- Joined
- Nov 9, 2014
- Messages
- 7
- Reaction score
- 13
- Points
- 4,621
- Pre-Dental
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Wow it feels good to be done with that beast! Through sweat and tears I managed to obtain a score that I am very pleased with and hopeful that it will be enough to provide me the opportunity of going to dental school.
cGPA: 3.3 sGPA: 3.6
PAT: 20
QR: 18
RC: 23
BIO: 23
GC: 20
OC: 22
TS: 21
AA: 21
Review Materials:
DAT Destroyer (10/10)
Math Destroyer (9/10)
Organic Chemistry Odyssey (8/10)
DAT Bootcamp (10/10)
Chad's Videos (10/10) -absolutely must have!
Kaplan online course (5/10)
Bootcamp scores:
PA: 19/19/20/19/18/20/20/19/20/20
QR: 20/19/19/18/17 It's not a good thing when your scores are going backwards. hmmmm???
RC: 18/23/19
BIO: 21/15/15/16/18
GC: 16/20/18/18/19
OC: 16/17/17/20/20
2007 DAT:
PA: 22
QR: 18
RC: 17
BIO: 16
GC: 19
OC: 23
2009 DAT:
PA: 22
QR: 15
RC: 19
BIO: 20
GC: 17
OC: 17
Kaplan online course:
I was initially planning on taking the DAT two years ago during my summer break, but due to some health issues I decided to cancel my test last minute to focus on my health, and I was not nearly prepared enough to take it. I feel like that was a good decision because I avoided a bad test score and my health is good now!! Anyways, this first time I was planning on taking it I did the online Kaplan course. It was way over priced and I found it to be extremely boring. Chad's is the way to go for review of gen chem and org chem material!
PAT (20): DAT Bootcamp was the best study material, very representative of the real test. This is what worked best for me. Before the exam for the keyhole section I would write out 1-15 with ABCDE next to each one, this really seemed to help by marking out the answers that I knew were definitely wrong so then I could usually only focus on two or I would have my answer after working through each answer choice. This part seemed spot on with bootcamp. Bootcamp teaches you what to look for and how they like to change the objects. T/F/E was very close to Bootcamp. At first when studying I tried the line counting technique but by the time I took my test I stopped using this method because it was faster and better to just picture the image in your head (practice and time perfect this). Plus, I don't think the line counting technique would work for most of them. Angle ranking had some easy and some hard, same as BC. Pattern folding had a few hard questions, I usually got all of those correct in practice exams, but 2-3 of them were really tricky. I did the tic tac toe method or whatever you call it and would write out 15 of those crosses on my paper before the exam. Cube counting was easy, I would write 1-5 on my paper and put marks next to each one as I counted. I got to pattern folding section with only 8 minutes left so I was worried but that section ended up being very easy and I skimmed right through it finishing with 1 min left.
QR (18): Studying for this section I worked my way through the DAT Destroyer, 9 tests from the Math destroyer (not timed) and Bootcamp tests. Trig was killing me so I blew it off. Missed a few on the test because of this but it wasn't detrimental not knowing Trig. I also had a hard time with the more complex geometry problems so I skipped those in the test (didn't miss many because of this), the rest of the questions were fairly easy probability, statistics, algebra. Nothing out in left field.
RC (23): My strategy was to read the passages as fast as I could while still picking up the overall idea but not worrying about knowing all of the details. After reading it I would usually know where in general the question was located in the passage, so then I could just search and destroy two or three paragraphs for the answer. Practicing I tried other techniques. Search and destroy alone I did not like, I had to familiarize myself with the passages. Taking key words or notes for each paragraph did not work either for me, writing took up too much time and most of the time they wouldn't even ask you a question over what you wrote down. The essays are short enough I could generally recall the area of the passage that a question was located. Two of the essays were easy and interesting, one was awful but the same method worked for it. Read each essay in around 4-5 minutes and then would have 15 minutes to search and destroy the questions.
BIO (23): I don't know how I got a 23 on this section. I never scored this high in any of my practice exams. Nothing too tricky, just quite a few were worded kind of tricky. I went through DAT Destroyer BIO 2.5X the last two weeks and DAT Bootcamp tests. I watched youtube video's to help me understand weak areas. Those practice problems are money, know them inside and out! I started going through Feralli's notes but with only two weeks left I realized I did not have enough time to cover all of this. So I took a chance and just went through as many questions as I could in Destroyer and Bootcamp. I was hoping that these would be the highest yielding for the amount of time I could devote to Bio. It worked! You could spend months studying for this section alone if you wanted to.
