DAT Done - 24AA

[baseness]

(Originally posted in the pre-dent forum because I wasn't paying attention)

Six months of studying then I finally pulled the trigger. I was sweating bullets the entire test. I feel great about my results except for the quantitative reasonsing. I thought I would do better but I was too slow and had to guess some questions. No amount of studying helped me on the on the perceptual ability part, though. Whoever designed that part was a sadist.

Some people might want to know I used to study... it was a great hodgepodge of stuff to make sure I covered a lot of material. I made note cards of all the material in the following:
Cliff's AP Biology - This thing is a steal at ~10$ and an absolute gold mine of information.
ExamKrakers biology book
The Kaplan DAT blue book
The General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry books for Berkeley Review MCAT Prep

Then I did all the problems in DAT destroyer. I also tried to develop my perceptual ability with Crack the DAT. Let's just say that it was a pretty good simulation of the real thing but it didn't help much. One of the most annoying things on the DAT is that many questions require you to scroll down about one millimeter before you can click the "next question" button. A great way to rob your time when every minute counts.

 

[412smb412]

(Originally posted in the pre-dent forum because I wasn't paying attention)

Six months of studying then I finally pulled the trigger. I was sweating bullets the entire test. I feel great about my results except for the quantitative reasonsing. I thought I would do better but I was too slow and had to guess some questions. No amount of studying helped me on the on the perceptual ability part, though. Whoever designed that part was a sadist.

Some people might want to know I used to study... it was a great hodgepodge of stuff to make sure I covered a lot of material. I made note cards of all the material in the following:
Cliff's AP Biology
ExamKrakers biology book
The Kaplan DAT blue book
The General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry books for Berkeley Review MCAT Prep

Then I did all the problems in DAT destroyer. I also tried to develop my perceptual ability with Crack the DAT. Let's just say that it was a pretty good simulation of the real thing but it didn't help much. One of the most annoying things on the DAT is that many questions require you to scroll down about one millimeter before you can click the "next question" button. A great way to rob your time when every minute counts.

Wow ur RC!!! how did u prepare for RC and what resources would u say are closest to the questions and or passages seen. How many paragraphs did u see with ur rc?
Comparisons to topscore, qvault and crack the dat would be great!
thx!

 

[pdog]

Great scores!

I agree that the scroll down thing on the real test was annoying. It always wants to make sure that you scroll down that last millimeter, even when you can already see every answer choice. Although at least you could use the "scroll down" button at the bottom to do this, rather than having to mouse back up to the scroll bar on the side.

 

[baseness]

Wow ur RC!!! how did u prepare for RC and what resources would u say are closest to the questions and or passages seen. How many paragraphs did u see with ur rc?
Comparisons to topscore, qvault and crack the dat would be great!
thx!

Actually that's the one section I didn't study for at all. If I have one natural skill, that's it.
They were each about 8 to 10 paragraphs long. Succeeding in that section was mostly just answering the first few questions by reading through till you find the first two or three answers. By then you should have read pretty much the whole thing. Then recall what each paragraph was generally about so that when you get to a question that looks like it would be in a certain section, your prediction will usually be correct.
I guess just read a lot, and try to both take in the overall message and identify which part of the piece is explained where would be the best practice. If you have access to academic journals those would be good to read because they're written in a formulaic manner that's really conductive to that kind of analysis.
Actually I was lucky on two of my readings. One was about Heliobacter bacteria as the cause of ulcers instead of stress and we had a lecture about that in my biochem class. Another was about the einstein-bose condensate and how its existence was predicted by the the pauli exclusion principle and most of the questions asked were stuff you should know if you remember your physics.

I actually didn't take any practice tests besides crack the DAT perceptual ability part, which was accurate (I think I got 20 on the practice usually). I wasted a lot of money on practice stuff I never used.

 

[drill-and-fill]

How were the genchem and orgo sections compared to Destroyer questions? Any off the wall conceptual or lab questions?

 

[baseness]

They were pretty much the same. Destroyer prepared me quite well for gchem and ochem. I give it my highest recommendation. The following are things I remember from destroyer that were on the test: Neutralization questions requiring you to use the normality formula instead of the more common dilution formula, identifying which election configuration belonged to which element or ion, identifying which element formed a particula halide or oxide, determining a percent yield, which bond was the longest in a compound with single, double and triple bonds, identifying the hybridization of carbon and determining which of 5 choices was a planar molecule or ion. Nothing seemed too out of the ordinary.

Actually most of the difficulty I had in the natural sciences was when they took a question I was familiar with and posed it in way I didn't expect. But that was more of a problem in the biology section because that required a lot more knowledge of little details and it's probably impossible to remember everything you need to know.

 

[drill-and-fill]

Cool, thanks alot! Congratulations!

 

[DAT12]

Where you thinking of applying to?

 

[baseness]

I'm applying to all the dental schools in CA, WA, TX and the ivies. I have family in WA and TX so I could save some money by going there but if I get an acceptance in the ivies I would go, it would be foolish not to.

 

[EpicDentist]

What were your practice test scores on PAT?

 

[Dotoday]

Great job. Awesome scores.

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

[tommyli128]

texas more or less accepts ~0% out of state, save your money and apply elsewhere

 

[jonbajulce]

what were u getting % wise on the 3 different sections of destroyer when u were starting? and what % were u getting before u stopped?