DAT done 3/19/11

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pk62281

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Wow.. it's finally over. Here are my results

PAT: 26 😀
QR: 26
RC: 23
Bio: 20
GC: 21
OC: 23
TS: 21
AA: 23

The material I used is Topscore, Achiever, KBB, Cliffs AP Bio, Barrons AP Bio, some Campbells, Cliffs AP Chem, and and my old Ochem book.

PAT: I'm an engineer, so I do this crap for work. I didn't think I'd do as well as I did though. I expected a 23 or so. Acheiver is good prep, but it's facepalm hard.
QR: A lot easier than I expected. I thought it would be as hard as DAT achiever, but not even close. I went through all the problems and even had enough time to go over all my questions. The calculator helped me sooooooo much. Learn to use the calculator!
RC: I honestly expected a 17 or something on this because of my Achiever and Kaplan scores, but this was a lot easier than I expected. The questions were almost all S&D.
Bio: Random as hell. It demoralized me in the beginning. From my understanding of the grading scale, (from what I saw on practice exams) is that I'm only allowed about 4 questions wrong to get a 21. I'm pretty sure I got a lot more than that, so I think that grading scale is not accurate. For most of the questions, I'd look at the question and be like WTF? Somehow managed to get a 20.
General Chemistry: Felt random too, and I still thought I got more wrong than 3. There was this one ridiculous calculation problem. bleh.. I'll just guess.
Ochem: There were a few random questions, but i pretty much breezed by it.

Topscore: My topscore scores were horrible. I forgot what they are but I would score 15-19 on the science sections. I would do better on the rest of the stuff, but I still did a lot better on the real thing.
DAT Achiever: I think achiever is overkill. It think it's probably actually only good for mental endurance exercise, and the PAT. For most of achiever, you're just sitting there like.. WTF? and your brain is working on overload, and then after the test, you want to shoot yourself in the face. I would get 15-17 on the science and, 15s on the RC, and 18-20 on PAT and QR.

My undergrad gpa is 3.23 and I studied engineering. I took 14 hours of prereqs while working recently and got a 4.0, so my gpa averages out to 3.3. What do you guys think of my chances? My gpa isn't great, but I have work experience, and a good DAT score.

Thanks for all the advice. Good luck to you all!

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention. I have taken about 13 practice exams through and through. And... I did most of the practice exams more than once. I think I've probably taken the exam about 30 times. It's a pain in the ass to voluntarily sit there, but it really helps.

Also, the 2009 DAT that you order, was the best indicator of my score. Nothing else comes even close.
 
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Awesome job. that is the highest PA i have ever seen. great job. get off the boards and relax 👍
 
Congrats...Great scores...

Just curious, you mentioned you took 13 tests, can you please list them..

Thanks.
 
awesome scores, way to dominate PA 👍

I read your GC breakdown, I literally had a problem exactly like this. one answer was "correct" if rounded to 1 sig. fig. (which based on the sig figs of the data given, wouldnt have been correct) and the other 2 differed in the ten thousandth position. really lame.

/rant.

anyways congrats again and GL appying
 
23AA + 3.3 GPA = recipe for many interviews...
Good job, I remember you freaking out 5 days ago.... see, it wasn't so bad 🙂

By the way, im sooo jelous of that QR 😡
 
Hey I just want to say congrats those scores are amazing... I'm in the process of studying and plan to take the exam next month... I'm pretty much doing the same thing you did to prepare, is there anything you wish you could have done differently or any material that really proved it's self helpful. And one last thing how long did you prepare before taking the exam
 
Hey I just want to say congrats those scores are amazing... I'm in the process of studying and plan to take the exam next month... I'm pretty much doing the same thing you did to prepare, is there anything you wish you could have done differently or any material that really proved it's self helpful. And one last thing how long did you prepare before taking the exam

I don't know what I would have done differently, other than not bother with ExamKrackers. I did the 1001 Chem and 1001 Orgo booklets, and it wasn't that practical. It did help me though somewhat, if I did 2002 questions and it didn't help me, then somethings terribly wrong. I just think the time could have been spent better doing something else (Like going through all the problems in AP Cliffs chemistry). I took Chemistry 10 years ago and got C's, so my Chem was really weak and I had to start from scratch.

Another thing that I did, which I would highly recommend is to do practice exams multiple times. You would think that once you go through an exam, and then go over what you got wrong and the solutions, that the next time around you'd do better. However, wait a few weeks, and your score may only slightly improve, and you'll make similar or different kinds of mistakes.

Doing the same PAT multiple times is almost like doing different tests, same for QR. I also did the same RC test over, and you'd be surprised how much you forget. Practice practice practice, even if it's the same questions. Attacking the "typical" questions should be almost instinctive, and the random ones should be ones that you have to stop and really think about.

