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Originally I was not going to post a breakdown up because I did not receive a 22+ and I figured the information was available. But I have had a few requests for a breakdown so I am happy to share.
Scores are at the bottom and a few other things that I haven’t seen in other breakdowns.
So, I was out of school in late April and was going to start studying to take it on June 19th. But I had some other plans come up. I went and visited schools in California for a week, then I went to Hawaii for a research conference for a week.
I decided to postpone the DAT until June 28th. I felt like I had the perfect amount of time (about 6 weeks of studying). If it was any longer, I would have been more burnt out and forgetting things and if it was shorter, I would not have had enough time.
I spent just about all of my time studying for this mother-in-law of a test. Every day I made sure that I was studying by about 8 - 830 in the morning and I would study until somewhere around 7 - 10 depending on the day. The last week or ten days before the test, I changed my schedule up though. I will get to that later.
So for materials:
DAT Bootcamp : 10/10 @Ari Rezaei
This stuff seriously prepares you. Most of the material seemed harder on this than the actual DAT and personally, I do believe in using the tests to measure myself (although some disagree with doing that). I am a firm believer in using these tests to measure myself because during my studies I was able to set goals every week for the scores I wanted to achieve and work for them. (and I think actual data illustrating the relationship between practice tests and the actual DAT would be especially helpful for this purpose - given that at the same time one focuses on content from the tests) I LOVED the PAT generators. This was the best resource I had for the PAT. I did at least 15 questions from every section of the PAT every day. Also, I LOVED the PAT trainer game. I used this a lot at the beginning to help sharpen my skills while practicing.
Coursesaver / Chad’s Videos : 6/10
Didn’t love it. Thought he was boring and could have done better. I really preferred Mike’s Videos. Also, I didn’t really love coursesaver’s quizzes either. Not to mention that coursesaver’s videos wouldn’t work on my laptop, so I had to go to my school’s library to study each day (annoying haha). If I could do it again, I would not buy coursesaver. I would have just used the resources on Bootcamp.
Mike’s Videos 9/10
I thought everything Mike had to say was great. I thought it was clear, concise and had really great practice questions.
DAT/Math Destroyer: 9/10 @orgoman22
I can’t in good conscience give Destroyer a 10 because there were LOTS of typos and errors in my books. I don’t know if everyone has those or if I just had some misprints, but I have to say that was really disappointing considering their reputation and price. In my opinion, anything that it $200 should have ZERO typos/errors. Now, as for the content and practice, it is unmatched. It was challenging and it was definitely not overkill. You must get this to do well, but seriously, they gotta fix those errors.
Cliff’s AP Bio : 8/10
You get what you pay for I guess. It is a good book and it is helpful, I just found it hard to sit down and read a text book. I would recommend just reading it once and then using it for reference.
Feralis Notes: 6/10
There was really good information on this and it was helpful for reference, but other than that I didn’t find much use for it. There are more effective and efficient ways to study in my opinion.
Quizlet: 10/10
I don’t know if other people use Quizlet as much as I did, but it seemed to be my saving grace for BIO. I was having a really tough time remembering everything in BIO until I started using Quizlet flashcards. It is nice because there are already hundreds of DAT flashcards already made. Every day I would go through 3 sets of flashcards. Each set would be from a different chapter in Cliffs AP Bio. I would shoot for about 100 cards in each set. By the end of the week, I would have hit every chapter. This really helped for remembering vocabulary, especially considering that there was some BIO stuff I had never learned in classes before. Be careful with Quizlet though because some people do make mistakes on their flashcards.
Kaplan: 7/10
I had a friend give me her old Kaplan stuff and it was pretty good. I think their flashcards and strategy guides were the most helpful, but other than that, I didn’t use it a ton.
QR Youtube Videos (BC): 7/10
Meh, I thought that it was all really basic stuff for me that I knew already. Could be helpful to some.
Schedule:
My schedule was early to late every day. I recognized that this test was the most important in my life (up to this point) and I wasn’t going to poorly because of a lack of effort.
I studied each subject for a few hours every day and never skipped a section any day. I used Ari’s schedule, except I did like twice the amount of videos, I read 2 chapters of Cliffs every day (1-2 first day, 2-3 second day, 3-4 third day etc) and I did a lot more PAT.
10 days before the test
I started doing full length practice tests about ten days before my test. I did the 2007 first, then BC 1-2, then 2009, then BC 3-5.
