DAT done 6-19

[salem21]

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Finished up my DAT on Friday and am pleasantly surprised with my scores.

TS 22
AA 22
OChem 22
Bio 22
Chem 22
RC 21
QR 21
PAT 20

This site was very helpful in seeing where I stood after some practice tests.
My Top Score AA was only 19 after the second test and I think 19 on the Kaplan as well. I had been scoring 22-23 on PAT but I think TopScore is a lot easier than the real thing. My reading went down as well from 23-25, but my QR went up from 19.

I'll admit that I got kind of lucky on the TS. I had ~35 questions marked, ~15 of which were in Bio, and I went back and changed a few on Bio. I was a little disappointed with my PAT, but I ended up leaving for my break 5 minutes early because I had a bit too much coffee before the test...

Overall, if I had to do it again, I would have started studying sooner. I spent an hour here or there 3 months leading up to the test and then really started hammering studying 2 weeks before the test when I got out of school for the summer. Fortunately, a lot of the gen chem and ochem came back quickly as I did fairly well in the those classes. I had yet to take a physiology class so I spent a lot of time learning body systems, so I recommend taking a phys before the DAT. I also had to spend a lot of time relearning animal and classification material I never really took seriously in Bio II. I didn't spend a lot of time on the Reading section...I just did 2-3 practice tests and figured that I knew how to read so it wasn't worth my time. For PAT, I just kept going over practice tests and figuring out where I was going wrong when I missed questions. I was very worried about math, because I didn't relearn any complex trig or probabilities or anything else that would have detracted from TS studying. I focused on time management, solving algebra fast, remembering some rules, and doing quick guess and check with answers. The best advice I can give is to be confident on the test and to do a lot of practice tests so you learn how the questions are asked and how they try to trip you up. Thanks to everyone for posting their advice and scores and best of luck to anyone that still has to take the test.

 

[failedmagician]

Awesome. What were your Topscore science scores? How was math? Lot of word problems? Did you have a lot of reaction in Ochem? Was Ochem more similar to Kaplan (more conceptual) or more like Topscore (more reactions)?

 

[Tsrshorty]

congrats. was there a lot of trig on it?

 

[g23armani]

Great job, very solid scores all around!

 

[nze82]

Sweet! we have the same scores? Which schools are you applying to, if you don't mind me asking?

 

[salem21]

I'm applying to Ohio State and Case Western...and maybe a top school just to see if I can get in. Ohio State's in-state tuition is only ~30k and I'm going there for undergrad so its my top-choice right now.

As for DAT content, I don't want to say any specifics. I will say that I memorized the soh-cah-toa and csc, sec, cot for trig, but nothing too complex. I tried to memorize some values like sin30=1/2. My main focus for studying was getting fast at algebra and plugging in answers. I basically tried to get to every question I knew how to do, and to answer it quickly and efficiently. Problems that I didn't understand or knew would take more than 2 minutes, I guessed, marked, and moved on.

My TopScore sciences were only 18-19. I admittedly didn't take them very seriously when I took them. Basically, I studied a little for a section and then took it to see where I was at. Then I went back and looked at all the concepts I was fuzzy on for those sections. Again, its about getting 100% of the questions right that you have some familiarity with. For me, that meant "don't miss any genetics or biochem questions" because I just took those classes.