Hi All!
I first want to start off, like most other posters, by saying to please ignore my grammar. It is about 9:30PM as I am typing this, and I had been up since 2:30AM and my exam was at 2:00PM. But I really wanted to give a quick breakdown of my scores and what I used to the SDN community. Although it was not direct support to me, it was the encouragement that I consistently read that I believe kept me sane. I really want to give back to the SDN community through this post.
Before I start, I want to quickly debrief my background. I recently graduated from NYU in May with a BA in Psychology. I did okay in undergrad. I came into college hot headed thinking that I was going to do fine because I did well in high school, but college, especially my first two years, destroyed me. I had about a 3.4ish (including most of my pre-req sciences) my first two years. But I realized that I was in a bit of a hole, so I worked my butt off and pulled off 4 semesters worth of 3.9+ GPA, which brought up my overall.
My last exposure to Biology and GenChem was 4 years ago, OChem 3 years ago, and BioChem 2 years ago. Needless to say, it was pretty rough when I first started studying for this DAT thing. It was honestly like learning a new language. I think that I pulled through, and tried my best on this exam, but I will leave it up to you to decide whether or not you need to be a science major to do well on this exam.
Let’s start this breakdown!
Study time period:
I graduated at the end of May, and after being with family for a week or so, I started to do research about this DAT thing. And if you take anything away from this post, it is this:
do research about all the different study materials and schedules, and then REALISTICALLY try to make a schedule and breakdown of your own. You have to understand that everyone has their own preferences, and some may say one source is better than another because it works better with them, but it may not be for you. And I think this is
extremely important because this will be the foundation to your success. What does this mean exactly?
For me, because I hadn’t been exposed to principle science courses in years, I knew that I had to start from the absolutely very beginning (and keep in mind that people who are chem or bio or whatever majors may not need this). I went into this knowing just the very basics, but I wanted to solidify even the simplest of things, so I decided it was best for me to start from the beginning.
To summarize: total study time was about 2 to 2.5 months. (I actually scheduled initially to take the DAT on June 30th, thinking that I could do it…boy was I wrong… I actually decided to delay it twice).
And one quick note: DISPERSE THE STUDY MATERIAL meaning: Orgo Day 1, GChem Day 2, Bio Day 3, etc etc etc. I
did not do this, and this cost me about a few weeks because I got through all of Chad’s videos (gchem and ochem in 1.5 weeks) but I forgot a lot of the stuff in Bio that I read the week before (details if you keep reading).
Study Material:
1) DAT DESTROYER (gchem/ochem/bio)
2) DAT BOOTCAMP (everything)
3) Chad’s Videos (gchem/ochem)
4) AP Bio Cliffs (THIRD EDITION)
5) FeralisNotes (bio)
6) Math Destroyer
I believe that if you go through all of this material, at least twice, you will get a 20+ on the real deal.
Biology:
I started with AP Cliff’s 5th edition thinking, of the newest is the best… NOPE. I didn’t do enough research on this, because you NEED the 3rd edition, especially if you have basically 0 science background, like me.
I started with the 5th edition (which had most of everything in the 3rd, except plants and taxonomy). I read through the entire book in a week, literally underlying and drawing and defining
every single word that I was unfamiliar with, even the one’s that I was partially sure about.
***Where I went
wrong. I thought I had all of the concepts down in bio and I thought I understood everything...so I started to do gchem/ochem the following week without reviewing Bio. I finished all of Chad’s videos in 1.5 weeks, and then went back to bio to see if I remembered anything… basically nothing per se. The thing about the DAT is that you need repetition, and the more repetition you have, the better you are off…not reviewing bio when I was going through chem was just a terrible idea.
I guess this was kind of okay because Feralis notes, for the lack of better words, ripped me a new one. Man was that difficult to go through. It took me about 1.5 to two weeks to go through all of Feralis. This is again, literally searching up every single term that I was unfamiliar with. It is about 70 pages of notes, but it really is like gold. You definitely need to go through cliffs before going through Feralis, if you do not have a strong Bio background. But even though I went through cliffs, it was still a tough round, but I made it through…YOU CAN TOO!
I loved FeralisNotes and I am thinking about creating a note PDF of my own. Feralis was great, but there was a lot of stuff that I thought was not detailed enough, as I have like 20 extra pages of notes. But overall Feralis was GREAT.
