DAT Bootcamp Scores

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I would be worried. Look over feralis notes is you haven't already
 
Definitely postpone. Bio is a lot of information and the exam can throw anything at you. If you're at 15-16 you're struggling with basics which means you haven't had time to delve into deeper material. You'll thank yourself later.


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One thing I regret about my DAT studying is not using Feralis' notes earlier. They're a lot more helpful than Cliffs. I didn't start using Feralis' notes until the week before my exam but it made a huge difference for me. Also keep in mind I went into my DAT exam having never scored above an 18 on the Bootcamp bio section but got a 21 on the actual DAT.
 
blablabla1 said:
One thing I regret about my DAT studying is not using Feralis' notes earlier. They're a lot more helpful than Cliffs. I didn't start using Feralis' notes until the week before my exam but it made a huge difference for me. Also keep in mind I went into my DAT exam having never scored above an 18 on the Bootcamp bio section but got a 21 on the actual DAT.
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I agree with this post, but I would take the last statement with a grain of salt. I think the general consensus is that your bootcamp scores will closely match your test day scores. So don't expect a magical 3 point jump. It all depends on your knowledge of the questions you happen to get on test day.
 
blablabla1 said:
One thing I regret about my DAT studying is not using Feralis' notes earlier. They're a lot more helpful than Cliffs. I didn't start using Feralis' notes until the week before my exam but it made a huge difference for me. Also keep in mind I went into my DAT exam having never scored above an 18 on the Bootcamp bio section but got a 21 on the actual DAT.
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Hey man I really value your advice so I thought I'd reach out to you again. I've been grinding it out since this post and I just took the SNS of the 2009 DAT today. I got a 22 Bio 18 Chem and 17 O Chem so that would be 19 TS. How do you think this will reflect on the real test?
 
Postpone. Go for breadth not depth. Also, DATQvault was very helpful for me after going through Feralis' notes.
 
Postpone. Go for breadth not depth. Also, DATQvault was very helpful for me after going through Feralis' notes.
 
D1Bound said:
Hey man I really value your advice so I thought I'd reach out to you again. I've been grinding it out since this post and I just took the SNS of the 2009 DAT today. I got a 22 Bio 18 Chem and 17 O Chem so that would be 19 TS. How do you think this will reflect on the real test?
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That's some great improvement already! The Bio section on the actual DAT ends up being a lot of chance sometimes. Some people will get tests with questions that they know the answer to better because they maybe did a bit more emphasis on that small tidbit of info. The fact that you got a 22 means that you're only missing a couple questions here and there and have a pretty solid basic knowledge (so you likely have the breadth mostly covered)

Since your test day is in about 2 weeks, I suggest you identify the subjects in Bio that you're not as well versed in and spend an hour or two a day working on that. Spend some other time on practicing PAT every day (getting consistent practice for this section is the most important)

Reading comprehension is a lot of just finding a technique that works for you, I'm assuming you're doing okay there. Your OC and GC scores came out a bit low, if you've been doing Bootcamp, I would try to see if there's any certain concepts that you're consistently not doing too well on and brush up on that.

You're on the home stretch and at this point in time you want to be refining your knowledge rather than completely learning new things. I'm not really sure how indicative the 2009 scores are for your actual score, but considering how much you've improved just in a week or so shows that whatever you're doing is working well
 
blablabla1 said:
That's some great improvement already! The Bio section on the actual DAT ends up being a lot of chance sometimes. Some people will get tests with questions that they know the answer to better because they maybe did a bit more emphasis on that small tidbit of info. The fact that you got a 22 means that you're only missing a couple questions here and there and have a pretty solid basic knowledge (so you likely have the breadth mostly covered)

Since your test day is in about 2 weeks, I suggest you identify the subjects in Bio that you're not as well versed in and spend an hour or two a day working on that. Spend some other time on practicing PAT every day (getting consistent practice for this section is the most important)

Reading comprehension is a lot of just finding a technique that works for you, I'm assuming you're doing okay there. Your OC and GC scores came out a bit low, if you've been doing Bootcamp, I would try to see if there's any certain concepts that you're consistently not doing too well on and brush up on that.

