Test stats
DAT scores
Bio: 22
GC: 26
OC: 22
PAT: 22
RC: 19
QR: 18
BC averages
Bio: 19.8
GC: 20.7
OC: 20.6
PAT: 20.3
RC: 19(only did 2 tests)
QR: 20.2
2009 DAT(GC + OC only) Raw Score
GC: 28/30
OC: 27/30
Background: in the final two days of my studying, I psyched myself out by continually studying/cramming. Don't do this. I had to learn the hard way of why this is not a good idea. I got 0 hours of sleep the night of the test, and 4 hours in the prior night. Nothing like 3-4 cups of coffee can't fix.....
My studying was all over the place, I studied whatever I felt like at the time. Get bored of GC? time for some OC! so on. I studied on average, no more than 4 hours/day due to part time job + volunteering.
Materials:
Chad's: 9/10
--->GC is perfect. However, Chad kind of falls short in OC, in comparison to Mike. I only used Mike's to supplement some GC/OC. The two have very different styles, but still very effective in teaching.
BC: 7.5/10
---> -1 for QR. The tone of the questions from Destroyer is a lot more representative of the actual DAT.
---> -0.5 for crappy HTML/missing certain obvious features that would improve functionality
---> -0.5 the keyholes in PAT don't prepare you that well as they should(i'll get to more of that later)
---> -0.5 for increasing the price before I got my subscription( I think it was in April, $200->$350). salty af
everything else is spot on in terms of representation with the exception of the actual sections in SNS being slightly easier.
Destroyer:
->BIO: 10/10
----->the questions have the perfect emphasis of breadth over depth. Not to say some aren't specific, but most of it is very diverse/high-yield. Use it with Romano's notes.
->GC 9/10
----->I would say, doing this section is a must if you want a high score here.
->OC 7/10
----->OC on the actual DAT was stupid. Non of the questions required any kind of critical thinking. It was just re-call, regurgitating **** you memorized. The OC questions in Destroyer are rather dense in nuances, and concepts. Thus, it wasn't that representative. I would still recommend going through this section at least once.
Romano's Notes: 10/10
--->At first, I tried BC/Feralis' notes, but they were way too dry. Romano's notes are perfection. I skimmed through them once over the span of 4-5 days, yet somehow retained like >95% of the information without having to revise.
Overview of the test:
BIO: Very straight forward and simple. Again, not many questions required any critical thinking(I think I had maybe 2 that weren't straight-up recall). There was one really dumb/ambiguous/wtf question. Maybe 3-4 very similar questions from BIO destroyer. The rest of the questions were very elementary. I had 2 plant questions. 1 embryology question. 0 taxonomy. Finished this section in 15 minutes.
GC: very straight forward section as well. The conceptual questions were also basic AF. I think the hardest question here was one about ranking atomic mass(b/c it took me a while to locate all the elements for some reason). There were 2 questions from destroyer that came in clutch as well..IIRC one question related the density to ideal gas law(deriving it is actually simple, but I would have probobly gotten it wrong if I didn't review it).
OC: there were 3 questions that stumped me... The rest was simple. I attribute my other mistakes to careless errors. After I reviewed my marked questions from SNS, I had 15 minutes remaining. I decided to use this time to use the restroom before PAT
PAT: preface: I didn't watch any strategies/read any explanations for this. I just practiced. I believe you have to adopt what works best for you by constant practice.
Keyholes: nothing from BC prepared me for this... it wasn't that they were hard per say, (in fact, they should have been easier) it was that BC kind of under-delivers here. BC keyholes are still harder, but the style of keyholes on the DAT were quiet different. I had 3 rocks. 2 very curvy figures. And too many of those unique keyholes that have like 20 different protrusions on each side of the figure(the ones where you have to determine the orientation of all the protrusions). TLDR, not necessarily harder, just "incorrectly prepared". For comparison, I averaged ~12/15 on BC.
