DAT Done 08/21

[Contach]

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Supp. Yeah so I just finished. I wrote at a Prometric Centre in Canada (Vancouver). The site was really good and the people were nice. Some ******* was typing an essay next to me, but luckily they had large industrial-earmuffs that I used for that time period. They gave me scrap paper and pencils, despite the fact that last week I went to them to ask what they would give me and they said laminated with markers. Ive been practicing for the last month with laminated/markers. But the pencils helped for sure. The screen was like a 14 inch CRT screen. Not the large LCD 19 inch that I was hoping for. T_T. I blame my PAT to this fact.

Most importantly: Thanks for all the help SDN forums! This is for everyone still needing to write:

I took the Kaplan class over this summer, with the online material and they give the Kaplan book with it. I did all the online stuff for this.. except some of the easy math workshops. I started studying like..early June. It was really light studying up until perhaps mid June. Then I started hardcoring it and blocked out everything else. If I would have known I would score these scores.. I probably wouldn't have blocked off so much because I sacrificed a month and a half of my summer - too bad.

Then I got Destroyer about August 12 (a bit more than 2 weeks ago). I did 3/4 of the bio questions, all the gen chem, 1/4 of the orgo chem and all of the QR questions. I didn't do the orgo because it's ****ing ludacris.. as I've said before. And yeah I agree with people that DAT Destroyer will help you get those extra points past 20 in bio.. And I DO NOT THINK DESTROYER IS THAT GOOD OTHERWISE. I think the 200 could be spent better somewhere else. But if you have 200 to burn, buy it and do some of the Q's.

My scores
PA 21 92
QR 19 85
RC 25 98.5
Bio 24 98,7
Gen chem 27 99
Orgo chem 26 98
Total Science 26 99.9 LOL
AA 24 99

I'm really surprised wth my RC. Didn't think I would do that well. Was most worried with bombing that section. Got some easy articles and I knew a lot about all 3 haha... I'm disappointed with my PAT.. as I was getting really good on Kaplan PAT. the Angles were much harder, and the hole punching was ****ed up.. there were like 'half folds' I think.. it was messed.. TFE/Pattern/Cube/Keyhole were all much easier than Kaplan and that I am grateful for.

I am happy with my scores. Disappointed with PAT because I thought that was my biggest strength.. and actually still do: I think I got unlucky on the PAT and lucky on the sciences and RC. My scores on Kaplan tests ranged form 21-25 consistently.
Yesterday I didn't study for most of the day, but then got really nervous last night and went over all my notes. I actually went to shadow a dentist yesterday for 8 hours haha...
I'm a Canadian applicant. GPA's about 3.9. going into my last year at a Canadian University. Haven't submitted my application, but will be soon for the 2009 Entering Class. Need to get on that.

Peace.

 

[Albuterol]

DUDE!!! SICKKK SCORES! i knew you were going to beast it.
good luck with the application , i'm sure you will be a ok haha

oh for the hole punch...what do u mean by half fold? thanks
one more ?...this is completely random but why is so freaking difficult to get into canadian dental/med schools? their stats are ridiculous!

 

[artanis]

GG no re DAT.

 

[artanis]

DUDE!!! SICKKK SCORES! i knew you were going to beast it.
good luck with the application , i'm sure you will be a ok haha

oh for the hole punch...what do u mean by half fold? thanks
one more ?...this is completely random but why is so freaking difficult to get into canadian dental/med schools? their stats are ridiculous!

Theres 2 dental schools in ontario. 255 seats, 10,000 applicants. They only care about GPA, they actually have a ~3.85 cutoff. Then they look at DATs. Then the interview is pure grilling your personal statement and application and they weed out the people there for the wrong reasons. Congrats, good to see you were well prepared. I am in the exact same position as you with respect to sending in late application. GPA + high dat score no problem you'll get interview. Best of Luck!

 

[ksksks]

very impressive

good scores overall, u'll get into almost all schools with a good interview. Canadian Universities really train people with this stuff.

u go to UBC i assume? lol i need a score like this with better QR 😛 I go to U of Toronto btw

 

[jdent]

AWESOME scores! Nothing else to say but good luck with the applications!

 

[doc3232]

great job...I knew you were gonna rock it

 

[DROCKINDAHOUSE]

If ronnie coleman can do it so can we...jk good job

 

[Kkae]

Very good job Contach!!!

 

[keliao]

DUDE!!! SICKKK SCORES! i knew you were going to beast it.
good luck with the application , i'm sure you will be a ok haha

oh for the hole punch...what do u mean by half fold? thanks
one more ?...this is completely random but why is so freaking difficult to get into canadian dental/med schools? their stats are ridiculous!

half fold , i think he meant by.....they fold it diagonal and punch it half way..so when you open it its just one hole.

