DAT Breakdown 7/1/2014. 23 AA, 21 TS, 24 PAT

[staystrong]

Just took my DAT this morning. So happy to be done! And I'm happy with my scores, my only wish is I wanted ONE more point on Bio so I would have a 22 TS. But here's my scores:

PA: 24
QR: 27
RC: 22
Bio: 20
GC: 24
OC: 21
TS: 21
AA: 23

Time studying: 7 weeks, with Friday, Saturday, and Sunday's off due to work.

Quick background: Business major, was a engineering major for about 3 years. (Note: That's important for the QR and PAT part. I'll explain below). Finished finals in May, started studying right away. Studied probably 10 hours a day the first 2 weeks, the last 5 I did about 6-7. I took Friday, Saturday, and Sunday off almost every week due to work/hanging with the girlfriend. I would wake up, work out, eat, then study. I'd go out once a week on the weeknights. My biology background is nowhere near some people's, so I knew it would be a struggle.

I'm actually surprised my OC wasn't at least 23, I just took both OC 1 and 2 last year and did amazing in them, and had no problems with any of chad's stuff. I had over 400 flashcards memorized from my OC 2 class and ran through those 1-2 times a week. Oh well.

Materials used: Feralis's notes, cliff's 3rd edition, DAT destroyer, Chad's videos, Topscore practice tests, ADA 2009 test, Crack the PAT, Math Destroyer

Biology Feralis's notes, Cliff's 3rd edition, DAT Destroyer
Feralis's notes primarily, with some Cliff's to help. I went over the notes I think 5 times total. Took forever the first time, but got much easier. Honestly, I felt I knew everything on those notes but I had about 6 questions on the real DAT that I had never heard or seen before in the Destroyer or the notes. So I guessed, and seems like I got them wrong. But even on practice tests I only got a 20 once and every other time I was getting 16-18, so I'll take it. Bio is not my thing for this test. Destroyer helpful to get practice questions in.

I saw 0 physiology questions, and maybe 1 plant question and 2 phylum questions. One of the phylum questions had a class I've never heard of before, and unfortunately that was the one being tested on. I wish there would have been something physiology, I dominated that class in undergrad and knew every single thing about hormones, the heart, the kidney, everything. Dangit. Lots of cell stuff. Know the cell, DNA/RNA, and genetics/heredity stuff.

General Chemistry Chad's videos and quizzes, Destroyer.
Chad's awesome. That's pretty much it. Though I did do great in my gen chem courses in undergrad, that was 2.5-3 years ago. Chad's was great for refreshing my mind, and his quizzes are good. Destroyer was overkill, went through it once and then gave up on it. I don't think it helped on the test, everything was pretty basic.

Organic Chemistry Chad's, Destroyer, flashcards from class
I had just taken 1 and 2, so it was all in my mind. Still studied a lot, but I felt good from day 1. I still don't know why it's only a 21, I was getting anywhere from 23-28 on practice tests. Destroyer was alright, still overkill.

Reading Topscore Tests
Didn't study for, took 4 practice tests and that's it. Topscore was good for getting me used to reading again, but was too easy. I got two 29's and a 22 on it if I remember right. It was all search and destroy on Topscore, once you find the keyword you're good. On the real thing, there were a decent number like that but a lot you did that and then had to think A LITTLE. Not much, but a few seconds of connecting dots. Not hard. Finished with 10 minutes left, used that time to try to find the answer to one of the problems and I swear it didn't exist so I guessed.

Quantitative Math Destroyer, Chad's videos, Topscore
Even though this section isn't "super" important, I just love seeing a bigger number lol. Remember how I said I was an engineering major for a while? Well guess what, engineering is pretty much 99% formulas, algebra, logic, and manipulating large, ridiculous equations. The hardest algebra on this test is literally the first "basic" step of an engineering problem. So my brains pretty wired for that.