After I completed Feralis, I did DAT Destroyer Bio, 60-70 questions per day and averaged about 70%. After completing Destroyer Bio, I did DAT Bootcamp Bio and I will post my scores of every exam later on. Once I was done with Bootcamp, I had about 1 week left until my exam, so I decided to go through Destroyer Bio again. This time, I did 175 questions a day (only a few hours) and averaged 90%+.
***I read through every single explanation in Destroyer Bio (on the first time through, regardless if I got it right or wrong and it took me about 4-5 hours), there was just so much awesome information. I screenshot-ed and saved all of the DAT Bootcamp explanations for questions that I got wrong and concepts that I did not understand).
The two days before test day, I went through my saved Bootcamp and reviewed everything again (I also did a few tests, and because it was my second time through, each test only took 15-20 minutes).
GChem/OChem:
When I first started, I literally knew just the first two of Chad’s GChem videos, and everything else was like new to me. Everything in Ochem was just new (LOL), I knew like literally NOTHING. But I watched every single second of Chad’s videos for chem, and literally typed VERBATIM each word that he said (this took about 1.5 weeks to do for both gchem and ochem). I then reread everything that I typed in 4 days or so, and went back to the videos when I was still fuzzy about a concept. After that, I printed Chad’s outline and wrote on the outline everything that I thought that I was going to forget, or a hard concept.
After reviewing the notes 2-3 times, I did Chad’s quizzes. Again, looking back, I
highly recommend doing the quizzes
immediately after each video. I just wanted to rush through all the videos and get that over with… But by the time I was done with that, I forgot the concepts from the earlier videos (which was why I had to review 2-3 times). After dong the quizzes (which are GREAT), I started destroyer. Overall I’d say that destroyer was TOO hard as a lot of people make it out to me. I averaged about 70%, doing about 60 questions a day for each. But I understand how it can be hard, and this was especially the case for some questions (that is, if they were hard, they were HARD).
After completing destroyer, I went through Bootcamp, which was pretty tough because I gave myself only within the time frame (30 minutes). For destroyer, it would take me like 3-3.5 hours to complete 60 questions, but I also read every single explanation (which to me was imperative). But I completely bootcamp, and did the same screen shot strategy I did with bootcamp bio.
After bootcamp, I decided to do destroyer again (some of the questions, especially the harder ones were like foreign again (even though I though I got it after reading the explanations)). But this time I would do about 100+ questions a day for each and only read explanations for the ones I got wrong, and I averaged 90%+ this second time through.
Again, two days before the exam, I read through all of the screen shots from bootcamp.
PAT:
I used Bootcamp (10 tests) and DAT Genius (1st test (free)). Do it all. Use the generators. The explanations were like useless to me, but I was able to make my own general understanding. PRACTICE. Then PRACTICE MORE.
Bootcamp is HARD, but if you practice daily it will make it easier for you. I do not want to say this, but I think that it may help relieve the ease for some people, but bootcamp keyhole, TFE, pattern folding, and especially angles were A LOT harder than the real deal. But take that latter statement with a grain of salt because there are different exams, some harder and some easier.
RC:
This was my lowest section on the exam. I actually scored better on Bootcamp (2 tests only) than I did on the real deal, but I will explain on this later. I really do not have much to say about this because I really did not practice much for it because I just couldn’t bring myself to focus and concentrate. But the passages and questions on the real exam, despite me not doing well, were easier than those on Bootcamp.
QR:
Do not overestimate this section. It was TOUGH for me, and I am surprised I got what I got. But do, at least, the first 10 Math Destroyer tests. I am terrible at math, so I’d say to NOT time yourself. Each test literally took me 3-4 hours to go through…but I went through it rereading and redoing all of the problems that I missed. If you do not like math or do not have a good foundation, then what may happen is that you get wrecked after doing one exam...you then go through the questions and explanations...redo it and believe you understand it all...but then just get wrecked the next day...and then the cycle repeats... Just remember that this may happen to you, so just accept it...everything is a learning curve.
I also HIGHLY recommend Bootcamp. After I attempted Test 11 on destroyer, I got wrecked on the first 4 questions, so I decided to try out Bootcamp. Bootcamp was tough and it has the newer quantitative comparison questions, which I was terrible at. I would again use the same strategy with the questions that I got wrong. I only did about 8 tests, so a total of 18 tests (including destroyer). Destroyer is better at explaining…but the questions are ridiculously hard. Bootcamp is about on par with the real deal.
Also, I highly recommend you to use the calculator. I read that it was terrible and wasted a lot of time on the exam, but it was not too bad. I had no lag, and I thought it was crucial for me.
