DAT Done 4/2

[AshleyM]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Hey all, I just finished my test today. I wanted to thank everyone for their help 🙂. I'm really stressing out now because I did poorly on one section. My scores were:

Bio GChem OChem RC QR PAT
20 20 19 15 17 18

I can't believe I screwed up on the most important section!! I really believe that I read fast but I don't know why this happened. Please tell me what you think of my chances, and here's a breakdown for future test takers:

Bio- I think AP Cliff's was great. Many of my questions came from this book(maybe I was lucky?). I also used Kaplan and Destroyer. For my test, like people said, anything can be on there. Don't skip stuff and say that "Oh, I don't need it, this won't show up." I studied Cliffs, Destroyer, and Kaplan and there was no question that surprised me, I think i've dealt or seen each question at least once. I'm not saying just buy these books, but I really do believe they are great.

GChem- Straightfoward. If you know trends, concepts, and basic calculations, you'll do fine. I kept doing Destroyer, Achiever, and Kaplan for this. I think it helped, but it was too hard. The real DAT is so much easier. To be honest, I think I wasted time going over Destroyer. Those long problems are too hard and I was not tested on any of those, but who knows, maybe you will be. In my opinion, Kaplan was great for this.

OChem- Straightforward. Know basic easy rxns. Like adding to a benzene, oxidizing, reducing, NMR, IR, aromaticity. I used Destroyer, Kaplan, Destroyer. I really think Destroyer+Achiever is enough. Destroyer was a lot harder and had harder reactions. But it's main purpose is to prepare you for anything and everything. Pretty much no surprises here.

PAT- So much easier than Achiever!! Make sure hole punching and counting the cubes are money in the bank, this should be 30 easy questions right. The others, use the process of elimination. There are always 2 bad answers and 2 good answers. If you can eliminate, you'll do fine.

RC- This is where i got knocked out!! =( I can't offer advice because my score doesn't support anything. All I can say is long passages, many questions about the author's tone. I think Achiever was so easy because you had to find the answer and it was directly in the passage. Actually, I really don't know, I really bombed this part.

QR-This was all right. I really suck at math so I didn't know how to prepare. Many word problems. However, they do throw in a lot of freebies. So if you don't know, immediately press NEXT!!

Best of luck to all the applicants taking the DAT. Study hard!! Anyways, what do you guys think of my chances? I'm looking at USC, NYU, Tufts, BU, Temple. My GPA is 3.4 cum and 3.3 sci. I've assisted a dentist for 100 hours, helped the church, and am a assistant bball coach for jr high school summer league. Thanks all, best of luck!!

 

[scuzfly]

The more I read posts like this the more I wish I had bought DAT Destroyer and Achiever. Seems like the harder the material the better you know it. I take mine friday.

 

[DDSelin2mori]

Which method did u use for Top-front-end in Pat? Does counting the number of events work in real Pat?

 

[Dencology]

good job. so would you agree with me that DAT is more of the concept and some specifics? I was told that they want you to know the basic and if you know the basic you will be fine.?
true?

 

[AshleyM]

good job. so would you agree with me that DAT is more of the concept and some specifics? I was told that they want you to know the basic and if you know the basic you will be fine.?
true?

I agree that concepts are more important that specifics. For example, let's take a look at muscles. You should know about Calcium is released and this will trigger an action potential, etc... I don't think they will test like the tropomyosin part or how ATP opens up the molecule or whatever. In my opinion, I think it is more important to know the WHY then specifics. That doesn't mean disregard all information that are specific, because there are some specific questions on the DAT. But just know that many concepts are tested. Be exposed to all topics because they will definitely be on there. Good luck!

 

[AshleyM]

Which method did u use for Top-front-end in Pat? Does counting the number of events work in real Pat?

I try to line count first. I look a the dash and dark lines to eliminate answers. On these problems, they always have 2 totally wrong answers and 2 similar. After elimination, try to visualize the shape of the object. What do you mean by counting the number of events?

 

[DDSelin2mori]

I meant counting number of lines.

I try to line count first. I look a the dash and dark lines to eliminate answers. On these problems, they always have 2 totally wrong answers and 2 similar. After elimination, try to visualize the shape of the object. What do you mean by counting the number of events?

 

[DRKNM]

Congrats on the scores,

Please let me know if this is the Cliffs book you are talking about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471770272

I searched and found around 4 different books.
thanks

 

[AshleyM]

Congrats on the scores,

Please let me know if this is the Cliffs book you are talking about.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0471770272

I searched and found around 4 different books.
thanks

hey, I think you should get this:

http://www.amazon.com/CliffsAP-Biol...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1207245737&sr=1-1

This goes over all the topics. I didn't really care about the 5 practice exams that you are looking at now. Definitely read this, Kaplan, Destroyer, and look up wikipedia if you need a fast resource. Good luck!

