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- Apr 30, 2015
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Hey all,
I put this off for a while after I forgot the password to my original account, but I figure it's better late than never to think of a cooler SDN username and give back to the community that helped me succeed 🙂
Note: Have not proofread and wrote some of this using voice command, please be kind, also sorry it's so long
Scores:
BIO: 26
GC: 21
OC: 23
TS: 23
PAT: 21
RC: 19
QR: 19
AA: 22
Study / Prep:
BIO: I had taken only two biology courses (cell bio and genetics, both during the summer of 2013) prior to my test date. So during the 2013 - 2014 school year (mostly in Fall, but also in Spring), I completed free online courses and watched/took notes on video lecture series for various full-length BIO courses. It took discipline to actually learn the material while knowing I wasn't actually being tested on it. But especially for A&P, I felt like I needed more exposure than Cliffs, and my science background was just so weak that even Cliffs confused me at first. So the online courses were more or less just to get my feet wet.
During Winter Break of 2013-2014, I read and highlighted Cliffs in its entirety. Most of the stuff was still foreign to me, so doing this covered a pretty steep learning curve. At the end of break, I went thru all of BIO Destroyer... This was dumb, though - I got like <10% correct and I hardly understood any of the explanations. OK, so I backtracked.
During Spring '14, I studied Barron's and Ferali's notes - along with review of Cliffs and began to make my own note packets for each subject. I then spent a while building and studying these note packets. I also watched a ton of Bozeman biology, Craig Savage, Khan academy, Armando Hasudungan, and other concise YT vids, usually before I went to sleep at night, added relevant info from there into my notes. Eventually I but these notes until I felt like I had - at my fingertips - the majority of the DAT BIO content.
Craig Savage biodiversity vids - if you take one thing from this, watch these videos. Around 3 weeks prior to test, I realized I was relying too much on memory for the subject (I had no formal education in it, so I was basically just trying to memorize a giant chart that outlined the physiological distinctions among animal classes). I watched Craig's vids and it was like I snapped my fingers and finally understood everything I had been trying to memorize for months.
Toward the end of Spring '14, I started making flashcards from all the content that was giving me trouble in those notes. I continued studying the notes, but by the test date, I probably had a stack of biology cards a foot high. Throughout the summer, I would continue making notecards (from questions I missed on practice tests, from a section of my notes that I didn't have down, etc.) and I would start quizzing myself using the cards. If I got one right I'd put it in a pile to the right, and if I got it wrong, in a pile to the left. At any time, I had about 4-6 separate stacks organized by how well I knew the material - Easy (1) to Hard (6) and I'd continuously go thru a pile, moving the ones I got right into the pile to its right and the ones I got wrong into the pile to its left (no real end game here, just the goal of just having more cards in the easier piles and fewer in the harder piles until they're all easy and then voila your weaknesses are your strengths).
During the summer was also when I purchased Qvault. TON of BIO problems on there and it's great for showing you the subjects in which you're missing the most questions. Any q's I wanted to review got made into a notecard and tossed in the hardest pile.
2-4 weeks from test date, I went back thru Destroyer and (nerd alert) it was pretty really cool to actually understand the material that honestly made no sense to a few months earlier. I marked all the questions I got wrong or wanted to review and typed up about 10 pages of notes from it, and later on took the material that was giving me trouble from those notes and put into flashcards.
A couple days prior to test, I ditched the notecards and tried to better understand "big picture" concepts. I spent a couple hours a day just watching YouTube videos (Bozeman and Savage mostly), not taking notes, just trying to get a better understanding of biology so that I could use context to answer questions I didn't know.
I spent WAY more time on BIO than any other subject because I felt like I really had to make up for my lack of BIO courses.
