So my test was at 8:30 today morning. I went to bed at 11:00 pm and woke up at 4:00 am. The DAT did not let me sleep more than that. I had the Kaplan Final practice test which I had not taken, so I decided to take its science sections in early morning [It was better than sitting in the dark]. It was kind of a warm up for me, although I do not recommend this to anyone.
Here are my scores
PAT 20 ----------------%87
RC 18🙁 ---------------%38.1
QR 22 -----------------%94.1
Bio 24 -----------------%98.4
Gchem 27--------------%99
Ochem 27 -------------%98.2
Ts 26 -----------------%99.8
AA 24 -----------------%99.2
I have been studying my science courses continuously since a couple of years ago, and earned good grades in them. I bought the Kaplan blue book a year ago, and skimmed through it. However, I don't think it had any effect on my grades. I have neither Destroyer, nor Achiever and Topscore, so I can't give any feedback on those.
I found other posters' break down of their DAT very helpful, so I'm gonna do it as well.
Here is my break down:
Bio: It was easy, but there were about 4-5 WEIRD questions. If you have earned good scores in your college Bio classes, you can easily make a 20 on Bio. There was only one taxonomy question which was dealing with important characteristics of the phylums. So make sure you know the basic characteristics of each phylum, and don't get into much detail. There were a couple of questions which needed some analysis, but the rest was pretty much straight forward.
Gchem: I don't even know what I missed here. Mine was mostly calculations, so be ready for that. Everything was clear, and the calculations were easy to handle. Skip the questions that sound weird at the beginning, and get back to them at your extra time of the science section. I skipped about 3 gchem question [I had no clue about them at my first look], and got back to them at my extra time. Boy, they looked like a piece of cake once I got back to them [You know, once you finish the science section, you're brain works much better on the questions that you have skipped]
Ochem: There was a question which did NOT have any correct answer [And I'm sure about this]. So I had to chose one of the choices which was similar. I think this is the one that I missed. Anyway, Ochem had a lot of lab NMR stuff in it [I would say 4 at least], so make sure you become proficient in those. There reactions were at least 2 step reactions, and nothing weird. There were a couple of questions which you had to use some analysis, but they were totally doable.
PAT: Anyone who has not got the Crack Dat Pat software, should get it ASAP. my Crack scores were 19,18,18,18,20,21,20,21,21, and I did not take the last one.
Keyholes: very similar to CDP. There were only two hard ones, and the rest was easy.
TFE: The line counting method does not work on the real thing. It was not harder than CDP though. I was scoring 8-10 on CDP without using the "line counting" trick, and I think it I got the answer to about 10 of them on the real thing as well.
Hole Punching: This was again very similar to CDP. In fact, it was easier. I started getting average of 10 on CDP hole. pun. Then I went through the explanations, and I got much better. There were about 3-4 weird folds on the real thing, but you will be able to figure them out if you work on CDP's hole punching
Angles: The difficulty was the same as CDP again. Make sure you do the angles in less than 6 minutes. Don't spend a lot of time staring at the angles. It was also helpful to look at the choices. There were about 5 cases when you could easily get to the answer by finding the obvious big or small angle.
Cubes: I scored 15/15 on 7 out of 9 crack Pat test, although crack was hard. The real thing is much easier. Each figure has less cubes compared to CDP. However, there were a couple of more figures on the real thing. Some of the figures would have only two questions, and then you would see another figure. I guess having more figures cancels out with having less cubes in each figure. It was still easier and less time consuming than CDP Cube Counting.
Pattern folding: It was a bit harder than CDP. I think I might have got something close to 10 on this section. Not that hard though, but still...
Reading Comp. : I started pretty well on the first passage, and I think I got a 17/17 there. What I did was was skimming through reading the upcoming 3-4 questions, and then reading the passage. I would then answer any the ones that I encountered in the text. I got a bit sluggish during the second passage [I thought I was on the beach or sth], and that made me fall behind. If I had only another 5 minutes, I could easilly boost my score to 20. Make sure you haunt this section till the last minute, and not let your speed fall.
Quantitative reasoning : I was a bit unlucky here. I had TOO MANY word problems [About 15], and also about 4 arithmetic questions which you have to multiply, divide or get the radical of big numbers. I was getting 30s on Kaplan practice tests. This one was really tough though. I was doing the algebra questions in about 35 seconds each to save me time, but that did not help.