I started preparing by taking practice exams at the end of december so, I studied about 3 months.
 
These are amazing scores! Congrats. You're the only person I've read about doing so well without using the DAT Destroyer too.
 
awesome job! a friend of mine was also an engineer major and he got in with a 3.3 or 3.4 gpa at utdb. I dont think his dat scores were as high as you tho.
 
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I'm very happy with my scores. I've been preparing for over a year, and it feels awesome to finally have it done and over with.

The science in the beginning was so demoralizing though. I nearly fell off my chair in disbelief when I saw all my scores were 20+.

It seems to me that practice exam scores mean almost nothing.
 
I don't know what I would have done differently, other than not bother with ExamKrackers. I did the 1001 Chem and 1001 Orgo booklets, and it wasn't that practical. It did help me though somewhat, if I did 2002 questions and it didn't help me, then somethings terribly wrong. I just think the time could have been spent better doing something else (Like going through all the problems in AP Cliffs chemistry). I took Chemistry 10 years ago and got C's, so my Chem was really weak and I had to start from scratch.

Another thing that I did, which I would highly recommend is to do practice exams multiple times. You would think that once you go through an exam, and then go over what you got wrong and the solutions, that the next time around you'd do better. However, wait a few weeks, and your score may only slightly improve, and you'll make similar or different kinds of mistakes.

Doing the same PAT multiple times is almost like doing different tests, same for QR. I also did the same RC test over, and you'd be surprised how much you forget. Practice practice practice, even if it's the same questions. Attacking the "typical" questions should be almost instinctive, and the random ones should be ones that you have to stop and really think about.

I started preparing by taking practice exams at the end of december so, I studied about 3 months.

Thanks for the helpful advice i'll definantly keep it in mind. Again congratulations, where do u plan to apply?
 
Wow.. it's finally over. Here are my results

PAT: 26 😀
QR: 26
RC: 23
Bio: 20
GC: 21
OC: 23
TS: 21
AA: 23

The material I used is Topscore, Achiever, KBB, Cliffs AP Bio, Barrons AP Bio, some Campbells, Cliffs AP Chem, and and my old Ochem book.

PAT: I'm an engineer, so I do this crap for work. I didn't think I'd do as well as I did though. I expected a 23 or so. Acheiver is good prep, but it's facepalm hard.
QR: A lot easier than I expected. I thought it would be as hard as DAT achiever, but not even close. I went through all the problems and even had enough time to go over all my questions. The calculator helped me sooooooo much. Learn to use the calculator!
RC: I honestly expected a 17 or something on this because of my Achiever and Kaplan scores, but this was a lot easier than I expected. The questions were almost all S&D. I heard ethics was supposed to be hard because the questions were supposedly mostly tonal. I got ethics, and it seemed pretty much all S&D to me.
Bio: Random as hell. It demoralized me in the beginning. From my understanding of the grading scale, (from what I saw on practice exams) is that I'm only allowed about 4 questions wrong to get a 21. I'm pretty sure I got a lot more than that, so I think that grading scale is not accurate. For most of the questions, I'd look at the question and be like WTF? Somehow managed to get a 20.
General Chemistry: Felt random too, and I still thought I got more wrong than 3. There was this one ridiculous calculation problem where I had to divide something like (not the real numbers) 2.40/1.33 to the 4th sig fig. I was like.. bleh.. I'll just guess.
Ochem: There were a few random questions, but i pretty much breezed by it.

Topscore: My topscore scores were horrible. I forgot what they are but I would score 15-19 on the science sections. I would do better on the rest of the stuff, but I still did a lot better on the real thing.
DAT Achiever: I think achiever is overkill. It think it's probably actually only good for mental endurance exercise, and the PAT. For most of achiever, you're just sitting there like.. WTF? and your brain is working on overload, and then after the test, you want to shoot yourself in the face. I would get 15-17 on the science and, 15s on the RC, and 18-20 on PAT and QR.

My undergrad gpa is 3.23 and I studied engineering. I took 14 hours of prereqs while working recently and got a 4.0, so my gpa averages out to 3.3. What do you guys think of my chances? My gpa isn't great, but I have work experience, and a good DAT score.

Thanks for all the advice. Good luck to you all!

Edit: One thing I forgot to mention. I have taken about 13 practice exams through and through. And... I did most of the practice exams more than once. I think I've probably taken the exam about 30 times. It's a pain in the ass to voluntarily sit there, but it really helps.

Also, the 2009 DAT that you order, was the best indicator of my score. Nothing else comes even close.


Good job..I don't think anyone can give an exact answer but the DAT scores and prereq GPA look great ..apply and wait patiently good luck!!
 
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