 

[pidbull]

amazing scores, I am sure you will get plenty of interviews.

 

[Mamona]

excellent scores congratulations!!!

 

[tranv117]

awesome job!

 

[Contach]

thanks guys.. I'll start answering the questions in my inbox on this thread.. so everyone can benefit.

What were your Kaplan scores also? If you wouldn't mind be exact on all the Kaplan tests you took...
What materials did you use for the sciences other than Kaplan and some Destroyer?

I know a lot of questions...sorry

Thanks a lot
doc3232

Personally I don't see how this helps anyone.. You have no idea how long ago I did these tests. But I'm pretty sure the last 3 or 4 tests I did within the last week and a half.. 2 of which I did 2 and 3 days before. But whatever, here they are.. just for doc2342342525
I did the tests in these orders. the Diagnostic I did twice.. these are the 2nd scores for those tests...
mY sCORES: BIO/ GC/ OC/ PAT/ RC/ QR/ TS/ AA
Midterm: 16 / 16/ n/a 23/ 19/ n/a ?/ ?
Kaplan Diagnostic: 26/ 23/ 17/ 19/ 21/ 21/ 22/ 22
Practice Test 2: 19/ 20/ 18/ 25/ 20/ 23/ 19/ 20
Practice Test 3: 26/ 19/ 23/ 21/ 21/ 18/ 23/ 21
Final: 21/ 20/ 28/ 24/ 21/ 21/ 23/ 22
Practice Test 1: 21/ 20/ 25/ 25/ 24/ 23/ 22/ 23

Other than Kaplan Blue book.. things that helped were:
I took a full year of Anatomy and Physiology a year ago.. which I remember really well because I really liked the course.
I took 1st year chem.. full year.. 1 year of orgo (summer school.. last summer). Oh and I love chem.. its like my favourite haha.. I would help lower years with their chem work and such.. so that maybe helped..
1st year bio.. but our bio was different.. so i didnt learn too much transferable knowledge. haha. then 2nd year problem-based learning bio.. also different..
I would sometimes refer to the Campbell's Bio book when I was confused about something.. this helped. but campbell's goes into a lot of detail. i felt like I was drowning each time i opened it.. so i didnt do it too often..
DAT destroyer roadmaps are good preparation, but I'm sure you can find those roadmaps somewhere else.. or make them urself.. just a conglomeration of all the basic reactions..
Wikipedia was a great resource too. I probably went to that more than Campbell's.
I think that's about it...

some things I forgot: I also used IQ publications Reading Comprehension.. It was pretty solid. Did a few of these in the final week. And 2nd year biochem I thought really helped for the Bio section. And a 3rd year immunology course as well.

 

[Contach]

Hey I saw ur schores and good job. I was wondering if you can give me any tips on the math and general chemistry section. I have taken both the topscore and dat achiever and would like to know what you thought about how those were compared to the actual test. Also if you have comments on the verbal reasoning section, because I am worried that I will get alot of tone ?'s. thanks and enjoy summer

thanks bud.
I never took a look at topscore or acheiver. sorry.
on the DAT there is reading comprehension. there is no verbal reasoning section. the reading comp on the dat is very far from testing your verbal reasoning. It's very similar to all the practice out there.. IQ publications has a decent book. I got a few tone questions. I left them till the end.. helps a lot. I was pressed for time but I thrive in stress 🙂
You can only hope you get easy reading comp passages and questions 🙂. Idont know what you wnat me to say - sorry.

 

[quartel]

this guy isnt real....

🙁

 

[Contach]

hey gr8 score, i was wondering how u studied 4 math??? thankss

Sup bud. Hrm.. QR is not difficult. I memorized the trig identities, and the perfect triangles. I was pretty good at highschool math and took Calc AP in grade 12.. I remember most of that.. sadly haha... never took anything in Univ. But I think practice really gets you fast. At the end of the test I was like dieing.. I just wanted to know my score and it was killing me. I coulda tried harder on QR for sure. I think the thing that saved me was that I skipped the Q's that I knew that during previous tests I have troubles with before even reading the whole question you can identify which Q's these were. I also skipped any Q taht had too many words.. they take too long to read and I was maddddd lazy at that time.

Other than that. just practice. Destroyer QR is good, so is Kaplan.. and I'm sure other material is too. Actually one question from destroyer was right on my test.. I remember looking at that in destroyer and being like WTFF. And I was right. the question is wrong. On the actual DAT it's a bit differently worded that makes the answer correct... It's interesting.. because this verifies my conjecture that ORGOMAN steals questions from the real DAT and puts them in his prep material. This question was a very unique question, not a lot of words, but it's something that I would never forget because I had never seen anything like it before. When I saw it from the DAT I was like LOL. Very unethical and I hope he gets sued by ADA because he has this coming to him.