I think I wrote enough. Hit me with questions if you have any.
Here are my scores
PAT 20 ----------------%87
RC 18🙁 ---------------%38.1
QR 22 -----------------%94.1
Bio 24 -----------------%98.4
Gchem 27--------------%99
Ochem 27 -------------%98.2
Ts 26 -----------------%99.8
AA 24 -----------------%99.2
I have been studying my science courses continuously since a couple of years ago, and earned good grades in them. I bought the Kaplan blue book a year ago, and skimmed through it. However, I don't think it had any effect on my grades. I have neither Destroyer, nor Achiever and Topscore, so I can't give any feedback on those.
I found other posters' break down of their DAT very helpful, so I'm gonna do it as well.
Here is my break down:
Bio: It was easy, but there were about 4-5 WEIRD questions. If you have earned good scores in your college Bio classes, you can easily make a 20 on Bio. There was only one taxonomy question which was dealing with important characteristics of the phylums. So make sure you know the basic characteristics of each phylum, and don't get into much detail. There were a couple of questions which needed some analysis, but the rest was pretty much straight forward.
Gchem: I don't even know what I missed here. Mine was mostly calculations, so be ready for that. Everything was clear, and the calculations were easy to handle. Skip the questions that sound weird at the beginning, and get back to them at your extra time of the science section. I skipped about 3 gchem question [I had no clue about them at my first look], and got back to them at my extra time. Boy, they looked like a piece of cake once I got back to them [You know, once you finish the science section, you're brain works much better on the questions that you have skipped]
Ochem: There was a question which did NOT have any correct answer [And I'm sure about this]. So I had to chose one of the choices which was similar. I think this is the one that I missed. Anyway, Ochem had a lot of lab NMR stuff in it [I would say 4 at least], so make sure you become proficient in those. There reactions were at least 2 step reactions, and nothing weird. There were a couple of questions which you had to use some analysis, but they were totally doable.
PAT: Anyone who has not got the Crack Dat Pat software, should get it ASAP. my Crack scores were 19,18,18,18,20,21,20,21,21, and I did not take the last one.
Keyholes: very similar to CDP. There were only two hard ones, and the rest was easy.
TFE: The line counting method does not work on the real thing. It was not harder than CDP though. I was scoring 8-10 on CDP without using the "line counting" trick, and I think it I got the answer to about 10 of them on the real thing as well.
Hole Punching: This was again very similar to CDP. In fact, it was easier. I started getting average of 10 on CDP hole. pun. Then I went through the explanations, and I got much better. There were about 3-4 weird folds on the real thing, but you will be able to figure them out if you work on CDP's hole punching
Angles: The difficulty was the same as CDP again. Make sure you do the angles in less than 6 minutes. Don't spend a lot of time staring at the angles. It was also helpful to look at the choices. There were about 5 cases when you could easily get to the answer by finding the obvious big or small angle.
Cubes: I scored 15/15 on 7 out of 9 crack Pat test, although crack was hard. The real thing is much easier. Each figure has less cubes compared to CDP. However, there were a couple of more figures on the real thing. Some of the figures would have only two questions, and then you would see another figure. I guess having more figures cancels out with having less cubes in each figure. It was still easier and less time consuming than CDP Cube Counting.
Pattern folding: It was a bit harder than CDP. I think I might have got something close to 10 on this section. Not that hard though, but still...
Reading Comp. : I started pretty well on the first passage, and I think I got a 17/17 there. What I did was was skimming through reading the upcoming 3-4 questions, and then reading the passage. I would then answer any the ones that I encountered in the text. I got a bit sluggish during the second passage [I thought I was on the beach or sth], and that made me fall behind. If I had only another 5 minutes, I could easilly boost my score to 20. Make sure you haunt this section till the last minute, and not let your speed fall.
Quantitative reasoning : I was a bit unlucky here. I had TOO MANY word problems [About 15], and also about 4 arithmetic questions which you have to multiply, divide or get the radical of big numbers. I was getting 30s on Kaplan practice tests. This one was really tough though. I was doing the algebra questions in about 35 seconds each to save me time, but that did not help.
I think I wrote enough. Hit me with questions if you have any.