GC: I took GC 1 in Fall '13 and GC 2 in Spring '14. GC always came pretty easy to me and I was a TA for the course this year. At end of Spring '14 and GC 2, I immediately watched Chad's, took notes, reviewed, and then moved onto Destroyer. Destroyer was AWESOME. It crushed my soul a few times, but by the end of it, I felt like a chemistry god. I solved in sets of 5 and wrote notes per every 50 problems on the ones I had gotten wrong, particularly the concept I had misunderstood. I had to cover GC quickly because I was taking both oChem (5 creds each) that summer and between that and BIO, I knew I wouldn't have much time to study GC. Throughout the summer, I was scoring 22-30 in GC practice tests, but I made two big mistakes here: 1) I got cocky and slowed down on GC review closer to test date and 2) I never took the time to address the issues I have having with one particular type of problem (the ones where the question provides all the numbers and units and you basically just have to know an equation and rearrange to match it to the the answer choice, all of which are written in the format like [(X)(Y)(Z)]/[(A)(B)]. Really simple, but I could never get these right and I would always spend too much time on it only to realize I had been working on it the most roundabout way possible. Anyways, I never put in the time to get those types of problems down and I'll let you guess whether I got 3 of them on my real test -___-
OC: I took OC 1 and OC 2 in Summer '14 and hated it. GC came so easy for me, so it felt like I was getting smacked in the face with a truck full of nucleophiles. Part of it was scary because I had already scheduled my DAT 11 days after my OC 2 final exam (I remember scheduling it and thinking that if I learn it as quickly as GC, it'll be a piece of cake... Not the case). Toward the end of my OC 2 course, I was beginning to stress out so much about the DAT, I would skip sometimes 2, 3, or even 4 out of 5 weekly (3hr) lectures to do DAT prep. The day after OC 2 final (10 days till test), I decided to take an OC practice test. I think I scored a 13... I finally had my 10 days of pure test prep and I was really upset because I realized I'd have to spend the majority of it studying more OC. So...... I did Chad's (had to watch some videos 2-3 times), then did Destroyer, and BOOM I'm an organic chemistry king. I didn't do any of the maps, just Chad's, Destroyer, and about five practice tests from Bootcamp and five from Qvault (both of which I thought were pretty close to the real thing).
PAT: I purchased CDP maybe 10 months prior to my test date. I wanted to get down PAT early so I could spend the next few months learning the sciences. I was scoring low-mid 20's months before my test and I felt content abandoning PAT to focus more on sciences. TFE gave me trouble, but with PAT, RC, and QR, I couldn't help but feel my time was better spent studying sciences. When I purchased Bootcamp one month before my test, I decided to do a PAT test. About 10 q's into it, I stopped because it was just SO much harder than CDP (and because CDP was my only prior exposure to PAT, I figured Bootcamp must be the incorrect one). WRONG! Bootcamp was on point and I was too stubborn to realize it. I saw things on my real test that I didn't know existed! Bootcamp's free angle generator was clutch, though, which should have made me realize the other PAT sections in Bootcamp were clutch too. I didn't read the signs, man 🙁
RC: The summer of '14 before by August test date, I was reading probably 10 or so bio publications per week as a part of my research, so I thought hey that's great... Won't have to prepare for this section at all... Reading and answering questions... what is this, the SAT?
I must have forgotten that I sucked at the SAT reading section. With one week before test, I did one kaplan practice and 2007 DAT RC (each test, I completed by breaking the section up by passage and I didn't even time it, just made sure I wasn't taking tooooo long) and scored 22 and 24. And that was all the motivation I needed to never glance at RC again. Definitely regret not actually preparing for this section. See below for how wildly unprepared I really was :0
QR: I knew very little in this section when I began reviewing ~10 months ahead of time, but I like math. Lots of YouTube videos, lots of googling, sprinkle in a little bit of Chad. I also did Math Destroyer, where I was scoring <30%, then slowly climbed my way up to >80% range (over the course of a month or two). Here's where I messed up. I hit the brakes on QR prep until about a month out, then made some notecards and decided to prep with Qvault. I was scoring really well, low-mid 20s. I should not have put my faith in Qvault for this section. Here's what I should've done: More Math Destroyer!!! After doing Qvault tests, I adjusted to the easiness and that not only made me over-confident in my QR abilities, but also made me forget how hard questions in this section really can be (like in Math Destroyer).
ALSO, and I kinda blame Chad for this, but I went into this section thinking that using the calculator would not only slow me down (yeah, I've read the horror stories about it not working), but also be totally unnecessary. WRONG and WRONG. The first question, I spent over a minute trying to solve with pen and pad before realizing that the calculator is pretty freaking handy... And it worked fine, but I just wish I had prepared that way too. Test day was my first time using a calculator because it was the first time (since doing Math Destroyer months earlier) that I felt like I needed it. Also, in hindsight I would done more timed practice. I was very slow here (as well as in RC and PAT).