 

[JTSLai]

Which method did u use for Top-front-end in Pat? Does counting the number of events work in real Pat?

the kaplan method of event theory works fairly well, but in many cases you will have to use something else to confirm it as sometimes there are more than one that follow the even theory, thats when you have to look at where the object is in respect to the view desired. for instance something located towards the top of the page will be seen towards the left of the side view. and sometimes it works best not to loo at the entire object but just and a key portion of it as many objects on the real dat are much too complex to just count events. what i do is narrow it down by eliminating obvious wrong answers, then look at the differences in the remaining answer choices, if its more than 2 remaining, its usually the same area of focus. then just look to see how that area of focus is compared to your twp remaining views. more often than not though, if you can determine the answer with just event theory, there is a much faster way to deternmine it, but if you are comfortable with the event theory, and can get it pretty fast you should do fairly decent, just make sure you can use other tricks in case counting events doesnt work

 

[DDSelin2mori]

That's what I'm doing in the practice tests as well. First I try to eliminate answer choices by counting the lines then if there are similar answers I look at the differences and try to visualize it which works in Carck Pat but I did one test from achiever and I totally messed up so I was wondering what does it look like in DAT.

the kaplan method of event theory works fairly well, but in many cases you will have to use something else to confirm it as sometimes there are more than one that follow the even theory, thats when you have to look at where the object is in respect to the view desired. for instance something located towards the top of the page will be seen towards the left of the side view. and sometimes it works best not to loo at the entire object but just and a key portion of it as many objects on the real dat are much too complex to just count events. what i do is narrow it down by eliminating obvious wrong answers, then look at the differences in the remaining answer choices, if its more than 2 remaining, its usually the same area of focus. then just look to see how that area of focus is compared to your twp remaining views. more often than not though, if you can determine the answer with just event theory, there is a much faster way to deternmine it, but if you are comfortable with the event theory, and can get it pretty fast you should do fairly decent, just make sure you can use other tricks in case counting events doesnt work

 

[DRKNM]

Thanks a Lot, i will buy it today.

 

[ilovedat]

Hey all, I just finished my test today. I wanted to thank everyone for their help 🙂. I'm really stressing out now because I did poorly on one section. My scores were:

Bio GChem OChem RC QR PAT
20 20 19 15 17 18

I can't believe I screwed up on the most important section!! I really believe that I read fast but I don't know why this happened. Please tell me what you think of my chances, and here's a breakdown for future test takers:

Bio- I think AP Cliff's was great. Many of my questions came from this book(maybe I was lucky?). I also used Kaplan and Destroyer. For my test, like people said, anything can be on there. Don't skip stuff and say that "Oh, I don't need it, this won't show up." I studied Cliffs, Destroyer, and Kaplan and there was no question that surprised me, I think i've dealt or seen each question at least once. I'm not saying just buy these books, but I really do believe they are great.

GChem- Straightfoward. If you know trends, concepts, and basic calculations, you'll do fine. I kept doing Destroyer, Achiever, and Kaplan for this. I think it helped, but it was too hard. The real DAT is so much easier. To be honest, I think I wasted time going over Destroyer. Those long problems are too hard and I was not tested on any of those, but who knows, maybe you will be. In my opinion, Kaplan was great for this.

OChem- Straightforward. Know basic easy rxns. Like adding to a benzene, oxidizing, reducing, NMR, IR, aromaticity. I used Destroyer, Kaplan, Destroyer. I really think Destroyer+Achiever is enough. Destroyer was a lot harder and had harder reactions. But it's main purpose is to prepare you for anything and everything. Pretty much no surprises here.

PAT- So much easier than Achiever!! Make sure hole punching and counting the cubes are money in the bank, this should be 30 easy questions right. The others, use the process of elimination. There are always 2 bad answers and 2 good answers. If you can eliminate, you'll do fine.

RC- This is where i got knocked out!! =( I can't offer advice because my score doesn't support anything. All I can say is long passages, many questions about the author's tone. I think Achiever was so easy because you had to find the answer and it was directly in the passage. Actually, I really don't know, I really bombed this part.

QR-This was all right. I really suck at math so I didn't know how to prepare. Many word problems. However, they do throw in a lot of freebies. So if you don't know, immediately press NEXT!!

Best of luck to all the applicants taking the DAT. Study hard!! Anyways, what do you guys think of my chances? I'm looking at USC, NYU, Tufts, BU, Temple. My GPA is 3.4 cum and 3.3 sci. I've assisted a dentist for 100 hours, helped the church, and am a assistant bball coach for jr high school summer league. Thanks all, best of luck!! [/QUOTE

Do you remember your RC topics?

 

[playa2652]

What do you mean by the questions from the Cliff's AP bio book? You mean from the practice tests or from those quizzes at the end of each chapter?

 

[siba]

Hey all! I just started reading the bio section in my Kaplan online course today...


I'm already very frustrated. It seems that a lot of people can just read through the entire Kaplan book with a couple of week. However, I spent three hours reading one chapter. And there's 16 chapters in biology section. That means it'll take me more than two weeks for finishing reading the biology section, not to mention there's still tons of chapters on ochem and gchem. It seems that everything sounds so new to me that I need to re-learn every single concept and try to memorize them all!! 🙁

I just started studying today and I'm so frustrated already... How long does it take you finish one section of the book? Can you guys give me some advice on how you "actively" read/learn from the thick book? It takes me forever to nail down one chapter, and I'm so worried now!!

 

[BBD814]

Siba-

Just keep working at it...the more you look at the stuff the better you will know it. The Kaplan book, in my opinion, should be used as just a review a week or two before the test...I would definitely get Cliffs AP and study it hard and make sure you go through all the questions at the end of the chapters. Cliffs AP was the best book for bio in my opinion. I used Destroyer and the Exam Krackers for the chemistry...Exam Krackers for organic is great. Try your best not to burn yourself out on studying...I did and I think it really hurt me a lot...I was at my peak at about week 4, this is when I wished I had taken my test, after that I just hit a wall and really had a hard time getting anything done.

I think the test has a lot to do with luck...you may get a test that concentrates on the subjects that you know like the back of your hand or you may get one that has a ton of questions that you have never seen...This is why studying everything you can really helps in case you aren't lucky the day of the test...

I wish you the best of luck studying...if you put in the time studying and listen to your gut on the big day you will do fine.