You're on the home stretch and at this point in time you want to be refining your knowledge rather than completely learning new things. I'm not really sure how indicative the 2009 scores are for your actual score, but considering how much you've improved just in a week or so shows that whatever you're doing is working well
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What RC strategy did you use? I've been writing keywords to questions then trying to search 2 or 3 out at a time. I've been getting 17-19 on Bootcamp with this.
 
D1Bound said:
What RC strategy did you use? I've been writing keywords to questions then trying to search 2 or 3 out at a time. I've been getting 17-19 on Bootcamp with this.
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I used search and destory for RC. I scored 23's and 24's on BC. Scored a 26 on the real DAT
 
Kingfish23 said:
I used search and destory for RC. I scored 23's and 24's on BC. Scored a 26 on the real DAT
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What is this search and destroy? Is it a strategy bootcamp uses? I just got bootcamp and RC is pretty low for me. Need all the help i can get. thank you
 
chicagodentist123 said:
What is this search and destroy? Is it a strategy bootcamp uses? I just got bootcamp and RC is pretty low for me. Need all the help i can get. thank you
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Search and destroy is a reading comprehension technique where rather than reading the passage first and then attempting to answer the questions, you jump straight to the questions and scan the passage trying to find the answer. It helps reduce the amount of time you need, but the downside is that any inference type questions are almost impossible to answer.

I personally think it's more effective to work on your reading speed by practicing so that you can read the entire passage and have sufficient time to answer questions, but that's just what worked for me.
 
D1Bound said:
What RC strategy did you use? I've been writing keywords to questions then trying to search 2 or 3 out at a time. I've been getting 17-19 on Bootcamp with this.
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Well with Bootcamp's practice exams, I found search and destroy to be inefficient because of the difficulty and length of the readings. I used a hybrid method for Bootcamp and I was scoring well (even got a 30 once)

But on the real DAT, I found the reading prompts to be way easier and I had to quickly change my strategy to purely search and destroy. I got a 24 on the actual exam for reference.

You just gotta go with what works for you! Every person is going to be different. I suggest taking practice exams with the different strategies that you'll find on SDN and see which one gives you the best scores
 
Personally, I was able to skim effectively and answer all of my RC questions with 10+ minutes to go. Like blablabla1 said, see which strategy works for you. I finished my RC section on the DAT with 15+ minutes to spare with search and destroy
 
For the RC section, are the passages and the questions shown side-by-side or do you have to constantly go back and forth? If that's the case, the search and destroy may be a bit hard for me.
 
are the survey of the natural sciences exams on BC supposed to be the same as we have done in Ari's schedule? I could have sworn I have seen some of these questions before
 
Tatu78 said:
For the RC section, are the passages and the questions shown side-by-side or do you have to constantly go back and forth? If that's the case, the search and destroy may be a bit hard for me.
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I believe each question is shown individually with the passage right next to it.
 
Tatu78 said:
For the RC section, are the passages and the questions shown side-by-side or do you have to constantly go back and forth? If that's the case, the search and destroy may be a bit hard for me.
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The passage will be on the same screen as each question. There is also a feature that I think is new to the 2017 DAT, where we can highlight throughout the passage.
 
FeralisExtremum said:
Search and destroy is a reading comprehension technique where rather than reading the passage first and then attempting to answer the questions, you jump straight to the questions and scan the passage trying to find the answer. It helps reduce the amount of time you need, but the downside is that any inference type questions are almost impossible to answer.

I personally think it's more effective to work on your reading speed by practicing so that you can read the entire passage and have sufficient time to answer questions, but that's just what worked for me.
Click to expand...
Ok. I'll have to try and see if it works with me thank you.
 
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