- Joined
- Nov 19, 2011
- Messages
- 43
- Reaction score
- 15
Hi all,
I thought that I would give you all a breakdown of my DAT scores given that I am a nontraditional student who wasn’t able to really study prior to taking the test. All of my prereqs were done between 2010-2012, so clearly it had been a few years since I had taken any science courses. I decided last minute this year that I would go ahead and apply for dental school instead of next, so I had approximately four weeks to prepare. In addition, I work full time at a hospital and was writing my thesis, so I had a lot to juggle.
Unfortunately though, I got extremely sick about a week into preparing with flu like symptoms, but my doctors were unable to figure out what was wrong with me. Clearly this forced me to change my DAT test date as I was unable to study. I moved it two weeks in advance. In total, I was able to get about 2.5 weeks of studying in for about 3-4 hours a night. I will breakdown what I did per section and my scores. I have already finished my Master’s degree, so I had taken the GRE a couple of years ago, which I compare when I talk about QR.
PA: 19
Preparation: DAT Bootcamp for angle ranking, nothing for cube counting, CDP for the rest. I knew going into the test that I was REALLY bad at TFE and pattern folding. I was hoping my ability to score high enough in the other sections would make for this.
Actual test: Hit the TFE section and actually skipped all of the problems until the very end. I can honestly say that I randomly guessed on over half of them because I didn’t know what I was doing. Very stressful situation. I would say that the 19 is pretty representative of what I actually knew.
QR: 21
Preparation: Chad’s Videos + 1 DAT Destroyer test. I made sure that I knew the tricks to doing age problems, rate problems, and knew my trig.
Actual test: Zero age or rate problems. Cool. However, I did have a lot of trig questions which I thought was odd. However, I didn’t completely get to finish this section– it would have been nice to have an extra 5-10 minutes. The difficulty of this section seemed comparable to the GRE. Towards the end, I did start to get scared knowing that I would have my scores pop up soon.
RC: 23
Preparation: None. Decided beforehand to use search and destroy.
Actual test: I thought I would score higher on this section than I actually did. My passages were pretty interesting to me and I finished with plenty of time left. However, there were some tone questions and didn’t know what the answer choices meant – so I probably got those wrong. Overall, I don’t think you can really study for this section.
Bio/Gen Chem/Orgo: 19
Preparation: Chad’s Videos + DAT Bootcamp. I scored 18’s or lower on all of the practice tests from DAT Bootcamp on these sections, so the actual DAT was a lot easier. I remember getting like a 14 on one of my bio practice tests the week prior and thinking that I might as well just give up and not even take the test.
Actual test: My bio section had three questions about dinosaurs, which I thought was annoying. Gen Chem and Orgo seemed like such a blur to me. Gen Chem was my worst out of the three in undergrad, so I was worried about it. I did whatever I could though to stay calm and focus on eliminating answer choices.
TS: 19
AA: 20
My goal given my situation was to get a 20, so I was pleased with how it turned out. My DAT scores are the weakest part of my application, so I am hoping that they won’t hold me back too much. My brother is a periodontist and he is helping me out with everything else. My actual app was esubmitted last week.
Hope this gives some of you hope if you are thinking that you will totally bomb it. If you are able to actually study and take a full practice test (I took zero...) then you already have an advantage over what I had!
I thought that I would give you all a breakdown of my DAT scores given that I am a nontraditional student who wasn’t able to really study prior to taking the test. All of my prereqs were done between 2010-2012, so clearly it had been a few years since I had taken any science courses. I decided last minute this year that I would go ahead and apply for dental school instead of next, so I had approximately four weeks to prepare. In addition, I work full time at a hospital and was writing my thesis, so I had a lot to juggle.
Unfortunately though, I got extremely sick about a week into preparing with flu like symptoms, but my doctors were unable to figure out what was wrong with me. Clearly this forced me to change my DAT test date as I was unable to study. I moved it two weeks in advance. In total, I was able to get about 2.5 weeks of studying in for about 3-4 hours a night. I will breakdown what I did per section and my scores. I have already finished my Master’s degree, so I had taken the GRE a couple of years ago, which I compare when I talk about QR.
PA: 19
Preparation: DAT Bootcamp for angle ranking, nothing for cube counting, CDP for the rest. I knew going into the test that I was REALLY bad at TFE and pattern folding. I was hoping my ability to score high enough in the other sections would make for this.
Actual test: Hit the TFE section and actually skipped all of the problems until the very end. I can honestly say that I randomly guessed on over half of them because I didn’t know what I was doing. Very stressful situation. I would say that the 19 is pretty representative of what I actually knew.
QR: 21
Preparation: Chad’s Videos + 1 DAT Destroyer test. I made sure that I knew the tricks to doing age problems, rate problems, and knew my trig.
Actual test: Zero age or rate problems. Cool. However, I did have a lot of trig questions which I thought was odd. However, I didn’t completely get to finish this section– it would have been nice to have an extra 5-10 minutes. The difficulty of this section seemed comparable to the GRE. Towards the end, I did start to get scared knowing that I would have my scores pop up soon.
RC: 23
Preparation: None. Decided beforehand to use search and destroy.
Actual test: I thought I would score higher on this section than I actually did. My passages were pretty interesting to me and I finished with plenty of time left. However, there were some tone questions and didn’t know what the answer choices meant – so I probably got those wrong. Overall, I don’t think you can really study for this section.
Bio/Gen Chem/Orgo: 19
Preparation: Chad’s Videos + DAT Bootcamp. I scored 18’s or lower on all of the practice tests from DAT Bootcamp on these sections, so the actual DAT was a lot easier. I remember getting like a 14 on one of my bio practice tests the week prior and thinking that I might as well just give up and not even take the test.
Actual test: My bio section had three questions about dinosaurs, which I thought was annoying. Gen Chem and Orgo seemed like such a blur to me. Gen Chem was my worst out of the three in undergrad, so I was worried about it. I did whatever I could though to stay calm and focus on eliminating answer choices.
TS: 19
AA: 20
My goal given my situation was to get a 20, so I was pleased with how it turned out. My DAT scores are the weakest part of my application, so I am hoping that they won’t hold me back too much. My brother is a periodontist and he is helping me out with everything else. My actual app was esubmitted last week.
Hope this gives some of you hope if you are thinking that you will totally bomb it. If you are able to actually study and take a full practice test (I took zero...) then you already have an advantage over what I had!
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