- Joined
- Jul 9, 2013
- Messages
- 427
- Reaction score
- 315
Perceptual Ability: 18
Quantitative Reasoning: 19
Reading Comprehension: 20
Biology: 22
General Chemistry: 27
Organic Chemistry: 24
TOTAL SCIENCE: 24
ACADEMIC AVERAGE: 22
I can easily say that to beat this exam, you need confidence. You are NEVER going to know everything and feel completely ready for any standardized exam. You just need to trust that when given a question that you haven't seen before, you can critically work your way through it and choose the most suitable answer. What you get on this exam is directly proportional to the amount of work you put in.
(The work that you put in = V... What you get on this exam equals T... Haha anyone? No? moving on...)
Study Material:
DAT Bootcamp: 10/10
AP Cliffs: 7/10 (too detailed; knew I wasn't going to read this after one chapter)
DAT Destroyer: 10/10 (if trying to get perfect score) 5/10 (If just trying to get 19-20 in chems)
Chad: 10/10 No doubt. Need this for GC/OC/QR
Topscore Exams: 8/10, helped me learn a question or two that actually came up on the exam.
ADA 07: 7/10 Not too bad to be honest. Good practice I would say, not good at representing real exam.
ADA 09: 8/10 There was an error or two on mine, and the organic chem section was asking questions that are out of the scope of OC on DAT. Pretty indicative of how you'll do on real exam though.
I spent around 5 weeks dedicated solely to this exam. I was planning on studying a few extra weeks, but taking a condensed spring course while fasting throughout the day for a month (religious purposes) shot those goals down. (Started real studying 7/5/15, exam 8/13/15) My game plan entering the DAT was to MASTER organic and general chemistry. These were the two subjects I decided to dedicate the majority of my studying to. I figured that the amount of extra time I would put into biology for an extra point or two was not worth potentially getting perfect scores in general and organic chemistry. This is what I used:
Perceptual Ability (18): I only used Dat Bootcamp. I didn't study perceptual AT ALL until the last week or so. I just toyed around with the generators that DBC offers and honestly I know that if I utilized the material they had for an extra week I wouldve killed PAT! This is all you need to succeed in PAT. No CRACK DAT PAT or anything else.. literally all you need is dat bootcamp.
Quantitative Reasoning (19): So.. to start off I haven't taken a math class since high school; and even then I didn't pay attention and barely passed. Whenever I would calculate my potential score for the DAT I would plug in like a 13-15 for QR. I took one DAT bootcamp QR test and got owned so I decided not to touch it again. Their QR is too difficult, but there is no such thing as being over-prepared. I think I just got extremely lucky and had an easy QR section that asked a lot of questions you could figure out if you tried hard enough. Chad's videos are great for this section! If I could go back, I would do all of the Math Destroyer tests.
Reading Comprehension (20): If you want to score a 20+ in this section, take all 5 DAT Bootcamp RC tests. They're a little longer than the real passages that I had, but the questions they ask you force you to read and think critically. Although it's a little tougher, come exam day you're going to constantly tell yourself " thank God I took those RC tests.. these are a lot easier."
Biology (22): I did little to nothing for this section. I'm a Bio major, so I knew a decent amount of stuff. I marked around 10 questions and guessed a decent amount. This section was honestly not comparable to any practice exam I took.
General Chemistry (27) + Organic Chemistry (24): So, when people say DAT Destroyer comes in clutch when you need those 2-3 extra questions, they're not lying. DAT Destroyer saved my butt on one or two questions in GC and OC. What I did for these two sections was watch Chad's videos, which are perfect for these two sections. I took notes, and tried to retain as much as I could. Went through the videos again, and instead of taking notes I made flashcards of examples and random facts that I would need to constantly look at. I went through these stacks of flashcards like 2-5 times a week and these two subjects became second nature to me. After I made the flashcards, I used DAT BOOTCAMP AS A STUDY SOURCE- NOT AS PRACTICE EXAMS. I took one OC test a day and learned from it. I probably have done all the OC and GC exams on DBC 5 or more times. The morning of my exam I did all the GC subject tests once (took about an hour) just to warm my brain up. This was worth it imo!
Overall, I'm happy I got this exam over with, and wish you all the best of luck. Thank you Ari, DAT Destroyer for saving me with those two questions, and Chad.
