DAT Break Down - AA 24

[Pyraeus]

Hello,

I just finished taking my DAT today, and I promised to post a break down. So here it goes. I hope it helps you a little bit on your studies.

My DAT scores are:

AA 24, TS 26, OC 26, GC 27, Bio 26, RC 16, QR 25, PAT 21



I studied about two months from 8am-8pm, sometimes until 5pm if I felt that's enough for the day. However, don't worry too much because I took too many long breaks in between. In a way, the long-breaks and making myself distracted literally by anything are my strategy to really learn or to memorize anything. (you'll be amazed how your unconscious mind can handle too much info!)

What I highly recommend to get really good scores is taking notes, notes on top of notes, and many notes. Honestly, taking notes helped in 85% of my scores, if it is not an overstatement.

The resources that I used include BootCamp, DAT destroyer, and Kaplan. I'll give a more detailed review of each in the following.

Biology
I mainly used Kaplan for the first 5 weeks of my studying. Kaplan is NOT a complete resource for biology. However, there many useful info and pretty well organized.

However, I wish that I knew how amazing BootCamp is before I knew about Kaplan (I know that BC is well known among everybody, but I didn't know its very potentials until I used it).

Their explanations are brief, complete and precise. I'd recommend going over explanations that you even think you are familiar with; because there might be some new info that you've never known about.

If you have a question, Ari and Joel are very quick in responding and explaining everything.

I also finished about half of DAT destroyer which was also great. (I would have finished the whole question set if my schedule allowed). To the students who do not have a solid background in biology, the destroyer might seem at first random; but remember biology is a very broad topic and it is in fact about random facts that you should be familiar with.

O-Chem and Gen Chem
The same comments as Biology.

However, I also found Mike's videos on BC very helpful. If I wasn't sure about something, I'd just watch Mike's and the whole thing made complete sense. (I put the video speed on 2x which I think is a good feature).

DAT destroyer is again a must. What really makes DAT destroyer tough is that some questions require you to apply multiple concepts in a single question, which really shows how much you really learned from what you studied.

In my actual DAT, I thought I was going at a slow paste but I ended up with extra 30 minutes to just review my answers and prepare my scratch paper for the cube-counting and the hole-punching.

PAT
I've always been good with my perceptual abilities, and honestly I was hoping for a higher score in this section.
I mainly used BootCamp for this section, and as all the other sections, I am happy that I did.

The generators are great! I remember struggling with the angle ranking, especially the ones that faced different directions and were only 3 degrees different.

The explanations on key hole are great!The key holes might seem tough at first, but once you get the hang of it with 20-30 questions, you start to see some patterns that test makers use to trick you.

BTW, I had zero rock key hole questions.

RC
I didn't score well on this section, so I don't think I'm qualified to give advice about this section.

QR
BootCamp again all the way! When it comes to being on top of everything and being the most up-to-date resource, BootCamp is always the best. The new Quantitative Comparison questions that BC recently incorporated into their practices did show up in my exam and there were about 10 of them! They are not particularly hard, but you need to be at least familiar, and know with what mind set to approach them.

In summary...
- Every single section was much easier than any practice test that I took (Maybe I feel that way because I over prepared?!?!).

- Don't forget to take lots of notes, A LOT OF IT!

-Use BootCamp and Destroyer

and you'll be good to go for the test day.

Best of luck to you all!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[artist2022]

Thank you! Excellent scores and detailed breakdown!!

 

[dentistaporfavor]

I hope you're right about the notes part because I have used up like six notebooks so far :')

 

[DDSDCMUU]

Congrats on the great scores and thanks for the advice!

 

[NHFields]

Was the real thing harder than Bootcamp practice tests?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

 

[DAT Destroyer]

Was the real thing harder than Bootcamp practice tests?


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile

Pyraeus posted this in his summary:


In summary...
- Every single section was much easier than any practice test that I took (Maybe I feel that way because I over prepared?!?!).

 

[Pearl E. White]

I would like to add that although HIS version seemed easier YOURS or MINE might not be. I think it comes down to preparation. Better to overprepare than under...

 

[DAT Destroyer]

I would like to add that although HIS version seemed easier YOURS or MINE might not be. I think it comes down to preparation. Better to overprepare than under...

Miss Pearl, you share pearls of wisdom!

 

[Pyraeus]

I would like to add that although HIS version seemed easier YOURS or MINE might not be. I think it comes down to preparation. Better to overprepare than under...

Miss Pearl is right everybody; don't get me wrong. I think that it was easier because of the time that I sacrificed into it. If I haven't put much effort into it, the questions might have seemed way way way harder than what they seem to me now.

So after all, the dedication to what you are doing is what pays off!

 

[Faefly]

Even though you got 16 in RC, your other scores are still awesome and I think it's quite unfair if they judged someone whose English is not the first language to this number that solely depends on speed not really on our ability to read!

Even though you got 16, what did you get to reach this far
Did you do bootcamp RC, what was your method, what were the errors you did, so we can learn from your mistakes I know you said passage 1 took a lot of time, was it like you spent 30 minute on it or was it so hard that you panicked?

 

[Pyraeus]

Even though you got 16 in RC, your other scores are still awesome and I think it's quite unfair if they judged someone whose English is not the first language to this number that solely depends on speed not really on our ability to read!

Even though you got 16, what did you get to reach this far
Did you do bootcamp RC, what was your method, what were the errors you did, so we can learn from your mistakes I know you said passage 1 took a lot of time, was it like you spent 30 minute on it or was it so hard that you panicked?

Thanks a lot! I did take bootcamp RC practices, but I couldn't come up with an effective strategy that works for me.
On the real test, I decided to read as much as passage as I can in 5 min and then start the questions, but when I looked up to see my time, I had spent about 12 minutes on that passage and I spent another 8 minutes on the questions of that passage. After the whole 20min passed, I guessed the rest of the questions and moved onto the second passage. For the 2nd and 3rd passage I used S&D to compensate for the time wasted.

I was just unlucky to let the panic effect me and my mind was blank for the entire section.

It was effecting the first few minutes of my QR, but I decided to forget that and solely focus on QR, so whether RC turns out bad or well, the QR is not ruined. Actually, I was unsure of my first ten QR questions, but I'm glad that I made correct calculations the first time around because I didn't have time to check all the questions that I had doubts in.