- Joined
- May 27, 2015
- Messages
- 120
- Reaction score
- 91
Hey Everyone!
Background:
All right, I’ve been waiting a real long time to make one of these. I’m going to take this moment to express my overall feelings towards the DAT, the studying process, and all else Dentistry related. I will try and make this as comprehensive as possible and be as much of a help as I can. You SDN’ers have really kept me sane and optimistic about the DAT these past couple months so I’ll try my best. Check for my full score report below.
I have a 3.3 GPA and a 3.0 sGPA as a rising senior majoring in Biology and I studied for about 13 weeks, 6-7 hours, 5 to 6 days a week for this exam. June 1st to September 3rd. I did end up taking a small vacation to Dubai and California so that took a little time out of my studying. I also tried to go out as much as possible on the weekends with my friends. If you’re putting 30+ hours in a week for this exam, using the weekends to enjoy can’t hurt you too much. Whatever you like to do in your free time, make sure you do it on the weekends to keep you level. You really need to maintain a social life and a healthy lifestyle during this process or else it will eat you alive. My passion for weightlifting was something that helped me get through this process and I actually lost 13 lbs and 7% Body Fat while preparing to battle the DAT beast.
I had the privilege to be apart of Dr. Romano’s (@orgoman22) DAT boot camp class, which was by far the best resource I had. Man, words cannot express how grateful I am to have been able to sit in a classroom and just absorb information from this man. Have you noticed every breakdown has given praise to the Destroyer and its creator? This man is a straight up genius and its unfortunate that many of you will never have the privilege to be apart of his class due to the fact he’s around the NY area, but if you are anywhere in the area I HIGHLY advise you to sign up for the class. You won’t regret it, every word the man says is absolutely crucial and he’ll keep it fun and bubbly so you’ll have no option but to destroy the DAT. A lot of people say that 13 weeks is too much time to study. That’s a bunch of BS. Dr. Romano always says there is no such thing as being over prepared. “Put the time in and test day will be a breeze. The people who don’t simply won’t make it. You know, not everyone can be a doctor.” All of his inspirational quotes really stuck with me and really motivated me to put in that extra hour of the day.
I knew I was already at a disadvantage with my low GPA so I had to do everything in my control to make this DAT score a good one. Check the picture at the bottom for all my scores. The first month or so I really studied inefficiently. I tried to make flashcards of all of Feralis’ Notes and memorize that for bio. I admit that wasn’t the greatest move as it is much more important to understand why things happen, and that’s for all sciences. If you know why something happens, you will remember it on test day and hit it with blitzing speed. If you memorize it, you might get tripped up, or take a little longer than you should. Spend the time to learn the topics and you’ll kill it.
Materials
The materials are quite expensive. Your going into a field where you’ll be almost half a million in debt by the time you get out. Don’t cheap out on the materials and resources you use for the DAT Prep. Think of it as a long-term investment.
DAT DESTROYER (20/10)
The DAT bible. You need to understand this book in and out to have a chance of doing well.
Bootcamp (10/10)
The generators are what got me the 21 on PAT. The repetitive practice is crucial to doing well on the actual DAT. The sciences are good too but some of the practice tests are unnecessarily difficult. It can be demoralizing at times.
Crack DAT PAT (7/10)
Good resource to start with but it is far too easy to be well versed in PAT for the exam.
Math Destroyer (10/10)
Really covers all topics seen on the exam. Do it religiously and do not slack on the math section early on.
Organic Chemistry by Klein, Organic As A Second Language (9/10)
Amazing textbook and its probably the best book I’ve used in college. This book teaches you organic in a brand new light and I highly recommend getting your hands on it. Also the Per Semester Orgo as a second language books are like a sparknotes version of the textbook. Get it if you can.
Cambell 9th Edition Biology Textbook (9/10)
Great book to use as a reference to double check all your facts and diagrams.
