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Before I proceed to post a descriptive breakdown of my DAT experience, I would first like to thank the SDN community for your advice and constant encouragement. As an active member on SDN I feel obligated to give back to the community and help future DAT takers!
ADVICE: a bit of advice for future test takers- do NOT postpone your exam. If you picked a date and you can honestly pull 12 hour study days until that designated date - do it! I postponed my exam three times (and paid $25 dollars each time), and it did not help me in the long run at all. If fact, I feel as though had I taken this exam a few weeks prior my scores would have been much higher since the information was more fresh in my head then. Instead of utilizing the time that I would have spent studying for the DAT, I spent worrying about it. I saw two questions in the biology section today that I knew I had reviewed a few weeks prior, but could not recall what the answer was. The same thing happened with three of the organic questions - so I had to guess. Bottom line - DO NOT POSTPONE!
Now for the breakdown:
Biology:
It was pretty random. Period. I had a whole lot of genetics on mine that were pretty complex. I marked six questions, two of which I know I would have gotten correct had I taken the same version of the exam a few weeks prior. Being that I had so many questions marked and was not sure of my answers for some of the others I really wanted to save some time to get back and review my answers. Also, if you are not sure of an answer to a question: MOVE ON! I was stuck on this one biology question and burned seven minutes debating what the answer could be.
General Chemistry:
It was pretty straight forward. I honestly was surprised after seeing my 22. I averaged a 25 on qvault general chemistry and got A's in this class both semesters of college. not sure what went wrong. Though, I have to mention that there was this obscure WTF density problem that kind of paralyzed me for a bit.
Organic Chemistry:
I honestly love organic chemistry. I am not so shocked with my 21 in this section since I blew this section in under 10 minutes in an attempt to check over the biology section. My diagnostic score in this section was a 19 and two weeks ago I was cruising on 27-30's. I did not review much for the days leading to my exam and it backfired - big time! I guess I must have made really dumb mistakes in this section because there was nothing on there that I did not know how to do.
After finishing with the organic I had around 15 minutes left, which I used to check my answers for biology. I changed three answers for the ones that I had marked and did not touch the rest. Not sure how those changed answers contributed to my final score...
Perceptual Ability:
Keyholes: I see what people meant by proportions, but it was by no means as difficult as achiever's keyholes. If you can do achiever's keyholes and know why the wrong answer choices are incorrect, you are golden. I spent 6 minutes for the first 4 keyholes and adrenaline kicked in after that.
I completed this section in 10.5 minutes
TFE: VERY simple. I would over-analyze achiever's TFE problems and that really helped going into the real DAT. I marked only three of these, whereas typically I would mark ~half the section. 🙂
Angles: I completed this section in under 8 minutes. VERY similar to CDP angles. I was not sure about half of these (probably where I lost a lot of my points), but I just kept plowing.
Hole punching:
I had a few obscure folds, nothing too crazy.
Cube counting:
Similar to achiever and ADA 2009. Very straight forward section.
Pattern folding:
WTF?!?!?! <- sums up this entire section. I was not sure about ANY of my answers. In fact I marked the ENTIRE section. It was impossible. I was able to eliminate one answer choice for only two of the questions and guessed. For the others I guessed and just picked C. Had I performed on this section how I perform on cdp's pattern folding, I probably would have walked out with at least a 23.
Reading Comprehension:
I was mentally exhausted by the time I got to this section. RC is a weakness of mine. Not because I do not know how to read, but because of the timing. Had I been given 1.5 hours for this section, I would have gotten a 30. Hands down. I made sure to finish each of the passages in 20 minutes and chose the letter C for those questions I did not complete in that 20 minute mark. I know I could have performed better.
QR:
After trying to rush through the RC section I felt a bit lethargic when I got to the QR section. I guess my low performance points to that. I blanked out on many of the questions. 😳
Concluding remarks:
Make sure you sleep well the night prior to the exam. I had a little over 4 hours of sleep last night and was on a caffeine high during the exam. The caffeine only helped ensure that my eyes would remain open during the process. It did not do much good when it came to focus and concentration. Do not freak out about a section during the exam and make sure you do not think about previous sections, as I did. Thinking about previous sections can significantly impair your performance on future sections. - a lesson well learned.
I am really concerned about my low RC and QR scores. I am applying this cycle and not sure how negatively those scores will affect me with regard to admission to dental school. Truthfully, I thought that I scored better, but I guess that was not the case. I have hundreds of hours volunteering and doing research. I was also on my university's dean's list since freshman year. I attend a middle-tier private university and have a 3.89 science GPA and 3.96 non-science GPA.
I feel as though it would be wise to add more schools due to my low performance.
