DAT done 06/07/2010

[cbizzle7994]

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Perceptual Ability: 20
Quantitative Reasoning: 21
Reading Comprehension: 23
Biology: 20
General Chemistry: 21
Organic Chemistry: 20
Total Science: 20
Academic Average: 21

GPA: 3.44
sGPA: 3.40

Target schools: Buffalo, Stony Brook, BU, Tufts, Temple, Columbia

Perceptual Ability: much easier than CDP, especially the pattern folding. Everyone talks about the TFE being harder, but I actually found it to be easier than CDP. You definitely can't line count, but they are much easier object to work with

Reading Comprehension: got one passage about NMDA and AMPA receptors, one about cancer, and one about the benefits of exercise. Being a cell biology major, the receptor one was fairly easy to read through. Took a class on molecular biology of oncogenes so I could almost answer all of the cancer questions without reading. The exercise passage was the hardest, only because most of the questions were inference questions. All in all it was very easy and I got very lucky with the passages

Biology: nothing too difficult. No taxonomy questions (thank god). Mostly genetics. Happy with my score because there were definitely a few questions where you could get down to 2 answers

Gen Chem: this was my strongest subject. Questions are very straight forward. Only problems I had were ranking acids and bases in strength. Thought I might do better than this because the first time I took the test I got a 27. All in all very easy

Organic Chemistry: haven't taken org in a long time and they used a few reagents I wasn't familiar with from my classes. I feel like you need to be pretty lucky to do well on this section because not everyone uses the same reagents in their classes. Pretty standard questions though. Weren't trying to trick you

Any questions about how I studied or anything just let me know and I'd be happy to help if I can

 

[DATkiller]

Very nice scores. Please give us the percentages as well as a breakdown. Congrats.

 

[erk005]

nice scores!

 

[sdental]

How long did you study and what materials helped you the most? Congrats, by the way!

 

[cbizzle7994]

Very nice scores. Please give us the percentages as well as a breakdown. Congrats.

Perceptual Ability: 81.0%
Quantitative Reasoning: 97.6%
Reading Comprehension: 96.1%
Biology: 91.8%
Gen Chem: 91.6%
Org Chem: 84.4%
Total Science: 91.3%
Academic Average: 97.2%

For biology I used Barrons AP bio book that my brothers were using for their AP exams and The Gold Standard book for anything that wasn't covered in Barrons

For gen chem and org chem I only used The Gold Standard book. For gen chem it is plenty of information to go on, however for org chem you need to use other sources. I went over my notes from my org classes which helped because you really need to be doing problems. You can study all you want but if you don't do practice problems for org, you just wont do well enough

Perceptual ability I used CDP. Life saver to say the least. First time I took the DAT I got 21 TS and 20 AA, however a 16 PAT. I retook cause it seems for most schools there is a cut off and 16 PAT wouldn't make it. I bought top score last summer for my first DAT and it completely underestimated the real deal in terms of PAT.

TAKE NOTE: none of the crack dats are and good besides CDP. Math is decent but the math on the DAT is MUCH easier than that on crack dat math

 

[cbizzle7994]

How long did you study and what materials helped you the most? Congrats, by the way!

I studied for about a month. First 2 weeks I studied maybe 3-4 hours a day 5 days a week. For the last 2 weeks I studied more like 6-7 hours a day for 6 days a week. I remembered a vast majority of the stuff from studying last summer so it came back fairly easy.

 

[BellaDDS]

How was the math? did the calculator help? were the topics or the level of difficulty any different from last year?

 

[cbizzle7994]

How was the math? did the calculator help? were the topics or the level of difficulty any different from last year?

math was just as easy. calculator helps in some cases. it lags a little bit so you have to make sure you are pressing the right buttons