GC (20): Spent a ton of time studying this in DAT Destroyer. Destroyer is on a whole different level than the real test, but if you can do those your sitting good. Know the basic formulas, the calculation problems are easy. Lots of concept questions. Chad's is best for understanding concepts. Bootcamp is best at testing these concepts.
OC (22): Spent most of my time studying this. Know Chad's inside and out. I thought I knew the reactions really good but they did have a couple tricky questions along with some really easy ones. The other questions were a general summary of everything else. DAT Bootcamp was awesome helping to prepare for this. I was lost at first with this section, it has been several years since I took Org chem. Org Chem Odyssey helped a lot because you could actually focus on learning each topic. However, some of the questions in this are way more detail than you need to know for the exam. If you have the time and are struggling with Org chem I suggest this.
I graduated this past December and knew that I was planning to take the DAT this May. So the summer before I watched all of Chad's Video's and made notes as well as did all of his quizzes. This helped refresh my memory on a lot of the material since it had been a few years since I took gen chem and org chem. His other material is good and definitely worth watching but his chem reviews are golden!
After graduating in December I took off for a couple of weeks and went surfing in Kauai. I felt like this little break was crucial in giving me a time to relax before I studied for the next three months. I first started off by going through Chad's videos again to refresh and strengthen the concepts. I spent around two weeks trying to understand and solidify all of these concepts in my head. After this I moved onto the DAT Destroyer. First time through it destroyed me. I did ok on the QR section so I stopped studying this so I could focus on my real problem with the chemistries. I decided to keep working myself through the entire book and hopefully pick up enough so the second time through I would not feel like I was learning something in a foreign language. The second time through I was getting around 40-60% of the problems correct, still not good. So I wrote down the numbers to all of the problems that I missed and would do those the next two days in a row. It was around 100-150 questions from both of the gen chem and org chem sections. Then I would work out the entire section again marking the problems that I missed again. I ended up working through the chemistries probably 6 or 7 before I had a good grasp on them. During this time I also started doing one section from the Organic Chem Odyssey everyday. This really helped drill the different concepts into my head because all of the question were related in every section. At this point I had spent around two months studying for the exam, usually around 6-8hrs per day.
Now this last month was time to really focus. I finally started feeling like I had built a strong foundation and was now completing the framework. I upped my studying to 10-12 hrs per day and I think I took off like 5 days scattered throughout. I started doing the DAT Bootcamp exams. Along with this I was still reviewing all of the other material. I had scattered results but overall I was not scoring where I wanted to be. The thoughts of this test being the death of my dental school acceptance seemed all to real. I kept working my way through the questions and eventually they would stick. I had spent most of my time until now on chemistries but I knew it was time to start studying for the other parts too. I would do a full PAT every other day from Bootcamp. My first Bootcamp Bio test I scored a 21, so I put off studying for the Bio section a little while longer. I began to freak when the next two Bio practice tests I score 15's on. Two weeks out from my test I began doing 100 Bio questions from Destroyer every day always reading and trying to understand all the answers and explanations provided. This would usually take the first three hours every morning because I would usually youtube different process and things to try and understand them better.
The week before my exam I took the 2007 and 2009 exam. The 2007 was good because Bootcamp provides explanations to all of the science questions! The 2009 I took 3 days before my exam and I could not find explanations for the answers. This felt like a waist because it was taking me forever to review the questions that I missed so I ended up just skimming through my review on this. Along with this several of the answers marked correct in the booklet are wrong, which is very frustrating. The last two days I mostly reviewed my notes fromChads's along with a bunch of Bio and QR problems.
I had a really hard time falling asleep the night before my exam but after staring at the ceiling with my mind still racing I managed 4 hours of sleep. I started my test at 9am. I was really scatter brained before I began the test, I felt like I couldn't focus on anything. However, once that first question popped up I focused in.
I was very surprised and happy when I saw my scores pop up at the end of the exam. They were all just as high or higher than all of my practice test exams. It feels amazing to have that weight lifted off of my shoulders and hopefully have a descent shot of being invited for several interviews!