Quantitative Reasoning: 19
Reading Comprehension: 20
Biology: 22
General Chemistry: 27
Organic Chemistry: 24
TOTAL SCIENCE: 24
ACADEMIC AVERAGE: 22
I can easily say that to beat this exam, you need confidence. You are NEVER going to know everything and feel completely ready for any standardized exam. You just need to trust that when given a question that you haven't seen before, you can critically work your way through it and choose the most suitable answer. What you get on this exam is directly proportional to the amount of work you put in.
(The work that you put in = V... What you get on this exam equals T... Haha anyone? No? moving on...)
Study Material:
DAT Bootcamp: 10/10
AP Cliffs: 7/10 (too detailed; knew I wasn't going to read this after one chapter)
DAT Destroyer: 10/10 (if trying to get perfect score) 5/10 (If just trying to get 19-20 in chems)
Chad: 10/10 No doubt. Need this for GC/OC/QR
Topscore Exams: 8/10, helped me learn a question or two that actually came up on the exam.
ADA 07: 7/10 Not too bad to be honest. Good practice I would say, not good at representing real exam.
ADA 09: 8/10 There was an error or two on mine, and the organic chem section was asking questions that are out of the scope of OC on DAT. Pretty indicative of how you'll do on real exam though.
I spent around 5 weeks dedicated solely to this exam. I was planning on studying a few extra weeks, but taking a condensed spring course while fasting throughout the day for a month (religious purposes) shot those goals down. (Started real studying 7/5/15, exam 8/13/15) My game plan entering the DAT was to MASTER organic and general chemistry. These were the two subjects I decided to dedicate the majority of my studying to. I figured that the amount of extra time I would put into biology for an extra point or two was not worth potentially getting perfect scores in general and organic chemistry. This is what I used:
Perceptual Ability (18): I only used Dat Bootcamp. I didn't study perceptual AT ALL until the last week or so. I just toyed around with the generators that DBC offers and honestly I know that if I utilized the material they had for an extra week I wouldve killed PAT! This is all you need to succeed in PAT. No CRACK DAT PAT or anything else.. literally all you need is dat bootcamp.
Quantitative Reasoning (19): So.. to start off I haven't taken a math class since high school; and even then I didn't pay attention and barely passed. Whenever I would calculate my potential score for the DAT I would plug in like a 13-15 for QR. I took one DAT bootcamp QR test and got owned so I decided not to touch it again. Their QR is too difficult, but there is no such thing as being over-prepared. I think I just got extremely lucky and had an easy QR section that asked a lot of questions you could figure out if you tried hard enough. Chad's videos are great for this section! If I could go back, I would do all of the Math Destroyer tests.
Reading Comprehension (20): If you want to score a 20+ in this section, take all 5 DAT Bootcamp RC tests. They're a little longer than the real passages that I had, but the questions they ask you force you to read and think critically. Although it's a little tougher, come exam day you're going to constantly tell yourself " thank God I took those RC tests.. these are a lot easier."
Biology (22): I did little to nothing for this section. I'm a Bio major, so I knew a decent amount of stuff. I marked around 10 questions and guessed a decent amount. This section was honestly not comparable to any practice exam I took.
General Chemistry (27) + Organic Chemistry (24): So, when people say DAT Destroyer comes in clutch when you need those 2-3 extra questions, they're not lying. DAT Destroyer saved my butt on one or two questions in GC and OC. What I did for these two sections was watch Chad's videos, which are perfect for these two sections. I took notes, and tried to retain as much as I could. Went through the videos again, and instead of taking notes I made flashcards of examples and random facts that I would need to constantly look at. I went through these stacks of flashcards like 2-5 times a week and these two subjects became second nature to me. After I made the flashcards, I used DAT BOOTCAMP AS A STUDY SOURCE- NOT AS PRACTICE EXAMS. I took one OC test a day and learned from it. I probably have done all the OC and GC exams on DBC 5 or more times. The morning of my exam I did all the GC subject tests once (took about an hour) just to warm my brain up. This was worth it imo!
Overall, I'm happy I got this exam over with, and wish you all the best of luck. Thank you Ari, DAT Destroyer for saving me with those two questions, and Chad.
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