Cliffs AP Bio (9/10)
Condensed version of just about everything you need to know in Bio. It is a must to use this and understand every concept written in this book.
Feralis Biology Notes (8.5/10)
I liked the notes originally, however it is too much information for the DAT. Yes, there are some tidbits of info in these notes that do show up on the exam and you wont really see anywhere else, but its an overwhelming amount of information. Use caution when using this.
2009 ADA Exam(9/10)
Best Indication of your final DAT score. Take it a few days before your exam and if your not happy with those scores, postpone.
Chads Videos(9/10)
These videos are awesome to get your fundamentals down. His little tricks and ways to remember things are necessary. His quizzes help tremendously. The orgo and chem questions are very similar to the difficulty of the actual exam so practice, practice, practice.
The Exam:
Biology
Boy, a bio major with that score? They really can throw anything at you. You really feel wronged when you know some topics extremely well and you get one, super easy, question about it. The questions didn’t seem to be too evenly spread out in terms of testing everything equally. Glad to know the 100s of pages of the Cambell book I had down got me two questions I could’ve answered in the 9th grade. You live and you learn I guess. There were some questions I haven’t really seen before but for the most part I thought I had a good grasp of the material.
Advice: use the destroyer. Read the book until every single question, and solution is embedded in your brain. It covers just about everything. Do it twice if you can. Watch videos on youtube for more complex processes. The videos help to solidify the info and bring everything together.
General Chemistry
I got Back to Back C’s in my freshman year of college in Chem. Never liked it and my professors lack of teaching skills did not help either. Then comes Dr. Romano. The passion he exhibits about his craft had me shocked. I became inspired to destroy this chem section and honestly couldn’t tell you where I went wrong. I felt really good about this section. I feel if I had to answer 100 gen chem questions my percentage/score would’ve been much higher. Pretty bummed about my score cause I knew everything in and out. Like I said, you can know everything, but the way questions are worded with concepts can be devious.
Advice: Destroyer. Understand it. Practice problems until it becomes second nature because on the exam you will not have time to think twice about something. You need to hit it with blitzing speed. Chad’s videos help to learn the concepts too.
Organic Chemistry
Rutgers Orgo man. Best in the Country. We don’t call it organic at Rutgers. We call it Orgasmic. Haha, just kidding. But seriously, you’ll learn to love orgo the way they push it upon the students at the University. To supplement my knowledge from University, Organic as a Second Language is crucial to getting down your fundamentals. A weak base in organic and the DAT beast will pick you to shreds. The questions are easy, but you must know the basics really well. Two or three questions wrong and your down to the low 20s. The DAT orgo is easy money. Draw out Dr. Romano’s roadmaps all the time. Make new ones up and work on synthesis problems to strengthen your skills in organic. Use this section like I did to bring your overall up. THIS SAVED MY SCORE from a potential retake and I’m so relieved that I got what I got. Still curious to see which question(s) I got wrong.
Perceptual Ability
I used crack dat for the first two months (going back to poorly used time). It’s a confidence booster because it’s relatively easy. Though the difficulty of the actual DAT is somewhere between bootcamp and crack dat, you need bootcamp in order to perfect your speed. I did angles first, then continued in forward fashion finishing with TFE. I did all the Bootcamp tests, and all the CrackDat Pat tests. Generators on bootcamp are helpful too.
Angles- Hill method (Acute) Scariest is Largest. Laptop (obtuse)
Holes- Line of symmetry
Cubes-Tally
Pattern Folding-Understand Ari’s solutions to the bootcamp and it’ll come easy after that.
Keyhole - Look for differences between the answers. All these questions (Key/TFE/PF) are not actually asking which is the correct answer. Think of these questions asking which of these are wrong. You must eliminate answers to find the correct one. Two at a time until the answer is under your mouse waiting to be clicked.
TFE- boot camp helps greatly; eliminate answers to determine which is correct.