That said, the stuff tested on the DAT is NOTHING like I learned or used in engineering. It's all stuff I learned over 6 years ago, IN HIGH SCHOOL. So I watched chad's videos, they are great for giving you the basics and they don't take that long. Math Destroyer was awesome also, would definitely recommend. I didn't even look at the QR in the regular Destroyer, no idea how it matches. I would say Math Destroyer was harder than the real thing, but there were 4 problems I hard to mark and spend a couple minutes on (I had 10 minutes left at the end). I took 7 math destroyer tests, 2 the day before my exam. I never got more than 32 of 40 right, and usually around 29-30. But thankfully most of the real DAT questions were solvable through logic.

If you don't know how to do a problem, remember: It can probably be logic'd through. Meaning, if you don't know the formula, you are given a few things. Use them in a combination of ways until you get a shown answer. Know how to do basic exponents, and how to do the rate problems in destroyer. There were a lot of algebra questions, know algebra. Like how to get x or y from one side to the other. How to solve 2 equations with 2 unknowns.

PAT Crack the DAT
My first Crack test I got a 17 on, didn't even finish. Came on here and looked up the LOS method and cube counting, went back and got a 22 on the 2nd test. After that I started getting 23-26 on the next 5 tests, and usually had about 15 minutes left on all the tests. I'll talk briefly about the TFE, because I missed 1 question total on those on all 7 tests. Again, I was engineering. We took a class that was EXACTLY THIS, the whole class for a whole semester. Actually, it was harder. Not only did we have to do the TFE, we had to draw the 3-D shape after we found the missing side, we had to draw it in perfect proportion, and we had to take a 3-D shape and draw ALL 3 sides. That probably doesn't help you because you aren't going to take a whole class on it, but it shows you something: IT"S LEARNABLE. 100%. That class was ridiculous at first, everyone did bad, but after a while it was actually pretty fun and it got to be pretty easy to see "events" and elevation changes and shapes.

If you have the ability, try visualizing what the 3-D shape would look like from the 2 sides given and then rotate it in your head to see the third side. Maybe you can, maybe you can't, but it helped me some. EVERY SINGLE change in elevation and shape must be accounted for, and it must stay in the exact same orientation as it was. So if it was on the front of the top portion, it has to be near the front on the side portion. You can imagine the three sides like a box, and fold them down into the page (like the pattern folding section). They should line up. Maybe that helps some of you, it's literally a box unfolded.

Crack the PAT was slightly easier for keyholes and pattern folding, slightly harder for cube counting. Keyholes on the real thing were A LOT of proportions, crack didn't have much. Angles on a couple crack's were comparable, some were harder. The real thing had easy-ish angles, which is lucky for me because that's the only thing I could not consistently do great on. My crack scores varied only because the angle part, depending on how hard they were. I actually liked practicing the PAT, it was a nice "break" from the other stuff. I felt very prepared for this part, and would recommend Crack the PAT. I only took 7 tests, the 5 test version probably would have worked but I liked having the option of the other's.

Closing Thoughts
None of my Topscore tests had an average or TS as high as the real thing for me, though the QR was similar. I think I got like 18, 19, 20 on something on the 3 tests. On the 2009 test I got a 20 I think but I went over my answers and I literally had it right but wrote down the wrong letter so if I adjusted it I got a 22. I knew this was my one good shot at taking this test, after this I have to go back to full time classes, a part time job, and a girlfriend and a life. I would not have anywhere near the time to study for it during the year, so I wanted to make it count.

I actually felt "ready" the day before, and knew that I learned as much as I could. I still studied all day, but that was just to keep it fresh. If you can get to that point, you'll be golden. Just try to realize at that point that you're ready and relax. Easy to say, hard to do I know but I literally went for a bike ride the night before and just contemplated the last 7 weeks and it made me satisfied knowing all the work I put in to reach that moment. That really helped me.

Enjoy the ride people, it's a pretty awful ride lol but remember to work hard and let the cards fall where they may. As long as you put everything you have into it you can rest knowing you did what you could. I sat at my computer for a solid minute looking at my scores when I was done, just being so relieved and happy.

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[Sharon914]

Wow, congratulations!!! You did wonderful!!!