Preparation Materials:
Test day:
I had initially scheduled my DAT the afternoon of 08/19/2014 at a Prometric ~5 mins from my home, but just over 24 hours prior, I had a mini freakout and felt like I could really use the extra two days to 1) prepare and 2) calm my nerves... Best $100 I've ever spent. I rescheduled for the 21st at a Prometric over an hour away, but it was conveniently a short walk from a DC metro stop -- so I brought some notes and notecards and did some last minute cramming while trying as best I could to force a big breakfast down my throat (with the nerves, I hardly had an appetite) on the 1hr long ride. I really liked this because I didn't have to drive while stressing out about material I didn't know.
I wore my most comfortable clothing, packed multiple layers (shorts+sweatpants and undershirt+longsleeve+hoodie) in case the environment was too cold/hot. I arrived at Prometric 20 mins early, picked my locker, drank a cup of water (I hated that I couldn't have a bottle of water in there with me cuz I'm that guy who always has water by his side... but I knew this ahead of time and dealt with it). Marker boards were non-erasable, but the staff was pretty snappy in replacing the board or makers when raising hand (~30 sec). I used the whole 15 mins to get adjusted, put extra clothing in my locker, practiced with the markers, got a couple drinks of water and actually ended up returning to my seat a couple seconds after the 15 mins were up and the test had begun.
BIO: Not too bad, I marked probably 10 questions and had time to review each, most of which were just being overly cautious. Consistent with the percentage of time I devoted to BIO, I also spent the most time checking my answers on this section. I finished the sciences with 10 mins to spare and only got thru BIO and most of GC. 26 really surprised me, I never scored above like a 22 in a practice test and I took A LOT of practice tests. Yep, it's random.
GC: Not bad, just wish I had practiced those questions involving equation rearrangements. I basically wasted all my leftover science time trying to figure a couple of those nasty little problems. Man I hate those problems... Like just give me a calculator and ask the same thing, man! 21 will do, but definitely felt like I could have gotten a higher score here.
OC: Flew thru this section, felt a lot easier than practices, marked a couple I really wanted to go back and check, but unfortunately did not have the chance to. Considering I scored a 13 less than 2 weeks earlier, I'm satisfied with a 23.
PAT: This one kind of blindsided me, but I knocked out my strongest subsections first and just tried to stay on time from then on.
I do just want to note here that during my break (b/w PAT and RC), I was on my phone looking at my schedule, trying to determine when to schedule my re-test. I'm not just saying that, I had almost no doubt in my mind that I had totally blown it. Everything just seemed harder, faster, and that left me increasingly demoralized. I desperately wanted to go thru the science section ultra confident about every problem and that just wasn't the case. I felt very unsure about at least a handful of problems in each science section... And as I was trying every which way to look at this annoying GC problem, all of a sudden, PAT TIME. So I'm pretty bummed out already that I didn't get to review every science problem I marked and now I'm working on the hardest keyholes I've seen. I didn't even bother marking PAT problems, the whole section was a race (with what I recall were lots of guesses)
RC: OK this is actually both a sad and uplifting story. I mentioned earlier that all my prep was basically reading for research position and two practice tests, which I broke up into 6 sections. So essentially I never completed a full-length RC section in the time provided. So blah blah I'm back in my seat after my depressing break eating a banana alone in the bathroom, thinking "OK I f'd up the science and PAT, I can still try to pull thru here". Working on the first passage, I'm on question 15, but I've only answered 12 (left 3 blank and marked). I'm about to click to go to 16 (which I think was the last Q in passage 1), when I look at the clock for the first time since I sat down. 30 mins had passed. I almost had a heart attack. I spend 3 seconds cursing myself out in my head, wondering why on earth I didn't practice or at least pick a strategy or at least be capable of completing the section in 60 mins. I wasn't even confident in my answers to the first passage... And 3 were blank. I quickly gave my best guess to those 3 and went search n destroy on the last 2 passages... I had no idea what I was doing, I never even read that posting, just read other people talking about it. So I finish RC feeling like I went 50:50 at best on every question after the 1st passage. The fact that I pulled a 19 here still blows my mind. I say uplifting because that right there is resilience.
QR: HARD. Felt even more blindsided than in PAT, lots of number crunching and TIME CONSUMING problems, such that I really felt like I needed the calculator. However, part of it was just being exhausted and nervous toward the end of the test. But yeah, Qvault definitely misled me in this section, wish I had done more Math Destroyer, because from what I remember that was closest to the real thing (I know it probably sucks to hear that, but maybe I had a harder version, because I really felt like I should have scored lower than a 19). I had I think 5 questions left with 2 mins to go.