Reading Comprehension
They always say there is one really hard section on the DAT. Found mine. Extremely dense, tons of scientific pronouns. My first passage I honestly could not tell what was going on, but came out alive, for the most part.
Quantitative Reasoning
Not going to lie, I thought I did better than my score on this section. I guess the future dentists of America are real math savvy. Hit it in waves and that’s the key to this section. Anything that takes longer than 15 seconds to comprehend on how to approach, skip and come back to it. I did 10 Math destroyer tests and it covers anything you’ll see on the exam. If you get a Type of problem wrong, learn how to do it and learn to set yourself up for anything they can throw at you. But you don’t have to take my advice, my score is a huge reminder of just how many math classes I skipped in high school. Stay in school kids hahaha
Thoughts:
Juxtaposing my scores to some of these SDN kids makes me feel like I failed. This is not a real benchmark for what people around the country are scoring and by no means should you feel bad about the hard work you put in to make your dreams come true. I really thought I was getting a much higher score on this exam and I danm near knew every question on the exam. It was tricky and questions you think you know, can be worded very strangely to make you second guess yourself. Hopefully it is good enough.
Listen, I’m not the smartest kid on the site, and you can tell by my GPA. But, I worked hard for something that was really important to me. Hard work and dedication, day in, day out will get you into dental school. If your tired of having your dreams be dreams, JUST DO IT. You will succeed IF YOU PUT THE TIME IN. I can’t say my scores are blazing, but I have to enjoy the fruits of my labor (100 days of non stop studying). I would greatly appreciate any feedback from you guys on how to make the best out of my application. Any schools you think I should look into with my scores would be very helpful. I am in the middle of deciding if I should do a masters program or stay in college for a 5th year. Everything is up in the air at this point and I’m kind of nervous of what the future holds. Message me if you have any questions at all I’d be more than happy to help you. I also have a large amount of resources that I am willing to share. But on a last note…
KEEP ON BANGING!
EVERYBODY IS BORN WITH A GIFT!
USE YOUR GIFT TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE!
IF I DID IT, SO CAN YOU!
Background:
All right, I’ve been waiting a real long time to make one of these. I’m going to take this moment to express my overall feelings towards the DAT, the studying process, and all else Dentistry related. I will try and make this as comprehensive as possible and be as much of a help as I can. You SDN’ers have really kept me sane and optimistic about the DAT these past couple months so I’ll try my best. Check for my full score report below.
I have a 3.3 GPA and a 3.0 sGPA as a rising senior majoring in Biology and I studied for about 13 weeks, 6-7 hours, 5 to 6 days a week for this exam. June 1st to September 3rd. I did end up taking a small vacation to Dubai and California so that took a little time out of my studying. I also tried to go out as much as possible on the weekends with my friends. If you’re putting 30+ hours in a week for this exam, using the weekends to enjoy can’t hurt you too much. Whatever you like to do in your free time, make sure you do it on the weekends to keep you level. You really need to maintain a social life and a healthy lifestyle during this process or else it will eat you alive. My passion for weightlifting was something that helped me get through this process and I actually lost 13 lbs and 7% Body Fat while preparing to battle the DAT beast.
I had the privilege to be apart of Dr. Romano’s (@orgoman22) DAT boot camp class, which was by far the best resource I had. Man, words cannot express how grateful I am to have been able to sit in a classroom and just absorb information from this man. Have you noticed every breakdown has given praise to the Destroyer and its creator? This man is a straight up genius and its unfortunate that many of you will never have the privilege to be apart of his class due to the fact he’s around the NY area, but if you are anywhere in the area I HIGHLY advise you to sign up for the class. You won’t regret it, every word the man says is absolutely crucial and he’ll keep it fun and bubbly so you’ll have no option but to destroy the DAT. A lot of people say that 13 weeks is too much time to study. That’s a bunch of BS. Dr. Romano always says there is no such thing as being over prepared. “Put the time in and test day will be a breeze. The people who don’t simply won’t make it. You know, not everyone can be a doctor.” All of his inspirational quotes really stuck with me and really motivated me to put in that extra hour of the day.
