- Joined
- Sep 18, 2013
- Messages
- 102
- Reaction score
- 35
PAT 21
QR 21
RC 25
Bio 21
GC 25
OC 29
TS 24
AA 24
Materials used:
So, I've been studying for this for the past 3 months, on and off, maybe 5 hours a week for the first two months and for the last month, 6-7 hours every day, and after taking it today, I think I can confidently say that spaced studying and constantly doing practice tests is key to preparing for the DAT.
Way before I started studying, I took the sample test (2007 I believe), and I got sub-20 scores on all the sections, especially biology, probably got 20 wrong out of 40. As someone with a decent science background, I was really surprised I got half of the bio questions wrong on the sample test. So I took to studying Cliffs notes, inside and out. Read it once. Read it a second time, taking very detailed notes. Went over the notes over the course of a month (spaced studying) and then moved on to Ochem/genchem (Chad's videos), still studying about 20 minutes of bio during each of those sessions. I also took detailed notes for Chad's ochem, but took no notes for his genchem (I had a solid general chemistry background, but a very weak organic chemistry background).
At this point, I felt I was ready, so I started taking practice tests from the destroyer, and let me tell you, I was not prepared for the difficulty of those questions. For ochem, Out of the 30 question intervals I did, I would get 15-16 correct. Even QR was giving me trouble (especially trig), and Bio/genchem, forget about it, I was getting the the equivalent of 15-17 scores on those. I felt discouraged, and didn't look back at the destroyer til the last few weeks in order to review some road maps, and random bio facts (I think Ochem roadmaps were a bit excessive as the problems on my DAT were mostly mechanism based and not really a "which reagent would accomplish this", but for Bio, any fact at all that I could commit to memory was worth it).
Fast forward to a week before the test (still haven't done any PAT at this point, I was screwed lol), I find out that DAT bootcamp is pretty representative of the actual DAT (and I can tell you from today, the OChem from bootcamp was spot on with regards to the actual DAT), the Bio was 50/50 in the way they asked the questions, and genchem from bootcamp was relatively representative of the actual DAT. DATBootcamp PAT was INSANE compared to the actual DAT. I felt like it has prepared me so much, with respect to looking at the tiny differences in keyholes, eliminating choices instead of trying to figure out how the shape looks like, and even the pattern folding was 3 times harder than the actual DAT. (Really, kudos to Ari for the difficult questions. I hated the PAT questions after I saw my bootcamp score but it really helped!)
After a whole week at the bootcamp, I finally felt that I was ready, so 2 days before the test, I took some topscore exams and here is what I got (never really got to the 2nd and 3rd exams, I don't know why)
RC 20/ BIO 17 / Chem 18/ OChem 20/ TS 19/ AA 19
As you can see, the Bio/chem/ochem are definitely not representative of my actual scores, could be a difference in scoring methods or just difficult questions on topscore. Now, came the moment of truth. The day before the exam, I just reviewed hormones, excretory system and reproduction/development (my weak subjects) for 2 hours and relaxed for the rest of the day, knowing that if I didn't know ochem/genchem by now, no amount of studying would help, but bio is something that can be memorized.
Now onto the actual DAT:
Biology: pretty straightforward, many fact-based questions.
Chemistry: again, straightforward, conceptual questions, had to know equations for some questions
OChem: I think I missed one question, everything else was pretty straightforward, Destroyer was overkill with regards to roadmaps, but it helped a lot.
PAT: the only PAT resource I used was DAT Bootcamp, and I believe it did help tremendously for the keyholes and pattern folding, really got me thinking about looking for the smallest details.
RC: All or most of my questions were Search and Destroy based, finished with 1 minute to spare. A few were tone inferences and true/false. The thing I noticed in this section was that if they asked for percentage values in the question, 9 times out of 10, the number was written out in letters and percentages were written out as "percent" instead of "%." Tricky bastards =P.
QR: I don't know what to say. Ran out of time on the last 3 questions and had to rush to finish, but overall I think I did well on this section.
Again, thank you Ari, Chad and Dr. Romano for the amazing resources.