I laid my head down on the desk for probably a minute until I realized I was the only one in the room and the staff was probably counting the seconds till I ran out of the building sobbing. And I really want to emphasize that I'm not exaggerating, I felt like everything that could have gone wrong on test day... did in fact go wrong. Literally every section made me upset as I thought about it before I clicked to see my results. I'm just super glad I was able to keep my cool and keep on truckin' when I truly thought I had bombed it. So if I have one piece of advice to give, dat would have to be it - stay calm, keep working - you probably did better than you think you did.
About the author: Earned BA in 2012, worked at a (not hellish, but just not for me) job for one year when in May of 2013 during the car ride back to the airport with my boss in New Mexico I politely quit and enrolled in a cell bio course that started the following week. Before then, the last real science course I took was high school physics in 2005. I got a D in it. Two years ago I didn't know the difference between an atom and a molecule. Next year I'm going to my first choice dental school 🙂
But really, I hope this helps somebody. Without SDN, I would have enrolled in the wrong courses, lowered my GPA, bombed the DAT, written a boring personal statement, applied to only Texas schools as an OOS applicant, and worn shorts to my interviews... Who knows, maybe I even would have enrolled in the Kaplan DAT course.
I put this off for a while after I forgot the password to my original account, but I figure it's better late than never to think of a cooler SDN username and give back to the community that helped me succeed 🙂
Note: Have not proofread and wrote some of this using voice command, please be kind, also sorry it's so long
Scores:
BIO: 26
GC: 21
OC: 23
TS: 23
PAT: 21
RC: 19
QR: 19
AA: 22
Study / Prep:
BIO: I had taken only two biology courses (cell bio and genetics, both during the summer of 2013) prior to my test date. So during the 2013 - 2014 school year (mostly in Fall, but also in Spring), I completed free online courses and watched/took notes on video lecture series for various full-length BIO courses. It took discipline to actually learn the material while knowing I wasn't actually being tested on it. But especially for A&P, I felt like I needed more exposure than Cliffs, and my science background was just so weak that even Cliffs confused me at first. So the online courses were more or less just to get my feet wet.
During Winter Break of 2013-2014, I read and highlighted Cliffs in its entirety. Most of the stuff was still foreign to me, so doing this covered a pretty steep learning curve. At the end of break, I went thru all of BIO Destroyer... This was dumb, though - I got like <10% correct and I hardly understood any of the explanations. OK, so I backtracked.
During Spring '14, I studied Barron's and Ferali's notes - along with review of Cliffs and began to make my own note packets for each subject. I then spent a while building and studying these note packets. I also watched a ton of Bozeman biology, Craig Savage, Khan academy, Armando Hasudungan, and other concise YT vids, usually before I went to sleep at night, added relevant info from there into my notes. Eventually I but these notes until I felt like I had - at my fingertips - the majority of the DAT BIO content.
Craig Savage biodiversity vids - if you take one thing from this, watch these videos. Around 3 weeks prior to test, I realized I was relying too much on memory for the subject (I had no formal education in it, so I was basically just trying to memorize a giant chart that outlined the physiological distinctions among animal classes). I watched Craig's vids and it was like I snapped my fingers and finally understood everything I had been trying to memorize for months.
Toward the end of Spring '14, I started making flashcards from all the content that was giving me trouble in those notes. I continued studying the notes, but by the test date, I probably had a stack of biology cards a foot high. Throughout the summer, I would continue making notecards (from questions I missed on practice tests, from a section of my notes that I didn't have down, etc.) and I would start quizzing myself using the cards. If I got one right I'd put it in a pile to the right, and if I got it wrong, in a pile to the left. At any time, I had about 4-6 separate stacks organized by how well I knew the material - Easy (1) to Hard (6) and I'd continuously go thru a pile, moving the ones I got right into the pile to its right and the ones I got wrong into the pile to its left (no real end game here, just the goal of just having more cards in the easier piles and fewer in the harder piles until they're all easy and then voila your weaknesses are your strengths).
During the summer was also when I purchased Qvault. TON of BIO problems on there and it's great for showing you the subjects in which you're missing the most questions. Any q's I wanted to review got made into a notecard and tossed in the hardest pile.
2-4 weeks from test date, I went back thru Destroyer and (nerd alert) it was pretty really cool to actually understand the material that honestly made no sense to a few months earlier. I marked all the questions I got wrong or wanted to review and typed up about 10 pages of notes from it, and later on took the material that was giving me trouble from those notes and put into flashcards.
