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Hey, everyone. I just finished the DAT and thought I would share my approach since I'm always using sdn!
PAT: 23
QR: 21
RC: 21
BIO: 21
GCHEM: 23
OCHEM: 23
TS: 22
AA: 22
Non-traditional/post-bac student. I spent about three months studying, put on multiple temporary holds for midterms, work, and finals. I started with Kaplan, as a good way to ease into the materials, and then used Destroyer almost exclusively.
Materials Used:
1) Destroyer - hands down, the most important study material for me. Call me weird.. but the moment I opened it, I loved Destroyer. Way more engaging than a lot of other materials. Don't be discouraged if you open Destroyer and you're lost right when you start studying... review your material first. I think what was most helpful to me was using Destroyer as a the base and then looking up EVERYTHING I didn't understand 100%.
2) Kaplan Online Course and Materials- I knnoww so many people on here hate on the Kaplan course - but I actually loved it. I'm the kind of person who would forget my head, so having to be accountable was particularly helpful. While the questions can be realllly easy, getting into the habit of consistently doing problems was great. Was it necessary? Maybe not. Was the destroyer necessary. Definitely.
3) Math Destroyer - I didn't use it as much as Destroyer, but I thought it was definitely helpful because.. I'm really.. really.. bad at math (or at least I haven't seen algebra for about 10 years!).
Others:
- Crack DAT - Crack DAT PAT was definitely helpful, but I just didn't get to use it as much as I thought I would.
- Cliffs AP BIO - Ok.. Is it just me or is this the most boring thing to read?? I couldn't. I tried so hard to read this but it was soul-crushing. If it works for everyone else, by all means. For me.. way to dry.
- TopScore - Tests are helpful. Scoring seemed fairly on point. Explanations were not as helpful as some of the other resources but I'm glad I took their practice tests.
A little about my approaches:
QR:
Like I said, I was really bad at QR when I started. I'm a post bac.. a humanities post bac. The last time I saw math was... a long time ago. I started right in the beginning with the basics of QR. Kaplan was very good for this kind of learning. I moved on the the QR section of the Destroyer. I was planning on winging the QR section, but came to my senses a week before and went through the Math Destroyer. I think Math Destroyer was more difficult than what I came across on the exam, but that's an AWESOME feeling to have on your weakest subject while you're taking the test.
GChem/OChem:
Just DAT Destroyer. OChem has been one of my strengths, and I really liked the problems in Destroyer. I also referred to an outside text for recall (Klein textbook.. love it!) but that's about it. For GChem I watched Chad's videos and did the quizzes, but honestly I did it too early on (3 months before) to be really helpful. Again, destroyer was 90% of my studying.
BIO:
Kaplan Blue Book and Destroyer. I read through Kaplan Blue Book, some of Feralis Notes (Got bored. I think summary notes are just not for me), made flash cards, and took a hideous amount of notes in destroyer. I like Kaplan Blue Book a lot, but I thought some of the sections were lacking. Combined with Destroyer was a good combination though. Again, I looked up everything I didn't get 100%.
RC:
I'm actually a little embarrassed about my score here. This was my strongest subject in most of my practice tests and I thought I would do a little better. Oh, well! My method was just read the paragraphs and answer q's in order. If I didn't immediately recall the exact placement I would move on to the next question and by the time I got to the end I would have encountered the missing phrase (I would occasionally jot down something like.. Q9-Paragraph 5 to go back to later). I totally bunked it in this one and got stuck on the first really tricky 25ish+ paragraph (WHAT?!) passage, but that method still pulled me out of it well enough.
PAT:
Kaplan, Crack DAT, and Topscore. Kaplan is good at first for easy questions, and my instructor was really great. There are significant portions where Kaplan doesn't have explanations for their PAT sections though.. so I hated that. Angle difficulty somewhere around Crack DAT. PAT in general is WAY harder than Kaplan (but that's to be expected since many people say that).
My Major Tips:
- Do not read too much into flukes in your practice test scores. I GOT A 14 ON QR TWO DAYS BEFORE MY EXAM! I freaked out, but it turned out fine.
- Maybe save a lot of bio towards close to your test. My biggest mistake was that I did bio first and I forgot a lot of material that I had down. Moral: I wish I would have done bio closer to the exam date.
- Try different methods and find what works for you. I was following the Kaplan mapping method and getting 18s/19s on RC. I read A LOT and I didn't understand why my scores were so low. The moment I ditched that method and went with what felt right, my practice scores went from 18 to 25.
Practice Test Scores:
BIO/GC/OC/TS/PAT/RC/QR/AA
Kaplan
Diag - 17/17/19/19/19/20/18/18
FL 1 - 20/17/15/18/20/20/19/18
FL 2 - 17/19/17/19/22/18/16/17
FL 3 - 18/17/20/20/25/25/20/20
FL 4 - 19/22/19/19 - stopped w/ comp issues
FL 5 - 19/23/21/21/24/23/14/20
Topscore
2 - 21/19/23/21/22/25/18/21
3 - 20/19/23/21/22/23/19/20
PAT: 23
QR: 21
RC: 21
BIO: 21
GCHEM: 23
OCHEM: 23
TS: 22
AA: 22
Non-traditional/post-bac student. I spent about three months studying, put on multiple temporary holds for midterms, work, and finals. I started with Kaplan, as a good way to ease into the materials, and then used Destroyer almost exclusively.
