And just like that, it’s over! Wow. What a crazy 5 weeks of an emotional roller coaster. I wanted to thank the SDN community for helping me achieve these scores. Reading previous breakdowns was one of the best resources to do well on the DAT. I don't post here often, but I want to post a detailed breakdown of my DAT experience. Here are my scores:
PAT: 21
QR: 23
RC: 22
Bio: 24
GC: 20
OC: 22
TS: 22
AA: 22
Studying:
I started studying around May 14 after finals. It gave me around 5 weeks to study for this beast. At first it was overwhelming because I didn’t know where to begin. So I spent an entire day figuring out a good schedule. Execution in KEY to doing well on this exam. Figure out exactly what you are going to do and keep track of your progress. It’ll be much easier to handle the workload this way. Here’s how I broke down the 5 weeks:
Weeks 1 and 2: Notes:
Watched chad’s Videos on the chemistries and took hand written notes. I made a notebook for OC and another one for GC, and wrote almost word-for-word about what Chad mentioned. At this time I also made a third notebook for biology and took notes by using Ferali’s notes. For some reason I retain things much more after writing them down. I could also come back to these notes for reference in the future. It was a struggle to understand all of the gen chem material because I took gen chem 4 years ago! However, I would have to give credit to Chad for those amazing videos. These first two weeks were the toughest for me. Worked around 10 hours a day constantly taking notes. Wasn’t worried too much about understanding all the concepts at this point, because I knew I would come back to these notes in the future.
Weeks 3 and 4: Review/destroyer:
I dedicated these next 2 weeks to reviewing the notes I had made. I would do this by going over a portion of notes from each subject everyday. At this time I also started doing destroyer problems. Destroyer was tough. On my first trial, I would get around 80% correct on bio (my strongest subject), but for GC/OC I would only get 1/3 correct. This goes to my next point: do not let these scores discourage you! Use destroyer as a way to study, not as a way to gauge how well you’re going to do on the real thing! I thought I knew a lot of material by now, but destroyer helped me pin-point my weaknesses. If I got a question wrong, I would go back to my notes and read over them and address those issues by editing notes (writing things on margins, etc…). At this point, I had a general idea of how my notes were organized and because I had gone over them so many times, I could visualize where everything was. This helped me tremendously on the real exam.
At this point I also went ahead and bought CDP 10-test version for practice. If I got bored doing the sciences, I would do a practice test. A note about PAT: the youtube videos are a great way to kick start strategies for tackling each section. Practice is also key to doing well on PAT. At first, I was terrible on this section but after practice I started to really understand how each section worked. I also knew that the real thing was more challenging than CDP, so I practiced from bootcamp the last week.
Week 5: Practice exams:
At this point, I was ready for full practice exams. I did one full practice exam each day, and studied what I got wrong. 5 bootcamp exams and 2007/2009 exams were good for this. I also did math destroyer for math practice. I have to say: destroyer is very good for math as well. It teaches you the skills to succeed in the math portion by asking you challenging questions.
Practice tests results:
Bootcamp (aa/bio/gc/oc/pat/rc/qr):
Exam 1: (21/24/22/23/20/17/20)
Exam 2: (21/26/24/22/18/19/22)
Exam 3: (21/22/23/20/19/21/21)
Exam 4: (22/25/24/19/19/22/22)
Exam 5: (22/24/22/21/19/21/22)
2007 ADA:(24/23/28/28/19/21/24)
2009 ADA:(23/23/26/27/22/19/19)
Review of the materials used:
1) Chad’s videos (10/10): This guy right here is a chem god. He teaches you things in such a manner that the concept, no matter how hard, becomes easier to understand. It’s absolutely a must for the chemistries, especially if you are rusty in chem like me.
2) Ferali’s notes (9.5/10): Perfect set of notes. I did not use cliffs because I realized that these notes were good outlines of cliffs and also included information from various sources. It has 95% of content in there. This, with destroyer, should be enough for bio.
3) DAT Destroyer (10/10): destroyer is named as such because it will destroy you, but do not worry because it’s a whole learning experience. You might as well make mistakes now rather than on the test. I would suggest going through it twice to really cement what you have learned.
4) CDP (8/10): good source for practicing the basics. The real exam will be a little bit more challenging, so I suggest moving to bootcamp after you have a good understanding of how to tackle problems.
4) Bootcamp (10/10): this was the single best representation of how the real exam will be. As my test results show, the AA was spot on. The questions are on par (or a little harder) with the difficulty of the real exam.
Test day:
Before going into details about each section, I want to mention your mind set going into the exam is crucial. I was very nervous but calmed myself because I realized that I studied hard for this thing, so it’ll be fine! Do not go into the test freaked out because it will affect your ability to think/answer tricky questions. Its easier said than done, but you have to have the mindset that you’re ready for this test!