I knew I was already at a disadvantage with my low GPA so I had to do everything in my control to make this DAT score a good one. Check the picture at the bottom for all my scores. The first month or so I really studied inefficiently. I tried to make flashcards of all of Feralis’ Notes and memorize that for bio. I admit that wasn’t the greatest move as it is much more important to understand why things happen, and that’s for all sciences. If you know why something happens, you will remember it on test day and hit it with blitzing speed. If you memorize it, you might get tripped up, or take a little longer than you should. Spend the time to learn the topics and you’ll kill it.
Materials
The materials are quite expensive. Your going into a field where you’ll be almost half a million in debt by the time you get out. Don’t cheap out on the materials and resources you use for the DAT Prep. Think of it as a long-term investment.
DAT DESTROYER (20/10)
The DAT bible. You need to understand this book in and out to have a chance of doing well.
Bootcamp (10/10)
The generators are what got me the 21 on PAT. The repetitive practice is crucial to doing well on the actual DAT. The sciences are good too but some of the practice tests are unnecessarily difficult. It can be demoralizing at times.
Crack DAT PAT (7/10)
Good resource to start with but it is far too easy to be well versed in PAT for the exam.
Math Destroyer (10/10)
Really covers all topics seen on the exam. Do it religiously and do not slack on the math section early on.
Organic Chemistry by Klein, Organic As A Second Language (9/10)
Amazing textbook and its probably the best book I’ve used in college. This book teaches you organic in a brand new light and I highly recommend getting your hands on it. Also the Per Semester Orgo as a second language books are like a sparknotes version of the textbook. Get it if you can.
Cambell 9th Edition Biology Textbook (9/10)
Great book to use as a reference to double check all your facts and diagrams.
Cliffs AP Bio (9/10)
Condensed version of just about everything you need to know in Bio. It is a must to use this and understand every concept written in this book.
Feralis Biology Notes (8.5/10)
I liked the notes originally, however it is too much information for the DAT. Yes, there are some tidbits of info in these notes that do show up on the exam and you wont really see anywhere else, but its an overwhelming amount of information. Use caution when using this.
2009 ADA Exam(9/10)
Best Indication of your final DAT score. Take it a few days before your exam and if your not happy with those scores, postpone.
Chads Videos(9/10)
These videos are awesome to get your fundamentals down. His little tricks and ways to remember things are necessary. His quizzes help tremendously. The orgo and chem questions are very similar to the difficulty of the actual exam so practice, practice, practice.
The Exam:
Biology
Boy, a bio major with that score? They really can throw anything at you. You really feel wronged when you know some topics extremely well and you get one, super easy, question about it. The questions didn’t seem to be too evenly spread out in terms of testing everything equally. Glad to know the 100s of pages of the Cambell book I had down got me two questions I could’ve answered in the 9th grade. You live and you learn I guess. There were some questions I haven’t really seen before but for the most part I thought I had a good grasp of the material.
Advice: use the destroyer. Read the book until every single question, and solution is embedded in your brain. It covers just about everything. Do it twice if you can. Watch videos on youtube for more complex processes. The videos help to solidify the info and bring everything together.
General Chemistry
I got Back to Back C’s in my freshman year of college in Chem. Never liked it and my professors lack of teaching skills did not help either. Then comes Dr. Romano. The passion he exhibits about his craft had me shocked. I became inspired to destroy this chem section and honestly couldn’t tell you where I went wrong. I felt really good about this section. I feel if I had to answer 100 gen chem questions my percentage/score would’ve been much higher. Pretty bummed about my score cause I knew everything in and out. Like I said, you can know everything, but the way questions are worded with concepts can be devious.
Advice: Destroyer. Understand it. Practice problems until it becomes second nature because on the exam you will not have time to think twice about something. You need to hit it with blitzing speed. Chad’s videos help to learn the concepts too.