A couple days prior to test, I ditched the notecards and tried to better understand "big picture" concepts. I spent a couple hours a day just watching YouTube videos (Bozeman and Savage mostly), not taking notes, just trying to get a better understanding of biology so that I could use context to answer questions I didn't know.
I spent WAY more time on BIO than any other subject because I felt like I really had to make up for my lack of BIO courses.
GC: I took GC 1 in Fall '13 and GC 2 in Spring '14. GC always came pretty easy to me and I was a TA for the course this year. At end of Spring '14 and GC 2, I immediately watched Chad's, took notes, reviewed, and then moved onto Destroyer. Destroyer was AWESOME. It crushed my soul a few times, but by the end of it, I felt like a chemistry god. I solved in sets of 5 and wrote notes per every 50 problems on the ones I had gotten wrong, particularly the concept I had misunderstood. I had to cover GC quickly because I was taking both oChem (5 creds each) that summer and between that and BIO, I knew I wouldn't have much time to study GC. Throughout the summer, I was scoring 22-30 in GC practice tests, but I made two big mistakes here: 1) I got cocky and slowed down on GC review closer to test date and 2) I never took the time to address the issues I have having with one particular type of problem (the ones where the question provides all the numbers and units and you basically just have to know an equation and rearrange to match it to the the answer choice, all of which are written in the format like [(X)(Y)(Z)]/[(A)(B)]. Really simple, but I could never get these right and I would always spend too much time on it only to realize I had been working on it the most roundabout way possible. Anyways, I never put in the time to get those types of problems down and I'll let you guess whether I got 3 of them on my real test -___-
OC: I took OC 1 and OC 2 in Summer '14 and hated it. GC came so easy for me, so it felt like I was getting smacked in the face with a truck full of nucleophiles. Part of it was scary because I had already scheduled my DAT 11 days after my OC 2 final exam (I remember scheduling it and thinking that if I learn it as quickly as GC, it'll be a piece of cake... Not the case). Toward the end of my OC 2 course, I was beginning to stress out so much about the DAT, I would skip sometimes 2, 3, or even 4 out of 5 weekly (3hr) lectures to do DAT prep. The day after OC 2 final (10 days till test), I decided to take an OC practice test. I think I scored a 13... I finally had my 10 days of pure test prep and I was really upset because I realized I'd have to spend the majority of it studying more OC. So...... I did Chad's (had to watch some videos 2-3 times), then did Destroyer, and BOOM I'm an organic chemistry king. I didn't do any of the maps, just Chad's, Destroyer, and about five practice tests from Bootcamp and five from Qvault (both of which I thought were pretty close to the real thing).
PAT: I purchased CDP maybe 10 months prior to my test date. I wanted to get down PAT early so I could spend the next few months learning the sciences. I was scoring low-mid 20's months before my test and I felt content abandoning PAT to focus more on sciences. TFE gave me trouble, but with PAT, RC, and QR, I couldn't help but feel my time was better spent studying sciences. When I purchased Bootcamp one month before my test, I decided to do a PAT test. About 10 q's into it, I stopped because it was just SO much harder than CDP (and because CDP was my only prior exposure to PAT, I figured Bootcamp must be the incorrect one). WRONG! Bootcamp was on point and I was too stubborn to realize it. I saw things on my real test that I didn't know existed! Bootcamp's free angle generator was clutch, though, which should have made me realize the other PAT sections in Bootcamp were clutch too. I didn't read the signs, man 🙁
RC: The summer of '14 before by August test date, I was reading probably 10 or so bio publications per week as a part of my research, so I thought hey that's great... Won't have to prepare for this section at all... Reading and answering questions... what is this, the SAT?
I must have forgotten that I sucked at the SAT reading section. With one week before test, I did one kaplan practice and 2007 DAT RC (each test, I completed by breaking the section up by passage and I didn't even time it, just made sure I wasn't taking tooooo long) and scored 22 and 24. And that was all the motivation I needed to never glance at RC again. Definitely regret not actually preparing for this section. See below for how wildly unprepared I really was :0
QR: I knew very little in this section when I began reviewing ~10 months ahead of time, but I like math. Lots of YouTube videos, lots of googling, sprinkle in a little bit of Chad. I also did Math Destroyer, where I was scoring <30%, then slowly climbed my way up to >80% range (over the course of a month or two). Here's where I messed up. I hit the brakes on QR prep until about a month out, then made some notecards and decided to prep with Qvault. I was scoring really well, low-mid 20s. I should not have put my faith in Qvault for this section. Here's what I should've done: More Math Destroyer!!! After doing Qvault tests, I adjusted to the easiness and that not only made me over-confident in my QR abilities, but also made me forget how hard questions in this section really can be (like in Math Destroyer).