Biology: this thing was SOO RANDOM! Its been repeated here over and over, and I kept thinking, “how random could it be?” There’s just no way to explain the breadth covered in this section, but what I can say is be efficient in your studies. If destroyer/bootcamp mentions it a lot, it’s probably something you should look into. I had to guess on a few questions, but most were straightforward.
GC/OC: These two were similar in their difficulties, and I thought they were challenging. I saw some things that I had never seen before in my studies or asked in a different/weird way, so make sure you really understand your concepts and it should be fine. I was honestly expecting a higher score going into the test, but after taking the test I thought I bombed these sections and am glad to come out with 20/22.
PAT: 1 word: Rocks. I read in previous breakdowns that were rocks in keyholes and told myself I would skip these if they showed up, and that’s exactly what I did. I did the sections in order, but skipped anything next to impossible like the rocks. Each question is weighted equally, so spending 5 minutes to answer a hard question correctly will contribute equally as answering an easy question. So I suggest doing easy stuff first and then coming back for the more challenging things as time permits.
RC: This is the section that I dreaded the most going into the test. I’m slow as a snail when it comes to reading. I thought I would have to retake because of this section. And the worst part about it was: there wasn’t much I could do improve my reading speed. HOWEVER, I can tell you that the DAT RC does NOT require you to be a speed reader. All it requires is a strategy going in. After doing bad on first couple bootcamp tests, I changed my strategy to reading the first 2-3 questions and then reading the passage until something about the questions came up. To my surprise, this strategy was PERFECT for a slow reader like me. Although the questions are not in order, it helps you tremendously when you have read things in detail to answer certain questions. I would skip the tone questions till the end.
QR: I’m okay at math and needed some brushing up. Destroyer was perfect for this. Questions were very similar but a little easier. Very straightforward stuff. Just be careful on tricky conversions/wording of problems. Finished QR with 10 minutes to spare and changed 3 answers after going back and rereading the question, so be careful!!
So there it is. If I were to do it again, I would employ a very similar strategy, but rely more on destroyer. It can be overkill at times, but you never know what will show up on the DAT, and having exposure to a broad range of topics is key. Also, do not overthink this exam! The questions are usually straightforward and I think I overthought a lot of it and should’ve left some answers unchanged. Good luck to everyone taking the test in the future. I know that if I can do it, anyone can!
PAT: 21
QR: 23
RC: 22
Bio: 24
GC: 20
OC: 22
TS: 22
AA: 22
Studying:
I started studying around May 14 after finals. It gave me around 5 weeks to study for this beast. At first it was overwhelming because I didn’t know where to begin. So I spent an entire day figuring out a good schedule. Execution in KEY to doing well on this exam. Figure out exactly what you are going to do and keep track of your progress. It’ll be much easier to handle the workload this way. Here’s how I broke down the 5 weeks:
Weeks 1 and 2: Notes:
Watched chad’s Videos on the chemistries and took hand written notes. I made a notebook for OC and another one for GC, and wrote almost word-for-word about what Chad mentioned. At this time I also made a third notebook for biology and took notes by using Ferali’s notes. For some reason I retain things much more after writing them down. I could also come back to these notes for reference in the future. It was a struggle to understand all of the gen chem material because I took gen chem 4 years ago! However, I would have to give credit to Chad for those amazing videos. These first two weeks were the toughest for me. Worked around 10 hours a day constantly taking notes. Wasn’t worried too much about understanding all the concepts at this point, because I knew I would come back to these notes in the future.
Weeks 3 and 4: Review/destroyer:
I dedicated these next 2 weeks to reviewing the notes I had made. I would do this by going over a portion of notes from each subject everyday. At this time I also started doing destroyer problems. Destroyer was tough. On my first trial, I would get around 80% correct on bio (my strongest subject), but for GC/OC I would only get 1/3 correct. This goes to my next point: do not let these scores discourage you! Use destroyer as a way to study, not as a way to gauge how well you’re going to do on the real thing! I thought I knew a lot of material by now, but destroyer helped me pin-point my weaknesses. If I got a question wrong, I would go back to my notes and read over them and address those issues by editing notes (writing things on margins, etc…). At this point, I had a general idea of how my notes were organized and because I had gone over them so many times, I could visualize where everything was. This helped me tremendously on the real exam.
At this point I also went ahead and bought CDP 10-test version for practice. If I got bored doing the sciences, I would do a practice test. A note about PAT: the youtube videos are a great way to kick start strategies for tackling each section. Practice is also key to doing well on PAT. At first, I was terrible on this section but after practice I started to really understand how each section worked. I also knew that the real thing was more challenging than CDP, so I practiced from bootcamp the last week.
