DAT Breakdown 6/30/14 - 4 Week Condensed Studying

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SmilesDMD

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I check the SDN quite often and I always see absolutely insane DAT test scores with their breakdowns which really helped guide my studying, so I thought I would add mine for anyone seeking advice from a more "average" student.

And by average, I'm saying I don't have a 4.0 GPA nor have a 25 AA DAT score. I'm smart, but I'm not a "genius".

Here's a little background:
I am 22 years old and am about to finish my last semester of undergrad as a Neuroscience major (victory lap?). I am applying this cycle with a 3.48 GPA and 3.2 sGPA. The first two years of college, I played college Volleyball and joined a fraternity, and didn't really care for school much and boy I wish I did. Through all of my Biology courses, I did JUST enough to be able to memorize and regurgitate concepts and processes to get an A, and I've also never received in A in any chemistry course (B+ GC1/C+ GC2/C+ Orgo1/B+ Orgo 2) so those were my weakest subjects going into the DAT. I've never been a perfect student, but I've always been a GOOD student. I wanted to take a full 10 weeks to study, but I'm going to Costa Rica for three weeks in July and I knew I would have forgotten everything if I took my exam in August. I just really condensed my study schedule and went after it.

Here's my breakdown:
Biology - 18
GC - 23
Orgo - 18
TS - 19
PAT - 18
Reading Comprehension - 25 - Thank you for saving my score.
QR - 19
AA - 21

I studied for 4 weeks, starting the beginning of June. I worked 5 hours each day. I would wake up at 7 am, work out, study from 10 am until 2 pm and then after work 8 pm until 12-1am. I competed in my first NPC Physique show too, so I was in the gym quite a bit and it was hard studying on those low carb diets. After my show midway through June, my studying really kicked up a notch when I was about two weeks away. I started by reviewing Bio and Gen Chem every single day. I would go over material for the first half, and do problems during the second half.

The third week I did Chad's Orgo quizzes and (horribly) attempted DAT Destroyer GC and Orgo. Got through all the material in the book in about a week. This was time consuming and VERY stressful with how close my exam was.

I took my first practice test about 10 days before my exam, and did not do well at all. I actually started completely panicking, but it really motivated me to study harder. The week before my test, I took the week off work and I did a full length timed practice test every day, and would do Gen Chem problems and Math Destroyer afterwards, totaling about 14-15 hours a day. My scores were increasing and I felt really confident about Bio, Orgo, PAT, and Reading so a majority of my time was really spent on Gen Chem problems.


Study Materials Used:

Cliff's AP Bio (8/10) - Covered all of the material well, but EXTREMELY dry. It would take me hours to get through the relatively short chapters and I could not keep myself motivated to read this textbook. However, the quizzes at the end of the chapter and the tests at the end are helpful. I would start each new chapter by first doing the quiz without reading it, and then focus on concepts the questions I missed.

YouTube Crash Course Biology (9/10) - Hank is hilarious. After reading the chapters in Cliff's AP bio, I would watch the corresponding video. He's enthusiastic and he relates all of the concepts to a real life application, so it helped quite a bit in that sense. I would play the audio in the morning while I showered and got ready just to keep exposing myself to material.

Chad's Videos (10/10) - Absolute MUST for Gen Chem. I didn't do very well in both Gen Chems and Chad made these concepts CRYSTAL clear, and you understand not only what formulas to use but why you're using them. Nothing new, Chad is the man. As for Orgo, I just finished OrgoII in the spring, so it was all relatively fresh so I didn't spend too much time on this.

DAT Destroyer (6/10) - Other than biology, I felt like it wasn't very useful. Like I said, I didn't do very well in Gen Chem but I understood Chad's videos enough to do the quizzes with ease. DAT destroyer made me absolutely panic every single day doing Gen Chem problems. It was 5 days before my exam and I couldn't figure out three of them in a row without resorting to my notes. I was adamant about rescheduling my test, but I decided to stick with it. It was a very poor indicator of what Gen Chem would be like on the actual DAT.

MATH Destroyer (10/10) - Haven't taken a math class that used the same concepts on the DAT since high school. This was a great refresher. I did tests 1-5 and felt like I was well prepared.

TopScore Pro (7/10) - Bio was too easy, GC was fair, OChem was mostly reactions and my test barely had any.

Practice Test Scores:

1. 16AA/17 TS (22 Bio/14 GC/19 Orgo)/16 PAT/22 RC/15 QR - Got super tired after reading and lazily did QR.
2. 18AA/17 TS (22 Bio/16 GC/17 Orgo)/20 PAT/22 RC/18 QR
3. 21 TS (25 Bio/17 GC/22 Orgo) - It was the week before my test and after seeing how poorly I did with GC I just spent a LOT of time doing GC problems.

I did well on all of the Bio and my last Orgo exam, so I was overconfident in those subjects.

DAT Bootcamp (10/10) - After reading a fellow SDN member's breakdown, he said that DAT Bootcamp was extremely helpful with the GC section. He was nice enough to let me have access to his account, but I think it expires next week. After consistently getting 17 or lower on all my practice tests, I spent the last week doing every single practice test and subject test, for probably 4-6 hours a day until I could do them in my sleep. I'm not exaggerating when I say I am horrible at GChem, and I was really happy with how prepared I was for that section.

CDP PAT (5/10) - Too easy, wasted a lot of time here. Bought the 10 test version and breezed through all of them and scored a 20 or higher. When I got to the actual DAT, TFE and keyholes were MUCH harder and I felt like I was guessing on most of the pattern folding questions. I honestly didn't see anything like the TFE section in CDP that was on my actual DAT.