It took me longer to prepare for this exam than most, but I believe my hard work payed off. Keep on believing in yourself through all of the trials and tribulations. Here is a quote that I had posted on my desk that helped me persevere " Attract what you expect, reflect what you desire, become what your respect, mirror what you admire".
cGPA: 3.3 sGPA: 3.6
PAT: 20
QR: 18
RC: 23
BIO: 23
GC: 20
OC: 22
TS: 21
AA: 21
Review Materials:
DAT Destroyer (10/10)
Math Destroyer (9/10)
Organic Chemistry Odyssey (8/10)
DAT Bootcamp (10/10)
Chad's Videos (10/10) -absolutely must have!
Kaplan online course (5/10)
Bootcamp scores:
PA: 19/19/20/19/18/20/20/19/20/20
QR: 20/19/19/18/17 It's not a good thing when your scores are going backwards. hmmmm???
RC: 18/23/19
BIO: 21/15/15/16/18
GC: 16/20/18/18/19
OC: 16/17/17/20/20
2007 DAT:
PA: 22
QR: 18
RC: 17
BIO: 16
GC: 19
OC: 23
2009 DAT:
PA: 22
QR: 15
RC: 19
BIO: 20
GC: 17
OC: 17
Kaplan online course:
I was initially planning on taking the DAT two years ago during my summer break, but due to some health issues I decided to cancel my test last minute to focus on my health, and I was not nearly prepared enough to take it. I feel like that was a good decision because I avoided a bad test score and my health is good now!! Anyways, this first time I was planning on taking it I did the online Kaplan course. It was way over priced and I found it to be extremely boring. Chad's is the way to go for review of gen chem and org chem material!
PAT (20): DAT Bootcamp was the best study material, very representative of the real test. This is what worked best for me. Before the exam for the keyhole section I would write out 1-15 with ABCDE next to each one, this really seemed to help by marking out the answers that I knew were definitely wrong so then I could usually only focus on two or I would have my answer after working through each answer choice. This part seemed spot on with bootcamp. Bootcamp teaches you what to look for and how they like to change the objects. T/F/E was very close to Bootcamp. At first when studying I tried the line counting technique but by the time I took my test I stopped using this method because it was faster and better to just picture the image in your head (practice and time perfect this). Plus, I don't think the line counting technique would work for most of them. Angle ranking had some easy and some hard, same as BC. Pattern folding had a few hard questions, I usually got all of those correct in practice exams, but 2-3 of them were really tricky. I did the tic tac toe method or whatever you call it and would write out 15 of those crosses on my paper before the exam. Cube counting was easy, I would write 1-5 on my paper and put marks next to each one as I counted. I got to pattern folding section with only 8 minutes left so I was worried but that section ended up being very easy and I skimmed right through it finishing with 1 min left.
QR (18): Studying for this section I worked my way through the DAT Destroyer, 9 tests from the Math destroyer (not timed) and Bootcamp tests. Trig was killing me so I blew it off. Missed a few on the test because of this but it wasn't detrimental not knowing Trig. I also had a hard time with the more complex geometry problems so I skipped those in the test (didn't miss many because of this), the rest of the questions were fairly easy probability, statistics, algebra. Nothing out in left field.
RC (23): My strategy was to read the passages as fast as I could while still picking up the overall idea but not worrying about knowing all of the details. After reading it I would usually know where in general the question was located in the passage, so then I could just search and destroy two or three paragraphs for the answer. Practicing I tried other techniques. Search and destroy alone I did not like, I had to familiarize myself with the passages. Taking key words or notes for each paragraph did not work either for me, writing took up too much time and most of the time they wouldn't even ask you a question over what you wrote down. The essays are short enough I could generally recall the area of the passage that a question was located. Two of the essays were easy and interesting, one was awful but the same method worked for it. Read each essay in around 4-5 minutes and then would have 15 minutes to search and destroy the questions.
BIO (23): I don't know how I got a 23 on this section. I never scored this high in any of my practice exams. Nothing too tricky, just quite a few were worded kind of tricky. I went through DAT Destroyer BIO 2.5X the last two weeks and DAT Bootcamp tests. I watched youtube video's to help me understand weak areas. Those practice problems are money, know them inside and out! I started going through Feralli's notes but with only two weeks left I realized I did not have enough time to cover all of this. So I took a chance and just went through as many questions as I could in Destroyer and Bootcamp. I was hoping that these would be the highest yielding for the amount of time I could devote to Bio. It worked! You could spend months studying for this section alone if you wanted to.