Week 5: Practice exams:
At this point, I was ready for full practice exams. I did one full practice exam each day, and studied what I got wrong. 5 bootcamp exams and 2007/2009 exams were good for this. I also did math destroyer for math practice. I have to say: destroyer is very good for math as well. It teaches you the skills to succeed in the math portion by asking you challenging questions.
Practice tests results:
Bootcamp (aa/bio/gc/oc/pat/rc/qr):
Exam 1: (21/24/22/23/20/17/20)
Exam 2: (21/26/24/22/18/19/22)
Exam 3: (21/22/23/20/19/21/21)
Exam 4: (22/25/24/19/19/22/22)
Exam 5: (22/24/22/21/19/21/22)
2007 ADA:(24/23/28/28/19/21/24)
2009 ADA:(23/23/26/27/22/19/19)
Review of the materials used:
1) Chad’s videos (10/10): This guy right here is a chem god. He teaches you things in such a manner that the concept, no matter how hard, becomes easier to understand. It’s absolutely a must for the chemistries, especially if you are rusty in chem like me.
2) Ferali’s notes (9.5/10): Perfect set of notes. I did not use cliffs because I realized that these notes were good outlines of cliffs and also included information from various sources. It has 95% of content in there. This, with destroyer, should be enough for bio.
3) DAT Destroyer (10/10): destroyer is named as such because it will destroy you, but do not worry because it’s a whole learning experience. You might as well make mistakes now rather than on the test. I would suggest going through it twice to really cement what you have learned.
4) CDP (8/10): good source for practicing the basics. The real exam will be a little bit more challenging, so I suggest moving to bootcamp after you have a good understanding of how to tackle problems.
4) Bootcamp (10/10): this was the single best representation of how the real exam will be. As my test results show, the AA was spot on. The questions are on par (or a little harder) with the difficulty of the real exam.
Test day:
Before going into details about each section, I want to mention your mind set going into the exam is crucial. I was very nervous but calmed myself because I realized that I studied hard for this thing, so it’ll be fine! Do not go into the test freaked out because it will affect your ability to think/answer tricky questions. Its easier said than done, but you have to have the mindset that you’re ready for this test!
Biology: this thing was SOO RANDOM! Its been repeated here over and over, and I kept thinking, “how random could it be?” There’s just no way to explain the breadth covered in this section, but what I can say is be efficient in your studies. If destroyer/bootcamp mentions it a lot, it’s probably something you should look into. I had to guess on a few questions, but most were straightforward.
GC/OC: These two were similar in their difficulties, and I thought they were challenging. I saw some things that I had never seen before in my studies or asked in a different/weird way, so make sure you really understand your concepts and it should be fine. I was honestly expecting a higher score going into the test, but after taking the test I thought I bombed these sections and am glad to come out with 20/22.
PAT: 1 word: Rocks. I read in previous breakdowns that were rocks in keyholes and told myself I would skip these if they showed up, and that’s exactly what I did. I did the sections in order, but skipped anything next to impossible like the rocks. Each question is weighted equally, so spending 5 minutes to answer a hard question correctly will contribute equally as answering an easy question. So I suggest doing easy stuff first and then coming back for the more challenging things as time permits.
RC: This is the section that I dreaded the most going into the test. I’m slow as a snail when it comes to reading. I thought I would have to retake because of this section. And the worst part about it was: there wasn’t much I could do improve my reading speed. HOWEVER, I can tell you that the DAT RC does NOT require you to be a speed reader. All it requires is a strategy going in. After doing bad on first couple bootcamp tests, I changed my strategy to reading the first 2-3 questions and then reading the passage until something about the questions came up. To my surprise, this strategy was PERFECT for a slow reader like me. Although the questions are not in order, it helps you tremendously when you have read things in detail to answer certain questions. I would skip the tone questions till the end.
QR: I’m okay at math and needed some brushing up. Destroyer was perfect for this. Questions were very similar but a little easier. Very straightforward stuff. Just be careful on tricky conversions/wording of problems. Finished QR with 10 minutes to spare and changed 3 answers after going back and rereading the question, so be careful!!
So there it is. If I were to do it again, I would employ a very similar strategy, but rely more on destroyer. It can be overkill at times, but you never know what will show up on the DAT, and having exposure to a broad range of topics is key. Also, do not overthink this exam! The questions are usually straightforward and I think I overthought a lot of it and should’ve left some answers unchanged. Good luck to everyone taking the test in the future. I know that if I can do it, anyone can!
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