Organic Chemistry
Rutgers Orgo man. Best in the Country. We don’t call it organic at Rutgers. We call it Orgasmic. Haha, just kidding. But seriously, you’ll learn to love orgo the way they push it upon the students at the University. To supplement my knowledge from University, Organic as a Second Language is crucial to getting down your fundamentals. A weak base in organic and the DAT beast will pick you to shreds. The questions are easy, but you must know the basics really well. Two or three questions wrong and your down to the low 20s. The DAT orgo is easy money. Draw out Dr. Romano’s roadmaps all the time. Make new ones up and work on synthesis problems to strengthen your skills in organic. Use this section like I did to bring your overall up. THIS SAVED MY SCORE from a potential retake and I’m so relieved that I got what I got. Still curious to see which question(s) I got wrong.
Perceptual Ability
I used crack dat for the first two months (going back to poorly used time). It’s a confidence booster because it’s relatively easy. Though the difficulty of the actual DAT is somewhere between bootcamp and crack dat, you need bootcamp in order to perfect your speed. I did angles first, then continued in forward fashion finishing with TFE. I did all the Bootcamp tests, and all the CrackDat Pat tests. Generators on bootcamp are helpful too.
Angles- Hill method (Acute) Scariest is Largest. Laptop (obtuse)
Holes- Line of symmetry
Cubes-Tally
Pattern Folding-Understand Ari’s solutions to the bootcamp and it’ll come easy after that.
Keyhole - Look for differences between the answers. All these questions (Key/TFE/PF) are not actually asking which is the correct answer. Think of these questions asking which of these are wrong. You must eliminate answers to find the correct one. Two at a time until the answer is under your mouse waiting to be clicked.
TFE- boot camp helps greatly; eliminate answers to determine which is correct.
Reading Comprehension
They always say there is one really hard section on the DAT. Found mine. Extremely dense, tons of scientific pronouns. My first passage I honestly could not tell what was going on, but came out alive, for the most part.
Quantitative Reasoning
Not going to lie, I thought I did better than my score on this section. I guess the future dentists of America are real math savvy. Hit it in waves and that’s the key to this section. Anything that takes longer than 15 seconds to comprehend on how to approach, skip and come back to it. I did 10 Math destroyer tests and it covers anything you’ll see on the exam. If you get a Type of problem wrong, learn how to do it and learn to set yourself up for anything they can throw at you. But you don’t have to take my advice, my score is a huge reminder of just how many math classes I skipped in high school. Stay in school kids hahaha
Thoughts:
Juxtaposing my scores to some of these SDN kids makes me feel like I failed. This is not a real benchmark for what people around the country are scoring and by no means should you feel bad about the hard work you put in to make your dreams come true. I really thought I was getting a much higher score on this exam and I danm near knew every question on the exam. It was tricky and questions you think you know, can be worded very strangely to make you second guess yourself. Hopefully it is good enough.
Listen, I’m not the smartest kid on the site, and you can tell by my GPA. But, I worked hard for something that was really important to me. Hard work and dedication, day in, day out will get you into dental school. If your tired of having your dreams be dreams, JUST DO IT. You will succeed IF YOU PUT THE TIME IN. I can’t say my scores are blazing, but I have to enjoy the fruits of my labor (100 days of non stop studying). I would greatly appreciate any feedback from you guys on how to make the best out of my application. Any schools you think I should look into with my scores would be very helpful. I am in the middle of deciding if I should do a masters program or stay in college for a 5th year. Everything is up in the air at this point and I’m kind of nervous of what the future holds. Message me if you have any questions at all I’d be more than happy to help you. I also have a large amount of resources that I am willing to share. But on a last note…
KEEP ON BANGING!
EVERYBODY IS BORN WITH A GIFT!
USE YOUR GIFT TO MAKE THIS WORLD A BETTER PLACE!
IF I DID IT, SO CAN YOU!