 

[doc3232]

this guy isnt real....

🙁

Umm...why not?
look at all his old posts...he always wrote smart posts.
and why the hell would be answering our questions hahahaha, for fun?
No, he is real

 

[Contach]

Hey bro, those are epic DAT scores. I am here in Ontario, will take my ADAT in 3 weeks. I only started like a week and half ago so I am getting a little paranoid, and I thought I can get a better perspective from a fellow Canadian. How long did you study and what materials did you use for the stuff especially bio? And for orgo, I thought the destroyer was the best **** out there according to the mass marketing on the forums, how was the orgo? kaplan blue book enough? Reaction based? And for QR, did you use blue book as well? Maybe you can give me a run down of everything.

Thanks, appreciate any advice.

Thanks. I love seeing fellow Canadians on these boards. Goodluck on ur ADAT. I think I said I studied for about a month and a half.. but the last 3 weeks were intense.. with the exception of the days before the DAT I was sorta burning out. Kaplan Blue book is good. Man I paid like 900 for that, and I was really bitter.. but it turned out well.. so can I really complain? Yeah QR in the blue book was good. They don't do enough trig stuff I think, i had to rely on what i remembered from highschool. QR is all about time management and endurance. I wouldn't be surprised if that's the only reason why its on the test. By that time of the test you are burnt. I Ienjoy doing math though so it wasn't so bad - i don't see it as much as a chore as a game that I like to beat 🙂.

What school do u go to?
I go to McMaster.

 

[quartel]

Umm...why not?
look at all his old posts...he always wrote smart posts.
and why the hell would be answering our questions hahahaha, for fun?
No, he is real

He's probably telling the truth, it's just that the truth is killing me.

Good job OP, are your parents doctors by chance?

 

[doc3232]

He's probably telling the truth, it's just that the truth is killing me.

Good job OP, are your parents doctors by chance?

Hahaha, I see

 

[quartel]

Sir Contach, how do you do angles on the PAT?

I find most of it undoable, is there a strategy you use?

 

[TeamGuo]

yeaaaaaaaaaaaaa!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

dude you killed it! awesome job 😀

 

[Chesnok]

Good job man, great scores . Hope you didn't apply to d-schools of mine. jk.

 

[Contach]

He's probably telling the truth, it's just that the truth is killing me.

Good job OP, are your parents doctors by chance?

hahah nope. neither are professionals.

 

[Contach]

Sir Contach, how do you do angles on the PAT?

I find most of it undoable, is there a strategy you use?

angles on real DAT PAt were challenging for sure. More so than Kaplan. My strategy for Kaplan was to work with the answers, because sometimes you will see that 3 is clearly smallest, and only 1 choice has 3 as the smallest, so that means you dont even have to rank the other 3.. just pick that one choice. On the real thing.. it was much more tricky.. if 3 was clearly the smallest all choices would have 3 as the smallest. They really tested your ability to see the difference in small angles - I was surprised. And with my ****ty 13 inch screen or w/e the hell it was.. made it that much more difficult. I considered tearing the scrap paper they gave me and putting it up against the monitor - but didnt want to risk it because the cameras haha..
I'd say that working with the answers is still a solid strategy, but I'm saying its not going to work as often. (a) Sometimes extending the lines worked, then you see how far the lines are. If you extend it, the difference in the space between the lines gets amplified and it's easier to pick. But of course you have to do this mentally. (b) Also comparing to right angles is a solid strategy. (c) Sometimes I would try and visualize putting one triangle in the other and seeing which is larger. (d) And finally, sometimes you just have to give it your best guess and that's what I had to do a couple times.

But most importantly I didn't dwell on angle questions too long. I think I got that section done in less than 4 or 5 minutes. Its important to save time for the sections that will give a better yield of correct answers if more time is invested. Like Keyhole or Pattern Folding.

 

[artanis]

did you happen to write it at the testing center in Hamilton?

 

[Contach]

did you happen to write it at the testing center in Hamilton?

No I wrote it in Vancouver.

Also, I'm getting a lot of PM's asking me about specific sections and if you have to know "so and so trig equations" or "know about plant physiology." Can you just stop? I'm not going to answer specifics, and I don't even remember what the test was on at this point.

 

[TeamGuo]

No I wrote it in Vancouver.

Also, I'm getting a lot of PM's asking me about specific sections and if you have to know "so and so trig equations" or "know about plant physiology." Can you just stop? I'm not going to answer specifics, and I don't even remember what the test was on at this point.

I hope they learn some ethics on the RC. kk

 

[paul510psu]

SOLID scores man. Good luck with those interviews.