TFE: some of the shapes were also funky, but the skills from BC translate pretty well here. if you're scoring 13/15, then you should be fine here.
angles: much easier than BC. I think there were two that were crapshoots. This is by far, the dumbest anything on any test ever. It is virtually impossible to improve here. I got a 12/15 on my first pat test here. I thought that it was only uphill from here for this section... I was 100% wrong. No improvement here/scores were very stagnant. I'd say this section is akin to a reflex/speed test. Not physiologically possible to improve. Just going accept this section may be a crap-shoot, and hope you get reasonable angles.
Hole-punching: much easier than BC, far fewer hole punches going on the edge of folded papers. folds were much more symmetrical.
cube counting: similar to BC. Although I had one question with "floating" cubes, something I had not seen before. nonetheless, nothing to worry about.
pattern folding: much more reasonable than BC's generators/tests.
RC
I spent the least amount of time studying here. I took tests 1/2 and assumed that I would do slightly better on the real thing.
The first passage kind of sucked. The questions were all over the place, and it seemed like BYU4U's method was not going to work here. I was starting to feel a little drowsy as well, so I decided to F#$% it and go all out using S+D. Fortunately, the second two passages were the easy ones.
QR:
This is the section I was most disappointed with. I thought I was supposed to do better than BC, but I guess not. The questions was very simple arithmetic, and I kept chugging along as fast as I could. Finished with 5 minutes remaining. At the end, i wanted to end my misery, so i just ended it, thinking i'd do better than a disgraceful 18..
I should say, I did not have the chance to do a full length test from destroyer+math edition, but I did do questions here and there, and can say that it seems destroyer is like 25% more accurate for the actual QR.
What I would do differently?
I would do destroyer(as long as you have a good foundation, IMO if you're getting more than 50% wrong on destroyer, it's time to go back to the basics. I didn't understand all the fuss about how destroyer was that hard. It's certainly more challenging than other sources, but no where to the level most make it out to be. ) before doing any BC practice tests. I also didn't read any BIO notes until after I finished all my 10 BC tests, that is until I discovered Romano's notes.
Conclusion:
In hindsight, I think I would have done much better on RC/QR on a rested brain. Maybe 1 pt higher on BIO/OC as well.
DAT scores
Bio: 22
GC: 26
OC: 22
PAT: 22
RC: 19
QR: 18
BC averages
Bio: 19.8
GC: 20.7
OC: 20.6
PAT: 20.3
RC: 19(only did 2 tests)
QR: 20.2
2009 DAT(GC + OC only) Raw Score
GC: 28/30
OC: 27/30
Background: in the final two days of my studying, I psyched myself out by continually studying/cramming. Don't do this. I had to learn the hard way of why this is not a good idea. I got 0 hours of sleep the night of the test, and 4 hours in the prior night. Nothing like 3-4 cups of coffee can't fix.....
My studying was all over the place, I studied whatever I felt like at the time. Get bored of GC? time for some OC! so on. I studied on average, no more than 4 hours/day due to part time job + volunteering.
Materials:
Chad's: 9/10
--->GC is perfect. However, Chad kind of falls short in OC, in comparison to Mike. I only used Mike's to supplement some GC/OC. The two have very different styles, but still very effective in teaching.
BC: 7.5/10
---> -1 for QR. The tone of the questions from Destroyer is a lot more representative of the actual DAT.
---> -0.5 for crappy HTML/missing certain obvious features that would improve functionality
---> -0.5 the keyholes in PAT don't prepare you that well as they should(i'll get to more of that later)
---> -0.5 for increasing the price before I got my subscription( I think it was in April, $200->$350). salty af
everything else is spot on in terms of representation with the exception of the actual sections in SNS being slightly easier.
Destroyer:
->BIO: 10/10
----->the questions have the perfect emphasis of breadth over depth. Not to say some aren't specific, but most of it is very diverse/high-yield. Use it with Romano's notes.
->GC 9/10
----->I would say, doing this section is a must if you want a high score here.
->OC 7/10
----->OC on the actual DAT was stupid. Non of the questions required any kind of critical thinking. It was just re-call, regurgitating **** you memorized. The OC questions in Destroyer are rather dense in nuances, and concepts. Thus, it wasn't that representative. I would still recommend going through this section at least once.
