DAT Done 07/07/09 - Breakdown

[dlud]

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Heres a breakdown of my scores:

PAT - 21 (92.2 percentile)
QR - 19 (84.9 percentile)
RC - 23 (94.5 percentile)
Biology - 19 (77.1 percentile)
Gen Chem - 24 (95.2 percentile)
O Chem - 23 (94.3 percentile)
Total Science - 22 (96.0 percentile)
AA - 22 (96.4 percentile)

PAT - I took the Kaplan course and used all their materials for this section. I feel that the angle ranking on the actual test is MUCH harder than those provided by Kaplan.

QR - I ran out of time on this section and even left a few blank. This had been a strong part on my practice tests but found it to be harder.

RC - The Kaplan roadmapping method approach worked wonders.

Biology - A little disappointed in this score because I thought I had studied this extensively.

GenChem/OChem - This seemed to be easier than Kaplan's practice tests. Practice in naming, acid/base, reactions, and substituent effects were bulk of these sections. Very satisfied with Kaplan prep.

I am very satisfied with these scores and hope this helps anyone that will be taking the test soon. I wish the best of luck to those applying for the current admissions cycle.

 

[dfymarine]

RC - The Kaplan roadmapping method approach worked wonders.


really??!!!!!


it didn't work for me!

care to elaborate how you approach?

p.s. great scores!

 

[sketo43]

Great job, congrats! I took the test on the same day as you and got the same AA!

 

[dlud]

I found that all scientific articles are broken down into paragraphs which cover a topic each. Prior to starting the RC section I numbered my scratch paper 1 - 15 (for a total of three times) to account for the greatest number of paragraphs in the paper. During the test I scanned the first sentence of each paragraph, looking for a keyword or topic of each paragraph. If the topic of the paper was about dental caries then you would expect paragraphs to be about tooth structure, types of dental caries, relevant bacteria, treatment, etc. In addition to the topic of each sentence, finding keywords also helped. Some keywords might include researchers that participated in relevant research, scientific words you're not familiar with, etc. This roadmapping method usually took about 5 minutes per article leaving 15 minutes to answer the ~17 questions. Since most questions are detail oriented or theme oriented relating the question back to a paragraph helped me search through the paper for the correct answer.

After making this roadmap, for the most part I would have no idea what conclusions were drawn or what several of the topics were about. For me this didn't matter as a solid roadmap allowed me find information that related to the questions

 

[ZzZzSleepyhead]

Nice job! Thanks for elaborating on your RC strat.