Materials Used:
1) Destroyer - hands down, the most important study material for me. Call me weird.. but the moment I opened it, I loved Destroyer. Way more engaging than a lot of other materials. Don't be discouraged if you open Destroyer and you're lost right when you start studying... review your material first. I think what was most helpful to me was using Destroyer as a the base and then looking up EVERYTHING I didn't understand 100%.
2) Kaplan Online Course and Materials- I knnoww so many people on here hate on the Kaplan course - but I actually loved it. I'm the kind of person who would forget my head, so having to be accountable was particularly helpful. While the questions can be realllly easy, getting into the habit of consistently doing problems was great. Was it necessary? Maybe not. Was the destroyer necessary. Definitely.
3) Math Destroyer - I didn't use it as much as Destroyer, but I thought it was definitely helpful because.. I'm really.. really.. bad at math (or at least I haven't seen algebra for about 10 years!).
Others:
- Crack DAT - Crack DAT PAT was definitely helpful, but I just didn't get to use it as much as I thought I would.
- Cliffs AP BIO - Ok.. Is it just me or is this the most boring thing to read?? I couldn't. I tried so hard to read this but it was soul-crushing. If it works for everyone else, by all means. For me.. way to dry.
- TopScore - Tests are helpful. Scoring seemed fairly on point. Explanations were not as helpful as some of the other resources but I'm glad I took their practice tests.
A little about my approaches:
QR:
Like I said, I was really bad at QR when I started. I'm a post bac.. a humanities post bac. The last time I saw math was... a long time ago. I started right in the beginning with the basics of QR. Kaplan was very good for this kind of learning. I moved on the the QR section of the Destroyer. I was planning on winging the QR section, but came to my senses a week before and went through the Math Destroyer. I think Math Destroyer was more difficult than what I came across on the exam, but that's an AWESOME feeling to have on your weakest subject while you're taking the test.
GChem/OChem:
Just DAT Destroyer. OChem has been one of my strengths, and I really liked the problems in Destroyer. I also referred to an outside text for recall (Klein textbook.. love it!) but that's about it. For GChem I watched Chad's videos and did the quizzes, but honestly I did it too early on (3 months before) to be really helpful. Again, destroyer was 90% of my studying.
BIO:
Kaplan Blue Book and Destroyer. I read through Kaplan Blue Book, some of Feralis Notes (Got bored. I think summary notes are just not for me), made flash cards, and took a hideous amount of notes in destroyer. I like Kaplan Blue Book a lot, but I thought some of the sections were lacking. Combined with Destroyer was a good combination though. Again, I looked up everything I didn't get 100%.
RC:
I'm actually a little embarrassed about my score here. This was my strongest subject in most of my practice tests and I thought I would do a little better. Oh, well! My method was just read the paragraphs and answer q's in order. If I didn't immediately recall the exact placement I would move on to the next question and by the time I got to the end I would have encountered the missing phrase (I would occasionally jot down something like.. Q9-Paragraph 5 to go back to later). I totally bunked it in this one and got stuck on the first really tricky 25ish+ paragraph (WHAT?!) passage, but that method still pulled me out of it well enough.
PAT:
Kaplan, Crack DAT, and Topscore. Kaplan is good at first for easy questions, and my instructor was really great. There are significant portions where Kaplan doesn't have explanations for their PAT sections though.. so I hated that. Angle difficulty somewhere around Crack DAT. PAT in general is WAY harder than Kaplan (but that's to be expected since many people say that).
My Major Tips:
- Do not read too much into flukes in your practice test scores. I GOT A 14 ON QR TWO DAYS BEFORE MY EXAM! I freaked out, but it turned out fine.
- Maybe save a lot of bio towards close to your test. My biggest mistake was that I did bio first and I forgot a lot of material that I had down. Moral: I wish I would have done bio closer to the exam date.
- Try different methods and find what works for you. I was following the Kaplan mapping method and getting 18s/19s on RC. I read A LOT and I didn't understand why my scores were so low. The moment I ditched that method and went with what felt right, my practice scores went from 18 to 25.
Practice Test Scores:
BIO/GC/OC/TS/PAT/RC/QR/AA
Kaplan
Diag - 17/17/19/19/19/20/18/18
FL 1 - 20/17/15/18/20/20/19/18
FL 2 - 17/19/17/19/22/18/16/17
FL 3 - 18/17/20/20/25/25/20/20
FL 4 - 19/22/19/19 - stopped w/ comp issues
FL 5 - 19/23/21/21/24/23/14/20
Topscore
2 - 21/19/23/21/22/25/18/21
3 - 20/19/23/21/22/23/19/20
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