- Joined
- Jul 14, 2017
- Messages
- 28
- Reaction score
- 26
Hello Everyone,
I just took my DAT this morning and managed to score fairly well.
My scores:
BIO/GC/OC/RC/QR/PAT/TS/AA
21/ 23/ 23/ 20/ 21/ 22/ 22/ 22
I can honestly say I performed far better than I thought I did once I finished the end survey.
First things first. I studied a bit on and off from March to May and from the end of May I studied for 2 month straight about 6-10 hours a day and I utilized a few different resources.
Resources: DAT Bootcamp, Destroyer, Cliff's AP Biology 3rd Edition, Crash Course, Chad, and Crack DAT PAT
DAT Bootcamp - Hands down the best way to prepare for the DAT in my opinion. If I could use only one resource on the list it would have been Bootcamp.
Destroyer - Definitely a great way to get in practice for OC, GC, and to add a ton of BIO facts to your arsenal.
Cliff's AP Biology 3rd Edition - Great review for BIO as a whole, but not the end all be all of the info that can be tested on. Great starting point, but utilize other resources.
Crash Course: Biology (YouTube Videos) - Great for filling in gaps left by Cliff's and it is great for visual learners like myself who can sometimes struggle with reading and comprehending boring text.
Chad - Learned more from Chad in a week than I did in my GC and OC classes. Great, funny guy who covers 95% of what is tested on the Chemistries.
Crack Dat / Pat - I'm gonna be completely honest. I spent a ton of money on this resource, because I heard it was fantastic for PAT. I was extremely disappointed, and only used it a few times. The questions for PAT are far too easy, and the science questions are obscure and nothing like the real DAT. Invest in Bootcamp. Aside from Rock Keyholes, it was essentially identical in difficulty.
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Test Day:
Everyone says you should get a full night of sleep, which I fully planned on, but to tell the truth I was so nervous I got about an hour. While I wouldn't recommend this, I didn't suffer from it due to the Epinephrine flowing from my Adrenal Medulla...(Adrenaline) haha. My DAT was at 8AM and I got up at 6 to make sure I was well awake. I got to the Prometric center 15 minutes before my DAT and got everything situated. It was time to begin.
Tutorial - I wasn't able to write on my sheets in prep for the PAT, which was unfortunate, but did not really effect my score. I used this time to take some deep breaths and to see how similar the program was to Bootcamp. If you are nervous at this time I would recommend utilizing this 15 minute period to try and relax and prepare for the test itself.
BIO - I felt like I got some weird questions on this section. Nothing I couldn't make an educated guess on, but definitely not easy. I can honestly say I thought I did terrible on this section, but I guess I managed to make some great educated guesses haha. The easy questions I got were super simple, but the hard questions were over things I would probably have never thought to study.
GC - Way easier than Bootcamp, and nothing Chad did not go over. My test was far more conceptual than any I had on Bootcamp, and was not calculation heavy at all.
OC - Overall very similar to my thoughts on the GC for this test. Chad covered everything. 3 of my synthesis questions were literally the exact same mechanism. Also, I swear I saw some questions that were straight up from Bootcamp.
PAT - I have always been pretty good at PAT, but I think the questions that got me were probably the Rock Keyholes. If you struggle with PAT just be assured that if you utilize Bootcamp's PAT generators you will be more than prepared for the exam. If you want more practice you can always buy Crack DAT PAT, but at their price point I definitely would not recommend it.
Break - I guess everyone gets 30 minutes now, which made the environment seem a lot more relaxed. It gives you a nice break to mentally prepare for RC.
RC - Not terrible. My passages were pretty interesting. I'm not a fast reader and only practiced a couple of RC practices tests on Bootcamp. The passages were easier to comprehend than Bootcamp's, and even though the questions were similar there were quite a few easy ones for each passage as well. I was only able to use Search-and-Destroy for 1 of my passages. Another passage was really short, and the first passage was like 18 paragraphs. Don't let a long first passage freak you out, because 9 times out of 10 the others will be far shorter. Have more methods than just Search-and-Destroy like Ari suggests. One thing I would recommend is do not spend more than 20 minutes on a single passage unless you have extra time on the last one. It is better to have full time on all passages than to use most of your time on 1 or .
QR - This was the most surprising section for me. I have been through Math Destroyer and Bootcamp QR tests and have never once gotten as many time consuming questions as I got on the real DAT. I am surprised I actually managed to answer all of the questions. This has never been a problem for me with Bootcamp, so I was caught off guard. I would recommend focusing on Quantitative Comparison questions, because they seem to be one of the most occurring question types as of recently (I had around 10). I completely guessed on 3 questions I knew would take too long, which was the only reason I finished all of them. I finished looking over my questions with only 15 seconds left.
End of DAT - As the time ran out for QR I was sitting in my seat assuming the worst. I was not confident in my BIO score, I literally had no idea how I did on RC, and I thought QR ended my life. I took my time with the survey, while I prepared for my world to crumble. Then as I finished I saw the white test results screen and was in shock. Not a single score below 20.
I wanted to take the time to thank @Ari Rezaei , @orgoman22 , @placebooooo and everyone on here who offered me words of encouragement when I felt like I was doomed. All of us are trying to get into Dental School, yet everyone is so willing to help each other.
If you have any questions, want advice, or just need some words of encouragement feel free to message me (trust me I had my fair share of questions).