 

[staystrong]

Thank you! If anyone has questions or anything I'd love to answer them, just be a little patient with my internet connection at my house right now it's hit or miss whether I can connect.

Otherwise, good luck to everyone!

 

[emminent]

First of all awesome job! All the hard work paid off haha.

Anyways, I'm still having trouble with hole punching even with using line of symmetry. I get so messed up with the flips. How do you approach it? Do you just use tic tac toe method alot? And how about angle ranking?

 

[Dotoday]

Nice scores. Good job.

 

[staystrong]

For LOS, it comes down to seeing where the fold is exactly. I used tic tac toe exclusively. If you haven't watched the video someone on here posted where they draw the dashed lines on it for every flip, take a look at that. Well nevermind, it looks like the original person took it down, but here:

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/line-of-symmetry-tutorial.1082433/

The second video (the 18 minute one) seems to explain it pretty well, though I drew the tic tac toe boxes instead of the "empty" ish boxes he has in those videos. Same difference though. When I first started doing it I ALWAYS drew the dashed lines, by the time it was my real pat I only did it for a couple more difficult ones. If you can learn this method, it takes almost all thinking out of the problem. The only thing you have to think about is where exactly the fold matches up for your grid.

I always drew my grid, looked at the final box and drew in the corresponding x's, then went back one box and tried to see where the fold was. If it was a simple fold right down the middle, it was easy. If it was a partial diagonal or something, it was a little harder. Once you get a little more comfortable with the method I also tried to look and see if ALL the x's would be flipped. Like if the paper was only a fourth unfolded I wouldn't copy the X all the way over. Also, if I had an X in the lower right corner and I unfold the paper and there's now no paper left in the lower right corner I'd get rid of the X there because it's not possible for it to be there. But these things aren't necessary since the method takes care of this, it was just a way to save a little time once I got comfortable. I definitely didn't start that way.

Angle ranking, that's tough. I usually tried to quickly look at all the angles and see if I can come up with the answer in the first 3-5 seconds. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not. Something about the quick look seems to help people discern between them. If that didn't work initially (and it only worked on maybe 5 of them on any given test) I'd have to start trying to find the biggest and smallest. Then I'd try to compare obvious things, like "well I know 3>1 for sure, and 2>4, and I think 1's the smallest so what answers does that leave me with?". Usually it would knock off 2 or so. From there I'd do rapid eye movement or the skiing method and try to figure out at least one more relationship.

After all of that, I could almost always get it down to 2 and about another 6-7 times down to 1, so I'd be taking "educated" guesses on the last 3-4 where I only had two options. From there, I'd just guess honestly. I'd usually look at the answers and try to notice if there's common lowest or highest answers. Like if 3 of the answers had angle 1 was the lowest, and 3 had angle 2 as the biggest I'd guess one where both of those held true.

And then there's also a luck component. One of the CDP tests I got like 8 of 15 right because the angles were all obtuse (I HATE those) and oriented differently on screen, other tests I got 14 right because they were mostly acute and oriented in line. Not much you can do about that though.

 

[ToBeDDSS]

Solid scores!!! Congrats

 

[vk223]

Congrats! Those are awesome scores! Just wondering, what's the name of that engineer class you took??

 

[staystrong]

Introduction to CAD (Computer Aided Design). Even though that's the name of it, it was basically the beginner level class for all dimensions and specifications, which is pretty important for engineering. It was a class and a lab, where we did paper stuff in the class and similar tasks on a computer for the lab. Every week we'd have two TFE assignments, and then we'd be tested every 4 or so weeks. The test consisted of a variety of problems, from drawing the three sides if given a shape to drawing the final side and the overall shape. Even though the paper and pencil part isn't really used in the real world with the CAD technology our teacher still was determined that we learned it by pencil and paper first.

It was very heavy on visualizing the shape and it's sides, and getting proportions perfect. Like, if you were off by 0.5 cm you got points off, or if your line was slightly to thick/dark. Not exaggerating.

 

[biomolecmed]

Amazing scores. You rocked the QR section. Congratulations.

 

[JHekmati]

very nice job!!