My schedule changed for this because I started taking a bigger break every day. I’ll admit I was starting to get burnt out. What I did was take my practice exam at 8 AM on the dot because I was taking my exam at that time. After my exam (1230 to 1 ish) I would go home and take a break. Going to the gym or playing Zelda was usually my go-to. Around 3-4 I would come back and studying until 9-10. These last few hours I studied what I missed on exams and made sure I knew how to do the problems. I would also do lots of the BC tests after that. I did one subject each day and did 3-5 of those practice tests.
PAT strategy:
Keyhole: I did everything PAT academy said. Not really sure how I ended up doing on the actual test, but the keyholes I had were WAY harder than BC. Surprisingly I did not have a single rock though.
Top-Front-End: I count lines and put corners and edges together. It makes it easy. Elimination of wrong answers helps too.
Angle Ranking: Laptop method, parallel line method, horizon method.
Hole Punch: Line of symmetry method
Cube Counting: I struggled until I started making a chart and counting all of the cubes like Ari said to. Do it. It hleps.
Pattern Folding: I would just compare like two or three sides then eliminate answers. You don’t actually have to imagine the whole thing folded up.
Feel free to DM with specific questions for this. I am happy to go over more details.
Scores:
TS/BIO/GC/OC/PAT/RC/QR-AA
2007 DAT - Saturday June 17th
21/20/20/25/23/22/22-22
BC 1 - Monday June 19th
20/20/18/23/21/19/20-20
BC 2 - Tuesday June 20th
19/18/20/19/25/20/19-19
2009 DAT - Wednesday June 21st
19/21/18/20/24/21/X-20
BC 3 - Thursday June 22nd
20/19/23/19/24/24/20-21
BC 4 - Friday June 23rd
21/20/22/21/22/23/19-21
My highest Bootcamp scores are:
BIO:21
GC: 23
OC: 23
PAT: 25
RC: 24
QR: 20
Bonus:
Lowest Bootcamp scores
BIO: 17
GC: 15
OC: 19
PAT: 20
RC: 20
QR: 16
**EDIT***
I forgot my actual scores lol
21 AA / 21 TS / 21 BIO / 21 GC / 20 OC / 23 PAT / 21 RC / 23 QR
EXTRA:
If you guys don’t know, the highlight tool can be used in any section of the test, not just RC. Also, you can right click on answers to cross them out. SUPER USEFUL.
Thanks to Ari, Dr. Romano, Kaplan and all my other resources for showing me and proving to the world that you can, in fact, polish a turd.
Scores are at the bottom and a few other things that I haven’t seen in other breakdowns.
So, I was out of school in late April and was going to start studying to take it on June 19th. But I had some other plans come up. I went and visited schools in California for a week, then I went to Hawaii for a research conference for a week.
I decided to postpone the DAT until June 28th. I felt like I had the perfect amount of time (about 6 weeks of studying). If it was any longer, I would have been more burnt out and forgetting things and if it was shorter, I would not have had enough time.
I spent just about all of my time studying for this mother-in-law of a test. Every day I made sure that I was studying by about 8 - 830 in the morning and I would study until somewhere around 7 - 10 depending on the day. The last week or ten days before the test, I changed my schedule up though. I will get to that later.
So for materials:
DAT Bootcamp : 10/10 @Ari Rezaei
This stuff seriously prepares you. Most of the material seemed harder on this than the actual DAT and personally, I do believe in using the tests to measure myself (although some disagree with doing that). I am a firm believer in using these tests to measure myself because during my studies I was able to set goals every week for the scores I wanted to achieve and work for them. (and I think actual data illustrating the relationship between practice tests and the actual DAT would be especially helpful for this purpose - given that at the same time one focuses on content from the tests) I LOVED the PAT generators. This was the best resource I had for the PAT. I did at least 15 questions from every section of the PAT every day. Also, I LOVED the PAT trainer game. I used this a lot at the beginning to help sharpen my skills while practicing.
Coursesaver / Chad’s Videos : 6/10
Didn’t love it. Thought he was boring and could have done better. I really preferred Mike’s Videos. Also, I didn’t really love coursesaver’s quizzes either. Not to mention that coursesaver’s videos wouldn’t work on my laptop, so I had to go to my school’s library to study each day (annoying haha). If I could do it again, I would not buy coursesaver. I would have just used the resources on Bootcamp.
Mike’s Videos 9/10
I thought everything Mike had to say was great. I thought it was clear, concise and had really great practice questions.
DAT/Math Destroyer: 9/10 @orgoman22
I can’t in good conscience give Destroyer a 10 because there were LOTS of typos and errors in my books. I don’t know if everyone has those or if I just had some misprints, but I have to say that was really disappointing considering their reputation and price. In my opinion, anything that it $200 should have ZERO typos/errors. Now, as for the content and practice, it is unmatched. It was challenging and it was definitely not overkill. You must get this to do well, but seriously, they gotta fix those errors.