Thanks again everyone.
I just took my DAT this morning and managed to score fairly well.
My scores:
BIO/GC/OC/RC/QR/PAT/TS/AA
21/ 23/ 23/ 20/ 21/ 22/ 22/ 22
I can honestly say I performed far better than I thought I did once I finished the end survey.
First things first. I studied a bit on and off from March to May and from the end of May I studied for 2 month straight about 6-10 hours a day and I utilized a few different resources.
Resources: DAT Bootcamp, Destroyer, Cliff's AP Biology 3rd Edition, Crash Course, Chad, and Crack DAT PAT
DAT Bootcamp - Hands down the best way to prepare for the DAT in my opinion. If I could use only one resource on the list it would have been Bootcamp.
Destroyer - Definitely a great way to get in practice for OC, GC, and to add a ton of BIO facts to your arsenal.
Cliff's AP Biology 3rd Edition - Great review for BIO as a whole, but not the end all be all of the info that can be tested on. Great starting point, but utilize other resources.
Crash Course: Biology (YouTube Videos) - Great for filling in gaps left by Cliff's and it is great for visual learners like myself who can sometimes struggle with reading and comprehending boring text.
Chad - Learned more from Chad in a week than I did in my GC and OC classes. Great, funny guy who covers 95% of what is tested on the Chemistries.
Crack Dat / Pat - I'm gonna be completely honest. I spent a ton of money on this resource, because I heard it was fantastic for PAT. I was extremely disappointed, and only used it a few times. The questions for PAT are far too easy, and the science questions are obscure and nothing like the real DAT. Invest in Bootcamp. Aside from Rock Keyholes, it was essentially identical in difficulty.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Test Day:
Everyone says you should get a full night of sleep, which I fully planned on, but to tell the truth I was so nervous I got about an hour. While I wouldn't recommend this, I didn't suffer from it due to the Epinephrine flowing from my Adrenal Medulla...(Adrenaline) haha. My DAT was at 8AM and I got up at 6 to make sure I was well awake. I got to the Prometric center 15 minutes before my DAT and got everything situated. It was time to begin.
Tutorial - I wasn't able to write on my sheets in prep for the PAT, which was unfortunate, but did not really effect my score. I used this time to take some deep breaths and to see how similar the program was to Bootcamp. If you are nervous at this time I would recommend utilizing this 15 minute period to try and relax and prepare for the test itself.
BIO - I felt like I got some weird questions on this section. Nothing I couldn't make an educated guess on, but definitely not easy. I can honestly say I thought I did terrible on this section, but I guess I managed to make some great educated guesses haha. The easy questions I got were super simple, but the hard questions were over things I would probably have never thought to study.
GC - Way easier than Bootcamp, and nothing Chad did not go over. My test was far more conceptual than any I had on Bootcamp, and was not calculation heavy at all.
OC - Overall very similar to my thoughts on the GC for this test. Chad covered everything. 3 of my synthesis questions were literally the exact same mechanism. Also, I swear I saw some questions that were straight up from Bootcamp.
PAT - I have always been pretty good at PAT, but I think the questions that got me were probably the Rock Keyholes. If you struggle with PAT just be assured that if you utilize Bootcamp's PAT generators you will be more than prepared for the exam. If you want more practice you can always buy Crack DAT PAT, but at their price point I definitely would not recommend it.
Break - I guess everyone gets 30 minutes now, which made the environment seem a lot more relaxed. It gives you a nice break to mentally prepare for RC.
RC - Not terrible. My passages were pretty interesting. I'm not a fast reader and only practiced a couple of RC practices tests on Bootcamp. The passages were easier to comprehend than Bootcamp's, and even though the questions were similar there were quite a few easy ones for each passage as well. I was only able to use Search-and-Destroy for 1 of my passages. Another passage was really short, and the first passage was like 18 paragraphs. Don't let a long first passage freak you out, because 9 times out of 10 the others will be far shorter. Have more methods than just Search-and-Destroy like Ari suggests. One thing I would recommend is do not spend more than 20 minutes on a single passage unless you have extra time on the last one. It is better to have full time on all passages than to use most of your time on 1 or .
QR - This was the most surprising section for me. I have been through Math Destroyer and Bootcamp QR tests and have never once gotten as many time consuming questions as I got on the real DAT. I am surprised I actually managed to answer all of the questions. This has never been a problem for me with Bootcamp, so I was caught off guard. I would recommend focusing on Quantitative Comparison questions, because they seem to be one of the most occurring question types as of recently (I had around 10). I completely guessed on 3 questions I knew would take too long, which was the only reason I finished all of them. I finished looking over my questions with only 15 seconds left.
End of DAT - As the time ran out for QR I was sitting in my seat assuming the worst. I was not confident in my BIO score, I literally had no idea how I did on RC, and I thought QR ended my life. I took my time with the survey, while I prepared for my world to crumble. Then as I finished I saw the white test results screen and was in shock. Not a single score below 20.
I wanted to take the time to thank @Ari Rezaei , @orgoman22 , @placebooooo and everyone on here who offered me words of encouragement when I felt like I was doomed. All of us are trying to get into Dental School, yet everyone is so willing to help each other.
If you have any questions, want advice, or just need some words of encouragement feel free to message me (trust me I had my fair share of questions).
Thanks again everyone.