Romano's Notes: 10/10
--->At first, I tried BC/Feralis' notes, but they were way too dry. Romano's notes are perfection. I skimmed through them once over the span of 4-5 days, yet somehow retained like >95% of the information without having to revise.
Overview of the test:
BIO: Very straight forward and simple. Again, not many questions required any critical thinking(I think I had maybe 2 that weren't straight-up recall). There was one really dumb/ambiguous/wtf question. Maybe 3-4 very similar questions from BIO destroyer. The rest of the questions were very elementary. I had 2 plant questions. 1 embryology question. 0 taxonomy. Finished this section in 15 minutes.
GC: very straight forward section as well. The conceptual questions were also basic AF. I think the hardest question here was one about ranking atomic mass(b/c it took me a while to locate all the elements for some reason). There were 2 questions from destroyer that came in clutch as well..IIRC one question related the density to ideal gas law(deriving it is actually simple, but I would have probobly gotten it wrong if I didn't review it).
OC: there were 3 questions that stumped me... The rest was simple. I attribute my other mistakes to careless errors. After I reviewed my marked questions from SNS, I had 15 minutes remaining. I decided to use this time to use the restroom before PAT
PAT: preface: I didn't watch any strategies/read any explanations for this. I just practiced. I believe you have to adopt what works best for you by constant practice.
Keyholes: nothing from BC prepared me for this... it wasn't that they were hard per say, (in fact, they should have been easier) it was that BC kind of under-delivers here. BC keyholes are still harder, but the style of keyholes on the DAT were quiet different. I had 3 rocks. 2 very curvy figures. And too many of those unique keyholes that have like 20 different protrusions on each side of the figure(the ones where you have to determine the orientation of all the protrusions). TLDR, not necessarily harder, just "incorrectly prepared". For comparison, I averaged ~12/15 on BC.
TFE: some of the shapes were also funky, but the skills from BC translate pretty well here. if you're scoring 13/15, then you should be fine here.
angles: much easier than BC. I think there were two that were crapshoots. This is by far, the dumbest anything on any test ever. It is virtually impossible to improve here. I got a 12/15 on my first pat test here. I thought that it was only uphill from here for this section... I was 100% wrong. No improvement here/scores were very stagnant. I'd say this section is akin to a reflex/speed test. Not physiologically possible to improve. Just going accept this section may be a crap-shoot, and hope you get reasonable angles.
Hole-punching: much easier than BC, far fewer hole punches going on the edge of folded papers. folds were much more symmetrical.
cube counting: similar to BC. Although I had one question with "floating" cubes, something I had not seen before. nonetheless, nothing to worry about.
pattern folding: much more reasonable than BC's generators/tests.
RC
I spent the least amount of time studying here. I took tests 1/2 and assumed that I would do slightly better on the real thing.
The first passage kind of sucked. The questions were all over the place, and it seemed like BYU4U's method was not going to work here. I was starting to feel a little drowsy as well, so I decided to F#$% it and go all out using S+D. Fortunately, the second two passages were the easy ones.
QR:
This is the section I was most disappointed with. I thought I was supposed to do better than BC, but I guess not. The questions was very simple arithmetic, and I kept chugging along as fast as I could. Finished with 5 minutes remaining. At the end, i wanted to end my misery, so i just ended it, thinking i'd do better than a disgraceful 18..
I should say, I did not have the chance to do a full length test from destroyer+math edition, but I did do questions here and there, and can say that it seems destroyer is like 25% more accurate for the actual QR.
What I would do differently?
I would do destroyer(as long as you have a good foundation, IMO if you're getting more than 50% wrong on destroyer, it's time to go back to the basics. I didn't understand all the fuss about how destroyer was that hard. It's certainly more challenging than other sources, but no where to the level most make it out to be. ) before doing any BC practice tests. I also didn't read any BIO notes until after I finished all my 10 BC tests, that is until I discovered Romano's notes.
Conclusion:
In hindsight, I think I would have done much better on RC/QR on a rested brain. Maybe 1 pt higher on BIO/OC as well.
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