ALSO, and I kinda blame Chad for this, but I went into this section thinking that using the calculator would not only slow me down (yeah, I've read the horror stories about it not working), but also be totally unnecessary. WRONG and WRONG. The first question, I spent over a minute trying to solve with pen and pad before realizing that the calculator is pretty freaking handy... And it worked fine, but I just wish I had prepared that way too. Test day was my first time using a calculator because it was the first time (since doing Math Destroyer months earlier) that I felt like I needed it. Also, in hindsight I would done more timed practice. I was very slow here (as well as in RC and PAT).
Preparation Materials:
- (10/10) Destroyer + (9/10) Math Destroyer
- (10/10) Chad's GC - necessary IMO
- (10/10) Chad's OC - necessary IMO
- (10/10) Cliffs AP Bio (3rd Ed.) - Together with Ferali's, it's the most concise DAT BIO study guide that I know of
- (9/10) Barron's AP Bio - great for reaching the corners of the material that Cliffs fails to reach
- (9.5/10) Ferali's notes - Sort of like Cliffs on steroids, the content is mostly fair game and stops just short of being overkill
- (5/10) Crack Dat Pat (CDP) - Outdated and way too easy IMO
- (9/10) DAT Bootcamp: For the sciences, very similar to the type of questions on the real test. Wish I had devoted more time to the other sections here, but I used mostly BIO and GC. For realistic testing prep, very helpful.
- (7/10 but 10/10 for BIO) QVault: Awesome analytics, esp. for BIO, helped me identify weak points, plus with so many questions you get a good idea of the randomness of the BIO section. Other sections, not so much.
- (N/A) YouTube: When the world's most efficient teachers make short videos on subjects that are fair game for DAT BIO, you gotta watch 'em.
- (N/A) Wikipedia - Truly endless source of information, probably thousands of times I quickly googled a term, found it on Wiki, defined it, and learned the most necessary information there is to learn about the subject in the shortest amount of time.
Test day:
I had initially scheduled my DAT the afternoon of 08/19/2014 at a Prometric ~5 mins from my home, but just over 24 hours prior, I had a mini freakout and felt like I could really use the extra two days to 1) prepare and 2) calm my nerves... Best $100 I've ever spent. I rescheduled for the 21st at a Prometric over an hour away, but it was conveniently a short walk from a DC metro stop -- so I brought some notes and notecards and did some last minute cramming while trying as best I could to force a big breakfast down my throat (with the nerves, I hardly had an appetite) on the 1hr long ride. I really liked this because I didn't have to drive while stressing out about material I didn't know.
I wore my most comfortable clothing, packed multiple layers (shorts+sweatpants and undershirt+longsleeve+hoodie) in case the environment was too cold/hot. I arrived at Prometric 20 mins early, picked my locker, drank a cup of water (I hated that I couldn't have a bottle of water in there with me cuz I'm that guy who always has water by his side... but I knew this ahead of time and dealt with it). Marker boards were non-erasable, but the staff was pretty snappy in replacing the board or makers when raising hand (~30 sec). I used the whole 15 mins to get adjusted, put extra clothing in my locker, practiced with the markers, got a couple drinks of water and actually ended up returning to my seat a couple seconds after the 15 mins were up and the test had begun.
BIO: Not too bad, I marked probably 10 questions and had time to review each, most of which were just being overly cautious. Consistent with the percentage of time I devoted to BIO, I also spent the most time checking my answers on this section. I finished the sciences with 10 mins to spare and only got thru BIO and most of GC. 26 really surprised me, I never scored above like a 22 in a practice test and I took A LOT of practice tests. Yep, it's random.
GC: Not bad, just wish I had practiced those questions involving equation rearrangements. I basically wasted all my leftover science time trying to figure a couple of those nasty little problems. Man I hate those problems... Like just give me a calculator and ask the same thing, man! 21 will do, but definitely felt like I could have gotten a higher score here.