Cliff’s AP Bio : 8/10
You get what you pay for I guess. It is a good book and it is helpful, I just found it hard to sit down and read a text book. I would recommend just reading it once and then using it for reference.
Feralis Notes: 6/10
There was really good information on this and it was helpful for reference, but other than that I didn’t find much use for it. There are more effective and efficient ways to study in my opinion.
Quizlet: 10/10
I don’t know if other people use Quizlet as much as I did, but it seemed to be my saving grace for BIO. I was having a really tough time remembering everything in BIO until I started using Quizlet flashcards. It is nice because there are already hundreds of DAT flashcards already made. Every day I would go through 3 sets of flashcards. Each set would be from a different chapter in Cliffs AP Bio. I would shoot for about 100 cards in each set. By the end of the week, I would have hit every chapter. This really helped for remembering vocabulary, especially considering that there was some BIO stuff I had never learned in classes before. Be careful with Quizlet though because some people do make mistakes on their flashcards.
Kaplan: 7/10
I had a friend give me her old Kaplan stuff and it was pretty good. I think their flashcards and strategy guides were the most helpful, but other than that, I didn’t use it a ton.
QR Youtube Videos (BC): 7/10
Meh, I thought that it was all really basic stuff for me that I knew already. Could be helpful to some.
Schedule:
My schedule was early to late every day. I recognized that this test was the most important in my life (up to this point) and I wasn’t going to poorly because of a lack of effort.
I studied each subject for a few hours every day and never skipped a section any day. I used Ari’s schedule, except I did like twice the amount of videos, I read 2 chapters of Cliffs every day (1-2 first day, 2-3 second day, 3-4 third day etc) and I did a lot more PAT.
10 days before the test
I started doing full length practice tests about ten days before my test. I did the 2007 first, then BC 1-2, then 2009, then BC 3-5.
My schedule changed for this because I started taking a bigger break every day. I’ll admit I was starting to get burnt out. What I did was take my practice exam at 8 AM on the dot because I was taking my exam at that time. After my exam (1230 to 1 ish) I would go home and take a break. Going to the gym or playing Zelda was usually my go-to. Around 3-4 I would come back and studying until 9-10. These last few hours I studied what I missed on exams and made sure I knew how to do the problems. I would also do lots of the BC tests after that. I did one subject each day and did 3-5 of those practice tests.
PAT strategy:
Keyhole: I did everything PAT academy said. Not really sure how I ended up doing on the actual test, but the keyholes I had were WAY harder than BC. Surprisingly I did not have a single rock though.
Top-Front-End: I count lines and put corners and edges together. It makes it easy. Elimination of wrong answers helps too.
Angle Ranking: Laptop method, parallel line method, horizon method.
Hole Punch: Line of symmetry method
Cube Counting: I struggled until I started making a chart and counting all of the cubes like Ari said to. Do it. It hleps.
Pattern Folding: I would just compare like two or three sides then eliminate answers. You don’t actually have to imagine the whole thing folded up.
Feel free to DM with specific questions for this. I am happy to go over more details.
Scores:
TS/BIO/GC/OC/PAT/RC/QR-AA
2007 DAT - Saturday June 17th
21/20/20/25/23/22/22-22
BC 1 - Monday June 19th
20/20/18/23/21/19/20-20
BC 2 - Tuesday June 20th
19/18/20/19/25/20/19-19
2009 DAT - Wednesday June 21st
19/21/18/20/24/21/X-20
BC 3 - Thursday June 22nd
20/19/23/19/24/24/20-21
BC 4 - Friday June 23rd
21/20/22/21/22/23/19-21
My highest Bootcamp scores are:
BIO:21
GC: 23
OC: 23
PAT: 25
RC: 24
QR: 20
Bonus:
Lowest Bootcamp scores
BIO: 17
GC: 15
OC: 19
PAT: 20
RC: 20
QR: 16
**EDIT***
I forgot my actual scores lol
21 AA / 21 TS / 21 BIO / 21 GC / 20 OC / 23 PAT / 21 RC / 23 QR
EXTRA:
If you guys don’t know, the highlight tool can be used in any section of the test, not just RC. Also, you can right click on answers to cross them out. SUPER USEFUL.
Thanks to Ari, Dr. Romano, Kaplan and all my other resources for showing me and proving to the world that you can, in fact, polish a turd.
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