So I'm writing this to give myself a break from studying for finals ochem is tough!
My scores were:
RC: 29
PAT: 24
BIO: 25
CHEM: 25
MDT: 21
TS: 25
AA:26
Canadian dat doesn't have qr or ochem (great for me since I suck at both of them lol). I started early august and took the dat in november, so about 3 months in total. I studied for about 3 hours a day for two months then the last month did ~6 hours a day. I find doing a little bit every day was a lot more helpful and stopped me from burning out.
Canadian DAT is a bit different from the American DAT. I don't know how sites like bootcamp/genius/qvault stack up in terms of representativeness for the aDAT but they weren't very representative of the cDAT. Still get bootcamp and genius though just for the PAT section because you're going to be lost without it.
So if you're preparing to take the cDAT I'd really suggest to spend more time reviewing notes rather than taking a bunch of tests. Get destroyer if you want 29 or 30s but know that it's a LOT of material to cover.
For the science sections I really thought the phrase "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" applied pretty well. Get a good breadth of material memorized but don't get bogged down in the details. I painstakingly memorized a lot of minutiae and I don't think I was tested on 99% of them.
Study materials:
RC: did bootcamp tests, finished the old examkrackers verbal reasoning passages for MCAT and also the princeton CARS prep booklet. Did some old GRE passages too. I wasn't looking for tests to be representative of the DAT but I knew that reading comprehension is one of those skills that carries over, so I practiced a lot of different tests and tried timing myself to complete them in half the time allotted. My bootcamp average was around 24, but bootcamp was a lot different than my actual RC.
PAT: Did bootcamp tests/genius tests and practiced every day on generators. I think I did about 2 hours every day. Honestly I didn't really think bootcamp was super helpful on any section except PAT, but I would definitely pay the full price for bootcamp just for the PAT section because it's amazing. Genius has a different flavour than bootcamp and overall I'd say bootcamp is higher quality but genius isn't bad. I scored about a 26 average on bootcamp and 28 average on genius. So I did a bit worse on the actual test (disappointing since I expected this to be my best mark!) than practice. I think I was too nervous and just wasn't on top of my game that day for angles (plus cDAT had about 4 rock keyholes which were impossible to solve for me).
Bio: bootcamp/destroyer/feralis. I regret doing destroyer, not because it's bad but because of my circumstances (didn't need my bio or chem score). I couldn't really absorb the knowledge from doing questions and I'd rather have spent my time reviewing more feralis instead. There are also extremely low yield questions in destroyer (interspersed with some GREAT questions), it's great if you want to get 30 or something but I don't actually need my bio score this cycle so I didn't pay much attention to this section. My advice here would be to just study feralis, you don't need anything else. There's enough information in there that I couldn't remember it all despite reviewing it for 3 months. Download the Anki flashcards for these notes and do 100 a day.
Also I heard taxonomy and classification was a big topic on the DAT but I didn't get any of those questions. I strongly suggest taking a diversity course before taking the DAT because this section alone takes up a lot of valuable time.
CHEM: bootcamp/chad's videos/destroyer. About the same impression as biology, destroyer has a lot of low yield questions that are great if you want the 30 but if you don't then it's not worth the time spent in my opinion. I also didn't need this score so I didn't really study this section too much. Advice here would be to watch chad's videos ONCE while taking comprehensive notes and just review them for the rest of your time. I looked up lab material as well and reviewed my first year chemistry notes. There's a lot of conceptual questions so focus on those instead of calculation questions. Don't worry about really mathy stuff, I didn't see any of that on the cDAT and neither did my friends who took it the years previous. One thing I didn't review for this section and lost marks on were ion charges for the transition metals.
MDT: Yay carving, the one important section I blew. I actually thought I did really well on the carving so I was pretty disappointed by the score. 21 is on the low end of people who apply to universities that accept MDT scores. I bought about 36 soaps and started carving them a month before the dat, about 1 a day. The practice soaps I got were quite hard and the DAT soap was obscenely soft, which really sucks because I didn't really know how to do the soft kind (still thought the carving was pretty much perfect though).
