DAT done. 12/01/08

[Zubnaya Feya]

Hey guys,

So I just wanted to make a couple of comments and suggestions about the test:

Study materials:

PAT: DAT achiever, Barron's DAT, Kaplan DAT book (the thick one), Crack DAT PAT.

QR: DAT destroyer.

RC: DAT achiever.

Bio: Barron's, Schaum's Biology, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, my old textbook.

Ochem, Gen chem: Barron's, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, old textbooks + practice books that come in with textbooks.

Started studying in mid August. Studied averaging 3-4 hours during work days and 8-9 hours during weekends.

Now the breakdown:
PAT:

Piece of cake, seriously. If you can do 18-20 on the DAT achiever and on Crack DAT PAT you are good to go. I haven't once scored more than 22 on PAT practice tests. I took the practice tests at least 2 times each just to make sure I have all the techniques in place. That also helped for practice.

RC:

Didn't study much for this section.. didn't have a real good strategy either (ran out of time). Did the DAT achiever tests and that's it.
Got the evil ethics/morals passage + 2 bio passages. I think I got lucky that I scored 19 here. You need to develop an excellent strategy that works with your reading habbits.. so that you don't run out of time.

QR:

DAT destroyer was my only source here and, suprisingly, it wasn't the best one. Many questions on the real thing I haven't seen before (ellipse and focal points, weird word problems, many modulus problems). I am good with numbers so what saved me is that I most likely nailed the arithmetic and algebra section, which were like in the DAT destroyer. Also, there wasn't much trig and only 2 statistics questions.
I think QR was all over the place...

Bio:

I read through my old textbook (completely), read through the schaum's outlines, did DAT destroyer questions twice. This sections was also all over the place but my textbook reading helped A LOT. If you want to score good, read the textbook.
I had the FRAP question in there on which I guessed) but besides that it was ok.

Gen chem: Same strategy as for bio. Also, did a lot of end of chapter problems.

Ochem: Same strategy as for bio and gchem. I thought it was harder than other science sections but I scored higher on it... More than 5 2 or more step reactons.
Review basics... really.

So, to conclude: The more I studied for particular section - the better I did (as it is supposed to be). Read through the old textbooks, especially, for bio. Outlines are useless otherwise.

PAT was extremely easy..

Good luck!

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[Dentista08]

Hey guys,

So I just wanted to make a couple of comments and suggestions about the test:

Study materials:

PAT: DAT achiever, Barron's DAT, Kaplan DAT book (the thick one), Crack DAT PAT.

QR: DAT destroyer.

RC: DAT achiever.

Bio: Barron's, Schaum's Biology, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, my old textbook.

Ochem, Gen chem: Barron's, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, old textbooks + practice books that come in with textbooks.

Started studying in mid August. Studied averaging 3-4 hours during work days and 8-9 hours during weekends.
PAT: 27
RC: 19
QR: 19
Bio: 23
Gen chem: 23
O chem: 25
TS: 24
AA: 22


Now the breakdown:
PAT:

Piece of cake, seriously. If you can do 18-20 on the DAT achiever and on Crack DAT PAT you are good to go. I haven't once scored more than 22 on PAT practice tests. I took the practice tests at least 2 times each just to make sure I have all the techniques in place. That also helped for practice.

RC:

Didn't study much for this section.. didn't have a real good strategy either (ran out of time). Did the DAT achiever tests and that's it.
Got the evil ethics/morals passage + 2 bio passages. I think I got lucky that I scored 19 here. You need to develop an excellent strategy that works with your reading habbits.. so that you don't run out of time.

QR:

DAT destroyer was my only source here and, suprisingly, it wasn't the best one. Many questions on the real thing I haven't seen before (ellipse and focal points, weird word problems, many modulus problems). I am good with numbers so what saved me is that I most likely nailed the arithmetic and algebra section, which were like in the DAT destroyer. Also, there wasn't much trig and only 2 statistics questions.
I think QR was all over the place...

Bio:

I read through my old textbook (completely), read through the schaum's outlines, did DAT destroyer questions twice. This sections was also all over the place but my textbook reading helped A LOT. If you want to score good, read the textbook.
I had the FRAP question in there on which I guessed) but besides that it was ok.

Gen chem: Same strategy as for bio. Also, did a lot of end of chapter problems.

Ochem: Same strategy as for bio and gchem. I thought it was harder than other science sections but I scored higher on it... More than 5 2 or more step reactons.
Review basics... really.

So, to conclude: The more I studied for particular section - the better I did (as it is supposed to be). Read through the old textbooks, especially, for bio. Outlines are useless otherwise.

PAT was extremely easy..

Good luck!

good job!!! amazing scores!! I hope to get close to those on Wed!
Was this your first time?

 

[nodoubt]

OMG!! That's insane. Good Luck!!!!!!!

 

[zuma35]

Good Breakdown. Great Scores! Best of luck.

 

[joedat41]

good job!

 

[ZenoVT]

Good Job!!

 

[gentile1225]

THAT IS FREAKING AWESOME!! Where you applying to so I know not to? lol. Congrats a million times!