GC (20): Spent a ton of time studying this in DAT Destroyer. Destroyer is on a whole different level than the real test, but if you can do those your sitting good. Know the basic formulas, the calculation problems are easy. Lots of concept questions. Chad's is best for understanding concepts. Bootcamp is best at testing these concepts.
OC (22): Spent most of my time studying this. Know Chad's inside and out. I thought I knew the reactions really good but they did have a couple tricky questions along with some really easy ones. The other questions were a general summary of everything else. DAT Bootcamp was awesome helping to prepare for this. I was lost at first with this section, it has been several years since I took Org chem. Org Chem Odyssey helped a lot because you could actually focus on learning each topic. However, some of the questions in this are way more detail than you need to know for the exam. If you have the time and are struggling with Org chem I suggest this.
I graduated this past December and knew that I was planning to take the DAT this May. So the summer before I watched all of Chad's Video's and made notes as well as did all of his quizzes. This helped refresh my memory on a lot of the material since it had been a few years since I took gen chem and org chem. His other material is good and definitely worth watching but his chem reviews are golden!
After graduating in December I took off for a couple of weeks and went surfing in Kauai. I felt like this little break was crucial in giving me a time to relax before I studied for the next three months. I first started off by going through Chad's videos again to refresh and strengthen the concepts. I spent around two weeks trying to understand and solidify all of these concepts in my head. After this I moved onto the DAT Destroyer. First time through it destroyed me. I did ok on the QR section so I stopped studying this so I could focus on my real problem with the chemistries. I decided to keep working myself through the entire book and hopefully pick up enough so the second time through I would not feel like I was learning something in a foreign language. The second time through I was getting around 40-60% of the problems correct, still not good. So I wrote down the numbers to all of the problems that I missed and would do those the next two days in a row. It was around 100-150 questions from both of the gen chem and org chem sections. Then I would work out the entire section again marking the problems that I missed again. I ended up working through the chemistries probably 6 or 7 before I had a good grasp on them. During this time I also started doing one section from the Organic Chem Odyssey everyday. This really helped drill the different concepts into my head because all of the question were related in every section. At this point I had spent around two months studying for the exam, usually around 6-8hrs per day.
Now this last month was time to really focus. I finally started feeling like I had built a strong foundation and was now completing the framework. I upped my studying to 10-12 hrs per day and I think I took off like 5 days scattered throughout. I started doing the DAT Bootcamp exams. Along with this I was still reviewing all of the other material. I had scattered results but overall I was not scoring where I wanted to be. The thoughts of this test being the death of my dental school acceptance seemed all to real. I kept working my way through the questions and eventually they would stick. I had spent most of my time until now on chemistries but I knew it was time to start studying for the other parts too. I would do a full PAT every other day from Bootcamp. My first Bootcamp Bio test I scored a 21, so I put off studying for the Bio section a little while longer. I began to freak when the next two Bio practice tests I score 15's on. Two weeks out from my test I began doing 100 Bio questions from Destroyer every day always reading and trying to understand all the answers and explanations provided. This would usually take the first three hours every morning because I would usually youtube different process and things to try and understand them better.
The week before my exam I took the 2007 and 2009 exam. The 2007 was good because Bootcamp provides explanations to all of the science questions! The 2009 I took 3 days before my exam and I could not find explanations for the answers. This felt like a waist because it was taking me forever to review the questions that I missed so I ended up just skimming through my review on this. Along with this several of the answers marked correct in the booklet are wrong, which is very frustrating. The last two days I mostly reviewed my notes fromChads's along with a bunch of Bio and QR problems.
I had a really hard time falling asleep the night before my exam but after staring at the ceiling with my mind still racing I managed 4 hours of sleep. I started my test at 9am. I was really scatter brained before I began the test, I felt like I couldn't focus on anything. However, once that first question popped up I focused in.
I was very surprised and happy when I saw my scores pop up at the end of the exam. They were all just as high or higher than all of my practice test exams. It feels amazing to have that weight lifted off of my shoulders and hopefully have a descent shot of being invited for several interviews!
It took me longer to prepare for this exam than most, but I believe my hard work payed off. Keep on believing in yourself through all of the trials and tribulations. Here is a quote that I had posted on my desk that helped me persevere " Attract what you expect, reflect what you desire, become what your respect, mirror what you admire".