So as far as the real DAT went, I was extremely confident in Biology, Organic Chemistry, QR, and PAT going into them. I breezed through A's in physics and all the calc's so I thought I was ready.

Biology - The questions I got were extremely random. DAT destroyer makes you really know each concept pretty in depth. I didn't get any plant questions, but I did get a few ecology and taxonomy which I didn't spend much time on. None of the practice tests I took really covered the subjects I got on the DAT. Even with DAT destroyer, a lot of the time if you are unsure there is the "All of the above" answers where if you can pick out more than one that are correct, you'll get it correct. I barely got any anatomy, cell biology, or physiology. It was honestly a bunch of random questions that I wasn't expecting. Breadth over depth.

Gen Chem - I did so many problems the week before my exam, I was prepared to do these problems. Very basic calculations, nothing like DAT Destroyer. Know your concepts.

Organic Chem - I never took Orgo Lab, so the NMR and lab techniques were all new to me. I didn't start reviewing Orgo until about two weeks before my exam since I still knew all the reactions but my test had 5 or 6 reactions, and the rest were conceptual and lab oriented. This really took me by surprise because I knew all of the reactions really well, but was shaky on NMR and lab techniques (I had 2 H NMR/s, 2 with a graph of peaks, and 4 lab technique questions) - Again, I thought it was really random that mine was so heavily oriented towards lab techniques and not actual product/reagent/reactant problems like I was continually getting on topscore so I was disappointed with my score on this one.

PAT - Very, very difficult for me. CDP was a breeze so I wasn't worried about this section for the test at all. My nerves were a bit crazy because I thought I blew it in Biology from all the random questions and in Organic from all the lab techniques and NMR material I lazily studied. Once I got to pattern folding I felt like I was guessing on half of them.

During the 15 minute break I wanted to grab my things and leave, but I looked in the mirror and just thought about all the hours and stress I put myself through and I needed to do well on RC and QR to at least get a 20 so I wouldn't have to retake it.

RC - I didn't use a mapping method, I didn't look into any strategies or anything. I would literally read the question, and speed scan through the whole passage until I found corresponding words. The ones I missed were the "implicative" or "tone" questions, I had three or four of them. When I would scan the passages, I kind of made a mental map of where everything was. But honestly, I treated it like a word search and it worked out for me.

QR - My first 30 questions were really easy, and the last 10 were medium-hard in difficulty. I was really, really burnt out by the end of the exam and I just wanted to finish strong. Ran out of time - If I could start over I would have started reviewing math sooner than I did. It was a lot of arithmetic and I made a ton of mistakes here.

In conclusion, if I were to start over I would have spent a lot more time going over biology, mastered NMR, and Orgo Lab techniques, and practiced Math Destroyer more under pressure. I feel like I could have nailed a 22 or 23 because I was disappointed with 18's. I feel like those aren't reflective of my knowledge on those subjects. As far as PAT goes, I did 10 full tests, and still didn't do well so I would go in a direction other than CDP. I thought DAT Destroyer was overkill and put me through a lot of unnecessary stress, and DAT Bootcamp was my most useful tool for studying GC. It tells you why each answer is wrong and why you may have thought it was right, and Ari's strategies are solid for Gen Chem. I didn't do his PAT tests, but I'm sure they would have been more helpful than CDP.

I hope this helped. Now I just have to hope my score was good enough to get some interviews :) Happy studying and feel free to PM me if you have any questions or just want to chat. I was panicking quite a bit and it helps to talk it out!

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good scores! LOL, that reading section did save your AA score doe. I'm taking my test in a few days and I am so freakin nervous. As for getting interviews, I am sure you will get into at least one dental school.
 
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Good job dude. Like another poster said I'm sure you'll get somewhere so go relax for now.
 
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If you had to compare QR to math destroyer, how similar were the questions? Also what would you average on those 1-5 tests in math destroyer? I am consistently getting 27-28/40 correct on all of the first 5 tests in math destroyer (timed with 45 to 50 minutes). I am not sure if I am ready to move on to another subject yet...
 
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If you had to compare QR to math destroyer, how similar were the questions? Also what would you average on those 1-5 tests in math destroyer? I am consistently getting 27-28/40 correct on all of the first 5 tests in math destroyer (timed with 45 to 50 minutes). I am not sure if I am ready to move on to another subject yet...

I would consistently get 30-35 out of 40 right. Never timed them, but I felt like I was prepared for much more complex problems and the DAT was pretty basic there was just basic arithmetic I didn't remember how to do or didn't pay attention to! I would focus more on knowing why you're using certain formulas. I forgot how to do basic things like factoring out multiple polynomials and simple graphs
 
Good job on your DAT, but I am more interested in the NPC:). How did you do? I am interested in competing maybe.
It was awesome! I didn't place, I wasn't full enough and there were a ton of guys in my class who have previously competed at nationals. Doing two shows in September though! Definitely encourage it, it was a blast!
 
Great job! Your post came at the perfect time--I too need to condense my DAT studying to 4-5 weeks--before August 10th. I've been feeling anxious about it, but your game plan looks solid, and I'll definitely incorporate that into my study plan.
Best of luck applying to dental school!
 
congrats!! this was SO Encouraging I take mine in a week and this really helped! you are awesome and GREAT job!
 
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Great job! Your post came at the perfect time--I too need to condense my DAT studying to 4-5 weeks--before August 10th. I've been feeling anxious about it, but your game plan looks solid, and I'll definitely incorporate that into my study plan.
Best of luck applying to dental school!

Thank you! I was really indecisive on if I could prepare myself well enough in such a short time and it really is possible. Best of luck to you! PM me if you need access to the bootcamp, I might have a week or something remaining
 
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