 

[allstardentist]

THAT IS FREAKING AWESOME!! Where you applying to so I know not to? lol. Congrats a million times!

awesome score~

 

[eldirty]

VERY nice work ... 27 on PAT ... your scores rank you as cool as an olympic athlete in my book. For you efforts the eldirty judge gives you a 9.9

 

[Dencology]

Hey guys,

So I just wanted to make a couple of comments and suggestions about the test:

Study materials:

PAT: DAT achiever, Barron's DAT, Kaplan DAT book (the thick one), Crack DAT PAT.

QR: DAT destroyer.

RC: DAT achiever.

Bio: Barron's, Schaum's Biology, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, my old textbook.

Ochem, Gen chem: Barron's, DAT destroyer, DAT achiever, old textbooks + practice books that come in with textbooks.

Started studying in mid August. Studied averaging 3-4 hours during work days and 8-9 hours during weekends.
PAT: 27
RC: 19
QR: 19
Bio: 23
Gen chem: 23
O chem: 25
TS: 24
AA: 22


Now the breakdown:
PAT:

Piece of cake, seriously. If you can do 18-20 on the DAT achiever and on Crack DAT PAT you are good to go. I haven't once scored more than 22 on PAT practice tests. I took the practice tests at least 2 times each just to make sure I have all the techniques in place. That also helped for practice.

RC:

Didn't study much for this section.. didn't have a real good strategy either (ran out of time). Did the DAT achiever tests and that's it.
Got the evil ethics/morals passage + 2 bio passages. I think I got lucky that I scored 19 here. You need to develop an excellent strategy that works with your reading habbits.. so that you don't run out of time.

QR:

DAT destroyer was my only source here and, suprisingly, it wasn't the best one. Many questions on the real thing I haven't seen before (ellipse and focal points, weird word problems, many modulus problems). I am good with numbers so what saved me is that I most likely nailed the arithmetic and algebra section, which were like in the DAT destroyer. Also, there wasn't much trig and only 2 statistics questions.
I think QR was all over the place...

Bio:

I read through my old textbook (completely), read through the schaum's outlines, did DAT destroyer questions twice. This sections was also all over the place but my textbook reading helped A LOT. If you want to score good, read the textbook.
I had the FRAP question in there on which I guessed) but besides that it was ok.

Gen chem: Same strategy as for bio. Also, did a lot of end of chapter problems.

Ochem: Same strategy as for bio and gchem. I thought it was harder than other science sections but I scored higher on it... More than 5 2 or more step reactons.
Review basics... really.

So, to conclude: The more I studied for particular section - the better I did (as it is supposed to be). Read through the old textbooks, especially, for bio. Outlines are useless otherwise.

PAT was extremely easy..

Good luck!

dud, how the hellyou got 27 on PAT?

 

[Zubnaya Feya]

I used DAT achiever (3 PAT tests) and DAT destroyer (5 tests version). I did each test twice at least (at least 18 total practices) over a period of ... 2 months. Besides that Barron's DAT has really good info about the strategies - their prep tests are too easy.

What I suggest: read Barron's, read this forums PAT suggestions, compile everything together and then practice practice practice using different strategies.

Aperture passing: I did not find any good strategy, I just became more accurate about very small details - comes with practice.

TFE: no good strategies that I have seen. You for sure need to be able to visualize the figure in 3D or at least see how the edges go. Line counting did not work with my real DAT (I tried it for the first 5 problems of TFE and none of them had even 1 choice that I could eliminate, moved on without even attempting to count but trying to visualize in 3D).

Angles: No strategy, just practice.. a lot. Especially with the CDP and DA - the hardness is similar to the real one. BTW CDP and DA are harder than the real thing in everything except for angle ranking (if anyone doubted).

Hole-punching: I used the method that people were talking about here. Draw a 16-cell grid and put dots in each cell as the paper unfolds. That way you do not miss any dots. Other strategies like "count the number of layers" or "if there is at least 1 dot in the middle then..." did not help me in practice. Watch out for symmetries too (although, I didn't use that strategy on the real thing, I think it would've been helpful).

Cube counting: The well-known "count all the cubes with all the different painted sides" method. It is excellent and fast. You count all the cubes - then you write out level by level which cubes' sides are painted how. That way you check yourself twice whether you got all the cubes.

Paper-folding: This was my most "iffy, shady" section but I practiced so much that I was able to do all the folding in my head. Suggestion: practice, practice, practice.

In conclusion I want to say that repeating the same practice test 2-3 times is ok (of course if you wait some time between taking them). It's not like repeating science tests where you could remember choices. In PAT I couldn't remember which figure was the right one so that I had to thought about the question every time I took the test.

To end this on a good note: if you get ~19-20 on the DAT achiever or CDP PAT sections even after 10th practice test - you are fine, practice more - it for sure helps.

Good luck!

 

[left high n dry]

good job!!! amazing scores!! I hope to get close to those on Wed!
Was this your first time?

how were you able to retain all the info from reading all the textbooks?

 

[Zubnaya Feya]

how were you able to retain all the info from reading all the textbooks?

Yea.. That was my first time taking the test.

As for the info, I made about 400 double-sided pages of notes during prep period. I usually write stuff down and remember it that way. Also, DAT destroyer is VERY helpful. It has information from all over the place and it kind of reminded me about things that I was weak at so I went and reviewed them again.

 

[toothfairy87]

Awesome scores and thank you for the break down!

Good luck!

 

[ramforte]

you have a great chance of getting into your first choice school, good job .

 

[allstardentist]

good work