My scores were:
RC: 29
PAT: 24
BIO: 25
CHEM: 25
MDT: 21
TS: 25
AA:26
Canadian dat doesn't have qr or ochem (great for me since I suck at both of them lol). I started early august and took the dat in november, so about 3 months in total. I studied for about 3 hours a day for two months then the last month did ~6 hours a day. I find doing a little bit every day was a lot more helpful and stopped me from burning out.
Canadian DAT is a bit different from the American DAT. I don't know how sites like bootcamp/genius/qvault stack up in terms of representativeness for the aDAT but they weren't very representative of the cDAT. Still get bootcamp and genius though just for the PAT section because you're going to be lost without it.
So if you're preparing to take the cDAT I'd really suggest to spend more time reviewing notes rather than taking a bunch of tests. Get destroyer if you want 29 or 30s but know that it's a LOT of material to cover.
For the science sections I really thought the phrase "wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle" applied pretty well. Get a good breadth of material memorized but don't get bogged down in the details. I painstakingly memorized a lot of minutiae and I don't think I was tested on 99% of them.
Study materials:
RC: did bootcamp tests, finished the old examkrackers verbal reasoning passages for MCAT and also the princeton CARS prep booklet. Did some old GRE passages too. I wasn't looking for tests to be representative of the DAT but I knew that reading comprehension is one of those skills that carries over, so I practiced a lot of different tests and tried timing myself to complete them in half the time allotted. My bootcamp average was around 24, but bootcamp was a lot different than my actual RC.
PAT: Did bootcamp tests/genius tests and practiced every day on generators. I think I did about 2 hours every day. Honestly I didn't really think bootcamp was super helpful on any section except PAT, but I would definitely pay the full price for bootcamp just for the PAT section because it's amazing. Genius has a different flavour than bootcamp and overall I'd say bootcamp is higher quality but genius isn't bad. I scored about a 26 average on bootcamp and 28 average on genius. So I did a bit worse on the actual test (disappointing since I expected this to be my best mark!) than practice. I think I was too nervous and just wasn't on top of my game that day for angles (plus cDAT had about 4 rock keyholes which were impossible to solve for me).
Bio: bootcamp/destroyer/feralis. I regret doing destroyer, not because it's bad but because of my circumstances (didn't need my bio or chem score). I couldn't really absorb the knowledge from doing questions and I'd rather have spent my time reviewing more feralis instead. There are also extremely low yield questions in destroyer (interspersed with some GREAT questions), it's great if you want to get 30 or something but I don't actually need my bio score this cycle so I didn't pay much attention to this section. My advice here would be to just study feralis, you don't need anything else. There's enough information in there that I couldn't remember it all despite reviewing it for 3 months. Download the Anki flashcards for these notes and do 100 a day.
Also I heard taxonomy and classification was a big topic on the DAT but I didn't get any of those questions. I strongly suggest taking a diversity course before taking the DAT because this section alone takes up a lot of valuable time.
CHEM: bootcamp/chad's videos/destroyer. About the same impression as biology, destroyer has a lot of low yield questions that are great if you want the 30 but if you don't then it's not worth the time spent in my opinion. I also didn't need this score so I didn't really study this section too much. Advice here would be to watch chad's videos ONCE while taking comprehensive notes and just review them for the rest of your time. I looked up lab material as well and reviewed my first year chemistry notes. There's a lot of conceptual questions so focus on those instead of calculation questions. Don't worry about really mathy stuff, I didn't see any of that on the cDAT and neither did my friends who took it the years previous. One thing I didn't review for this section and lost marks on were ion charges for the transition metals.
MDT: Yay carving, the one important section I blew. I actually thought I did really well on the carving so I was pretty disappointed by the score. 21 is on the low end of people who apply to universities that accept MDT scores. I bought about 36 soaps and started carving them a month before the dat, about 1 a day. The practice soaps I got were quite hard and the DAT soap was obscenely soft, which really sucks because I didn't really know how to do the soft kind (still thought the carving was pretty much perfect though).
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