And without further ado, the score report:
QR 21
RC 25
Bio 21
GC 25
OC 29
TS 24
AA 24
Materials used:
- Chad's Videos
- Cliffs AP Biology 3e
- Topscore (barely)
- DAT Destroyer
- DAT Bootcamp
So, I've been studying for this for the past 3 months, on and off, maybe 5 hours a week for the first two months and for the last month, 6-7 hours every day, and after taking it today, I think I can confidently say that spaced studying and constantly doing practice tests is key to preparing for the DAT.
Way before I started studying, I took the sample test (2007 I believe), and I got sub-20 scores on all the sections, especially biology, probably got 20 wrong out of 40. As someone with a decent science background, I was really surprised I got half of the bio questions wrong on the sample test. So I took to studying Cliffs notes, inside and out. Read it once. Read it a second time, taking very detailed notes. Went over the notes over the course of a month (spaced studying) and then moved on to Ochem/genchem (Chad's videos), still studying about 20 minutes of bio during each of those sessions. I also took detailed notes for Chad's ochem, but took no notes for his genchem (I had a solid general chemistry background, but a very weak organic chemistry background).
At this point, I felt I was ready, so I started taking practice tests from the destroyer, and let me tell you, I was not prepared for the difficulty of those questions. For ochem, Out of the 30 question intervals I did, I would get 15-16 correct. Even QR was giving me trouble (especially trig), and Bio/genchem, forget about it, I was getting the the equivalent of 15-17 scores on those. I felt discouraged, and didn't look back at the destroyer til the last few weeks in order to review some road maps, and random bio facts (I think Ochem roadmaps were a bit excessive as the problems on my DAT were mostly mechanism based and not really a "which reagent would accomplish this", but for Bio, any fact at all that I could commit to memory was worth it).
Fast forward to a week before the test (still haven't done any PAT at this point, I was screwed lol), I find out that DAT bootcamp is pretty representative of the actual DAT (and I can tell you from today, the OChem from bootcamp was spot on with regards to the actual DAT), the Bio was 50/50 in the way they asked the questions, and genchem from bootcamp was relatively representative of the actual DAT. DATBootcamp PAT was INSANE compared to the actual DAT. I felt like it has prepared me so much, with respect to looking at the tiny differences in keyholes, eliminating choices instead of trying to figure out how the shape looks like, and even the pattern folding was 3 times harder than the actual DAT. (Really, kudos to Ari for the difficult questions. I hated the PAT questions after I saw my bootcamp score but it really helped!)
After a whole week at the bootcamp, I finally felt that I was ready, so 2 days before the test, I took some topscore exams and here is what I got (never really got to the 2nd and 3rd exams, I don't know why)
RC 20/ BIO 17 / Chem 18/ OChem 20/ TS 19/ AA 19
As you can see, the Bio/chem/ochem are definitely not representative of my actual scores, could be a difference in scoring methods or just difficult questions on topscore. Now, came the moment of truth. The day before the exam, I just reviewed hormones, excretory system and reproduction/development (my weak subjects) for 2 hours and relaxed for the rest of the day, knowing that if I didn't know ochem/genchem by now, no amount of studying would help, but bio is something that can be memorized.
Now onto the actual DAT:
Biology: pretty straightforward, many fact-based questions.
Chemistry: again, straightforward, conceptual questions, had to know equations for some questions
OChem: I think I missed one question, everything else was pretty straightforward, Destroyer was overkill with regards to roadmaps, but it helped a lot.
PAT: the only PAT resource I used was DAT Bootcamp, and I believe it did help tremendously for the keyholes and pattern folding, really got me thinking about looking for the smallest details.
RC: All or most of my questions were Search and Destroy based, finished with 1 minute to spare. A few were tone inferences and true/false. The thing I noticed in this section was that if they asked for percentage values in the question, 9 times out of 10, the number was written out in letters and percentages were written out as "percent" instead of "%." Tricky bastards =P.
QR: I don't know what to say. Ran out of time on the last 3 questions and had to rush to finish, but overall I think I did well on this section.
Again, thank you Ari, Chad and Dr. Romano for the amazing resources.
And without further ado, the score report:
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