teaches you how to do all the calculations, and even though it's harder than the real thing, it's right on target for teaching you what you need to know. For math, between the book and the subject tests, you know all the concepts you need to know (which is why I was surprised I didn't do better on the QR, I felt like I knew everything except for three problems which I ran out of time for.) I didn't use anything else for either one of these sections. For Ochem, I went through the Kaplan blue book and made notes on everything, and then I made this cheat sheet where I wrote down all the reactions sorted by functional group. I started out with alkenes and wrote down all the different ways to synthesize alkenes, and then I wrote all the reactions you could do with alkenes. I did the same thing for every functionality, alkynes, benzenes, ald/ketones, alcohols, etc, and these pages were totally separate from my notes.

Speaking of notes, you have to make notes on every little thing you don't know. When you're going over the answer key, you think you'll remember your mistakes, but you wont, you have to write down EVERYTHING!

Other resources: I used Topscore for the science sections, very very similar to the real thing (except for all those damn taxonomy questions. The real test is not that detailed, knowing what's in Kaplan is more than good enough). I also used Crack PAT and I thought it was also excellent, a definite MUST HAVE, totally worth every penny, the most realistic practice ever. Crack has harder cube counting, but it's good to get used to doing the harder ones. I don't know if it varies from test to my test, but I felt for pattern folding my test had about an equal number of shading and shape questions.

As to how hard the test is: Some questions are really really easy. Like I had two questions that were about active/passive transport and phagocytosis. And like everyone has been saying, some questions are just like, wtf??? I wished I had read up on the immune system a little more, Kaplan is great for kidneys, but I couldn't remember some of the stuff, which sucked.

And as to questions about my background knowledge, I'm a bio major, and I'm about to graduate (just need to pass out of my language requirement and then I'm done!). I've taken obviously the two semester of bio (did well), two semesters of gchem (rocked it), two semester of ochem (C-, C, then B- when repeating the first semester), biochem, mol bio, genetics, physio, and some other stuff that doesn't matter. I'm not a particularly great student (I usually only go to class if there's a midterm), so I didn't have any notes or anything like that from class to rely on, so I made notes from scratch.

Other notes: In the last week of June, I studied about an hour or two each day, the first two weeks of July I spent studying several hours a day, between July 14-July 24 I was in my room from 4 in the afternoon to 2 at night, and then from July 24-Aug 3, all day every day in my room. I spent at least 1/2 - 3/4 of that time productively. Someone said to use a timer, which I think is a great idea to let yourself know exactly how much time you've actually been productive and to motivate yourself to keep going.

I studied all of my materials first before taking any sort of practice tests because I didn't want to waste them. Two weeks before the test I printed out a calendar and wrote out which tests I wanted to take each day to keep myself on track. Like one day I would do one Crack, a gchem subject tests, a bio subject test, and a math subject test. This way I made sure to use all my resources and to spread out studying time over all subjects.

Ok wow, this was freakishly long. If you're still here, congratulations! I hope this hasn't bored you to tears and that it'll actually help someone out.

 

[doc3232]

Thanks for the breakdown...did you take any Kaplan online tests? Recently?

 

[drpsuedonym]

dangggg retake with a AA21... you show some mad motivation.... kk

Good job!

wow that's ridiculous, your scores were pretty much up there the first time! why the retake? *coming from a guy who took it again too lol

Lol, I retook because my sGPA is a bit low, and my PAT the first time was below average most schools, so I didn't want to go into the application process with two handicaps.

But mad motivation, hell yeah. And it's hard because general opinion on SDN is don't retake, and so you're sitting there feeling bad because you don't want to study, and so you come on SDN and you read about people going don't retake, what if you do WORSE!, and then you panic and it's awful because you have no idea if you're doing the right thing.

But seriously, if you're going to do a retake, you hope for a change like bigasianpianist. 😀

 

[drpsuedonym]

Thanks for the breakdown...did you take any Kaplan online tests? Recently?

I didn't take the online full length tests, but I took the subject tests and I saved most of them for the last two or three weeks.