I am seriously considering a retake.
What are your thoughts?
(I apologize for the typos in advance...did not have time to read it over.)
ADVICE: a bit of advice for future test takers- do NOT postpone your exam. If you picked a date and you can honestly pull 12 hour study days until that designated date - do it! I postponed my exam three times (and paid $25 dollars each time), and it did not help me in the long run at all. If fact, I feel as though had I taken this exam a few weeks prior my scores would have been much higher since the information was more fresh in my head then. Instead of utilizing the time that I would have spent studying for the DAT, I spent worrying about it. I saw two questions in the biology section today that I knew I had reviewed a few weeks prior, but could not recall what the answer was. The same thing happened with three of the organic questions - so I had to guess. Bottom line - DO NOT POSTPONE!
Now for the breakdown:
Biology:
It was pretty random. Period. I had a whole lot of genetics on mine that were pretty complex. I marked six questions, two of which I know I would have gotten correct had I taken the same version of the exam a few weeks prior. Being that I had so many questions marked and was not sure of my answers for some of the others I really wanted to save some time to get back and review my answers. Also, if you are not sure of an answer to a question: MOVE ON! I was stuck on this one biology question and burned seven minutes debating what the answer could be.
General Chemistry:
It was pretty straight forward. I honestly was surprised after seeing my 22. I averaged a 25 on qvault general chemistry and got A's in this class both semesters of college. not sure what went wrong. Though, I have to mention that there was this obscure WTF density problem that kind of paralyzed me for a bit.
Organic Chemistry:
I honestly love organic chemistry. I am not so shocked with my 21 in this section since I blew this section in under 10 minutes in an attempt to check over the biology section. My diagnostic score in this section was a 19 and two weeks ago I was cruising on 27-30's. I did not review much for the days leading to my exam and it backfired - big time! I guess I must have made really dumb mistakes in this section because there was nothing on there that I did not know how to do.
After finishing with the organic I had around 15 minutes left, which I used to check my answers for biology. I changed three answers for the ones that I had marked and did not touch the rest. Not sure how those changed answers contributed to my final score...
Perceptual Ability:
Keyholes: I see what people meant by proportions, but it was by no means as difficult as achiever's keyholes. If you can do achiever's keyholes and know why the wrong answer choices are incorrect, you are golden. I spent 6 minutes for the first 4 keyholes and adrenaline kicked in after that.
I completed this section in 10.5 minutes
TFE: VERY simple. I would over-analyze achiever's TFE problems and that really helped going into the real DAT. I marked only three of these, whereas typically I would mark ~half the section. 🙂
Angles: I completed this section in under 8 minutes. VERY similar to CDP angles. I was not sure about half of these (probably where I lost a lot of my points), but I just kept plowing.
Hole punching:
I had a few obscure folds, nothing too crazy.
Cube counting:
Similar to achiever and ADA 2009. Very straight forward section.
Pattern folding:
WTF?!?!?! <- sums up this entire section. I was not sure about ANY of my answers. In fact I marked the ENTIRE section. It was impossible. I was able to eliminate one answer choice for only two of the questions and guessed. For the others I guessed and just picked C. Had I performed on this section how I perform on cdp's pattern folding, I probably would have walked out with at least a 23.
Reading Comprehension:
I was mentally exhausted by the time I got to this section. RC is a weakness of mine. Not because I do not know how to read, but because of the timing. Had I been given 1.5 hours for this section, I would have gotten a 30. Hands down. I made sure to finish each of the passages in 20 minutes and chose the letter C for those questions I did not complete in that 20 minute mark. I know I could have performed better.
QR:
After trying to rush through the RC section I felt a bit lethargic when I got to the QR section. I guess my low performance points to that. I blanked out on many of the questions. 😳
Concluding remarks:
Make sure you sleep well the night prior to the exam. I had a little over 4 hours of sleep last night and was on a caffeine high during the exam. The caffeine only helped ensure that my eyes would remain open during the process. It did not do much good when it came to focus and concentration. Do not freak out about a section during the exam and make sure you do not think about previous sections, as I did. Thinking about previous sections can significantly impair your performance on future sections. - a lesson well learned.
I am really concerned about my low RC and QR scores. I am applying this cycle and not sure how negatively those scores will affect me with regard to admission to dental school. Truthfully, I thought that I scored better, but I guess that was not the case. I have hundreds of hours volunteering and doing research. I was also on my university's dean's list since freshman year. I attend a middle-tier private university and have a 3.89 science GPA and 3.96 non-science GPA.
I feel as though it would be wise to add more schools due to my low performance.
I am seriously considering a retake.
What are your thoughts?
(I apologize for the typos in advance...did not have time to read it over.)
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