Hi,
Long time lurker, first time poster. I'd like to start with how long I gave myself to study. I took a light quarter, and gave myself 3 months to study. Little did I know taking a light quarter did not help me at all. I ended up procrastinating the entire time, and always made excuses not to study for the DAT. I studied probably 2h max each day (those 2h include me not studying in between lol).
It was not until after finals when I finally realized that my DAT was only 2.5 weeks away. I started to haul ass, using the DAT Destroyer, Math Destroyer, Chad's, KBB and Barron's. I studied for about 10-12h a day, I ended up playing Starcraft 2 for about 2-3h in those hours.
I don't have those stellar scores like majority of the people that post here, but here they are.
BIO:19
GC: 18
OC: 21
RC: 17 (extremely happy)
QR: 20
PAT: 22
TS: 19
AA: 19
BIO: All I did was read KBB, then Barron's. I tried taking notes, but my hand started to cramp a lot so I ended up just reading, and tried to absorb the information. My strategy was to read KBB first, then read the corresponding topic in Barron's. Now, maybe it was because I didn't take detailed notes, but I ended up skipping about half the questions on this section because I had no idea how to answer them. I guess you can say I made some lucky educated guesses.
GC+OC: Chad. Is. God. I watched his video's once each because I was on very tight time scale. He definitely knows his stuff. I highly recommend subscribing to his videos. I would say that it's extremely underpriced for what you get. =P $30/month is nothing, its practically free! Real DAT was not that bad since most of the answers are layed out for the calculations. I think I got the conceptual questions wrong though as I never took much time to take detailed notes.
RC: Spent no time on this section whatsoever. Not to mention I am a really poor reader. I'm the person who knocks-out after reading 2 paragraphs of a book. I brought a Monster to drink during my break so that I would stay awake, and I think it helped me stay awake. I bought the Achiever, but I always scored 12-14 on all the exams.It was really discouraging. I was really happy that I got a 17 on this section. I read about 50-75% of the passage relatively quickly, then went through the questions. I just used S&D after reading most of the passages.
QR: I am good with algebra, horrible with geometry. I just quickly went over the math destroyer, didnt really time myself on any of the exams. I just got myself exposed to the variety of questions that are out there. I think I got through all 12. Didn't take that long.
PAT: Three words. Crack DAT PAT. I've always been good with this type of stuff since I'm a gamer. I guess that helped me haha. Never spent much time "studying" for this. I just did this when I was bored. I never scored below a 20 on CDP. Everything on CDP was similar to the real DAT. Although there were a couple in each section that gave me a hard time, I think I got those wrong, mostly angles and hole punching probably screwed me over. I had 15-20 minutes to spare when I finished this section.
But yeah, overall, the DAT is do-able. If you study for 1+ month, you definitely should be good to go. I'm just your average student with an average score.
I hope I have a chance in a California school, although I'm not picky, I'll go to any school that accepts me. I'm considering applying to 25-35 schools to increase my chances. What do you guys think? I have a 3.47 GPA in university, and a 3.77 at community college. I'm applying at the moment. Shadowed a dentist for about 70-90h.
EDIT!
I would not recommend Achiever at all. I found it to be very successful in making me feel like crap and discouraging me...much more than it was helping me. On every single section I was hitting 12-14s except the PAT (...maybe its because I'm dumb HAHA)I got the 5 test version...I think you should spend that $100 on 3 months worth of CHAD'S VIDEOS BECAUSE HE'S JUST THAT FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!
Long time lurker, first time poster. I'd like to start with how long I gave myself to study. I took a light quarter, and gave myself 3 months to study. Little did I know taking a light quarter did not help me at all. I ended up procrastinating the entire time, and always made excuses not to study for the DAT. I studied probably 2h max each day (those 2h include me not studying in between lol).
It was not until after finals when I finally realized that my DAT was only 2.5 weeks away. I started to haul ass, using the DAT Destroyer, Math Destroyer, Chad's, KBB and Barron's. I studied for about 10-12h a day, I ended up playing Starcraft 2 for about 2-3h in those hours.
I don't have those stellar scores like majority of the people that post here, but here they are.
BIO:19
GC: 18
OC: 21
RC: 17 (extremely happy)
QR: 20
PAT: 22
TS: 19
AA: 19
BIO: All I did was read KBB, then Barron's. I tried taking notes, but my hand started to cramp a lot so I ended up just reading, and tried to absorb the information. My strategy was to read KBB first, then read the corresponding topic in Barron's. Now, maybe it was because I didn't take detailed notes, but I ended up skipping about half the questions on this section because I had no idea how to answer them. I guess you can say I made some lucky educated guesses.
GC+OC: Chad. Is. God. I watched his video's once each because I was on very tight time scale. He definitely knows his stuff. I highly recommend subscribing to his videos. I would say that it's extremely underpriced for what you get. =P $30/month is nothing, its practically free! Real DAT was not that bad since most of the answers are layed out for the calculations. I think I got the conceptual questions wrong though as I never took much time to take detailed notes.
RC: Spent no time on this section whatsoever. Not to mention I am a really poor reader. I'm the person who knocks-out after reading 2 paragraphs of a book. I brought a Monster to drink during my break so that I would stay awake, and I think it helped me stay awake. I bought the Achiever, but I always scored 12-14 on all the exams.It was really discouraging. I was really happy that I got a 17 on this section. I read about 50-75% of the passage relatively quickly, then went through the questions. I just used S&D after reading most of the passages.
QR: I am good with algebra, horrible with geometry. I just quickly went over the math destroyer, didnt really time myself on any of the exams. I just got myself exposed to the variety of questions that are out there. I think I got through all 12. Didn't take that long.
PAT: Three words. Crack DAT PAT. I've always been good with this type of stuff since I'm a gamer. I guess that helped me haha. Never spent much time "studying" for this. I just did this when I was bored. I never scored below a 20 on CDP. Everything on CDP was similar to the real DAT. Although there were a couple in each section that gave me a hard time, I think I got those wrong, mostly angles and hole punching probably screwed me over. I had 15-20 minutes to spare when I finished this section.
But yeah, overall, the DAT is do-able. If you study for 1+ month, you definitely should be good to go. I'm just your average student with an average score.
I hope I have a chance in a California school, although I'm not picky, I'll go to any school that accepts me. I'm considering applying to 25-35 schools to increase my chances. What do you guys think? I have a 3.47 GPA in university, and a 3.77 at community college. I'm applying at the moment. Shadowed a dentist for about 70-90h.
EDIT!
I would not recommend Achiever at all. I found it to be very successful in making me feel like crap and discouraging me...much more than it was helping me. On every single section I was hitting 12-14s except the PAT (...maybe its because I'm dumb HAHA)I got the 5 test version...I think you should spend that $100 on 3 months worth of CHAD'S VIDEOS BECAUSE HE'S JUST THAT FREAKING AWESOME!!!!!
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