By the way, I did not like QC and I think it is hard, just be ready for them. I had about 10 on my exam.
Scores:
As I said, I basically got no sleep before the exam about 3 hours…this was just terrible. I drank a shot of coffee at 7AM, but then the effects dissipated. I was reading through notes at 12:30 and I was really tired, so I decided for another shot. BAD IDEA. I think the adrenaline and the caffeine synergized, and my stomach hurt the entire exam.
Actual Scores:
PAT: 24
QR: 22
RC: 19
BIO: 23
GC: 23
OC: 29
TS: 24
AA: 23
Bootcamp Scores:
T1 –> T10 (except QR)
Bio: 23, 24, 22, 23, 25, 22, 23, 27, 21, 22
GC: 20, 21, 22, 21, 20, 22, 25, 23, 21, 18
OC: 28, 25, 26, 23, 22, 25, 24, 23, 22, 23
QR: 18, 19, 20, 18, 18, 19, 20, 18
RC: 20, 23, 20
***I never completed a single bootcamp PAT in a single sitting. I would actually time myself after every 15 questions, and then see what I got wrong and go through it. I just was not comfortable going through it all because I knew that I probably wouldn’t be able to finish. For the last 3 exams, however, I timed myself for each section of the PAT (6 different sections) and then at the end added up all of my scores and time, and I finished around the 60 minute mark, with a score of 20 for the last 3 exams (To do this, I actually had to go back and re-enter the correct answers for the amount of questions that I got correct. I just really did not want to bring down my morale. Also, when I did this, I would use the angle generator instead of the actual exam angle for test 6-10 because the angle ranking in these tests were ridiculous and totally unnecessary.
***One thing about bootcamp is that I believe the questions have some sort of order to them, but on the DAT it was completely random, so be on the lookout for this.
***I also never completely an entire 4.5 hour long practice exam
Overall thoughts:
It is not about 11:10PM and I am quite tired so I will sum up quickly.
I was way to nervous about the exam, which was not good for me during the exam. Nervousness + adrenaline + stomach pain was just not a good combo. This hurt me especially for the
RC part because I went into the exam reminding myself that I have to stay concentrated, especially during the RC... but because I told myself to stay concentrated, I ended up not being focused at all for the first passage, and I was thinking about literally everything else not pertaining to the passage. It was then when I realized that I was going to be screwed if I don’t concentrate with 35 minutes left and 2 passages to go, thus my will to not fail overpowered everything else. I believe that I aced the last two passages (with time running out 2 seconds before the clock ended). The passages and questions were pretty easy, which is why I am disappointed with my RC grade.
QR: I thought this part was VERY HARD. There were random Log questions and probability (p-value) questions that I did not go over. I thought this was going to be my lowest section, and I thought it was a lot harder than any of the bootcamp QR that I took.
NS: Orgo very basic and on par with Bootcamp. Chem had a few tough questions that I had never encountered before, but overall pretty basic and on par with bootcamp. Bio was a bit tougher that I thought it was going to be…there were maybe 2-3 questions that I had no idea about…it was very random overall.
PAT: Do Bootcamp, and you will be fine. I actually had 4 rock questions, which were especially tough for me because I had little experience with them. But again, do Bootcamp and you will be fine.
A few special shoutouts:
1) The best part about destroyer is that you will have
@orgoman22 behind your back. I want to give a big shout out to you, Dr. Romano, for having that open forum on SDN. You have no obligation to have that open forum, yet you do it anyway. I cannot thank you and Nancy enough for all of your help in my last two months. I probably would have nothing close to the scores that I have right now if it was not for your help. Thank you.
2)
@Ari Rezaei Bootcamp was an amazing platform to use, and 110% necessary for a 20+ DAT score. I also want to thank you for the 20% discount you gave me!
3)
@FeralisExtremum Thank you so much for your notes. They were extraordinary and 110% necessary for success for the bio part of the exam. I believe that collaboration is the best competition, and to just piggyback off of you a bit, I hope to also create my own little note booklet for students preparing to take the DAT.
Lastly:
This has been an extremely long post, and I tried to be as comprehensive as I can with my breakdown. However, I do believe that I may have slipped in terms of me trying to be comprehensive towards the end of this post. To make up for this, I will be more than willing to elaborate on any questions anyone may have via DM or via this thread. Just let me know!
Remember this: the most important thing is to ENJOY this process. Do not be afraid of it. Take it day by day.
I will now go to sleep (apologies again for any grammar mistakes!!).
-David