OC: Flew thru this section, felt a lot easier than practices, marked a couple I really wanted to go back and check, but unfortunately did not have the chance to. Considering I scored a 13 less than 2 weeks earlier, I'm satisfied with a 23.
PAT: This one kind of blindsided me, but I knocked out my strongest subsections first and just tried to stay on time from then on.
- Keyholes: way harder than CDP, I spent probably 15 mins finishing these
- Angles: I did these 2nd after realizing time was moving a lot faster than I expected. They were not too bad, but seemed harder than CDP
- Holes: These were always my best subsection of PAT (consistently scoring 14-15/15 in practice @ ~15sec/question), so I did these third -- and this is where I wanted to run home and go scream at CDP... Not just harder, but totally unexpected folds.
- Cubes: Not bad, no mind bleeps.
- Pattern: These always gave me trouble, but were distinctly harder than CDP
- TFE: slightly harder than CDP, but I've always struggled here. I answered the final q just as time expired
I do just want to note here that during my break (b/w PAT and RC), I was on my phone looking at my schedule, trying to determine when to schedule my re-test. I'm not just saying that, I had almost no doubt in my mind that I had totally blown it. Everything just seemed harder, faster, and that left me increasingly demoralized. I desperately wanted to go thru the science section ultra confident about every problem and that just wasn't the case. I felt very unsure about at least a handful of problems in each science section... And as I was trying every which way to look at this annoying GC problem, all of a sudden, PAT TIME. So I'm pretty bummed out already that I didn't get to review every science problem I marked and now I'm working on the hardest keyholes I've seen. I didn't even bother marking PAT problems, the whole section was a race (with what I recall were lots of guesses)
RC: OK this is actually both a sad and uplifting story. I mentioned earlier that all my prep was basically reading for research position and two practice tests, which I broke up into 6 sections. So essentially I never completed a full-length RC section in the time provided. So blah blah I'm back in my seat after my depressing break eating a banana alone in the bathroom, thinking "OK I f'd up the science and PAT, I can still try to pull thru here". Working on the first passage, I'm on question 15, but I've only answered 12 (left 3 blank and marked). I'm about to click to go to 16 (which I think was the last Q in passage 1), when I look at the clock for the first time since I sat down. 30 mins had passed. I almost had a heart attack. I spend 3 seconds cursing myself out in my head, wondering why on earth I didn't practice or at least pick a strategy or at least be capable of completing the section in 60 mins. I wasn't even confident in my answers to the first passage... And 3 were blank. I quickly gave my best guess to those 3 and went search n destroy on the last 2 passages... I had no idea what I was doing, I never even read that posting, just read other people talking about it. So I finish RC feeling like I went 50:50 at best on every question after the 1st passage. The fact that I pulled a 19 here still blows my mind. I say uplifting because that right there is resilience.
QR: HARD. Felt even more blindsided than in PAT, lots of number crunching and TIME CONSUMING problems, such that I really felt like I needed the calculator. However, part of it was just being exhausted and nervous toward the end of the test. But yeah, Qvault definitely misled me in this section, wish I had done more Math Destroyer, because from what I remember that was closest to the real thing (I know it probably sucks to hear that, but maybe I had a harder version, because I really felt like I should have scored lower than a 19). I had I think 5 questions left with 2 mins to go.
I laid my head down on the desk for probably a minute until I realized I was the only one in the room and the staff was probably counting the seconds till I ran out of the building sobbing. And I really want to emphasize that I'm not exaggerating, I felt like everything that could have gone wrong on test day... did in fact go wrong. Literally every section made me upset as I thought about it before I clicked to see my results. I'm just super glad I was able to keep my cool and keep on truckin' when I truly thought I had bombed it. So if I have one piece of advice to give, dat would have to be it - stay calm, keep working - you probably did better than you think you did.
About the author: Earned BA in 2012, worked at a (not hellish, but just not for me) job for one year when in May of 2013 during the car ride back to the airport with my boss in New Mexico I politely quit and enrolled in a cell bio course that started the following week. Before then, the last real science course I took was high school physics in 2005. I got a D in it. Two years ago I didn't know the difference between an atom and a molecule. Next year I'm going to my first choice dental school 🙂
But really, I hope this helps somebody. Without SDN, I would have enrolled in the wrong courses, lowered my GPA, bombed the DAT, written a boring personal statement, applied to only Texas schools as an OOS applicant, and worn shorts to my interviews... Who knows, maybe I even would have enrolled in the Kaplan DAT course.
