- Joined
- Apr 26, 2006
- Messages
- 65
- Reaction score
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Thanks to everyone who posts here. While I don't post here a lot I find reading everything incredibly helpful, so I want to help out and give a breakdown of the DAT in my experience
First of all, here is what I did that was a bad idea...getting no sleep the night before. I was so nervous that I was wired the whole night and got maybe 2 hours of sleep. That sure didn't help when I was looking at this old computer screen and trying to focus on the PAT. I swore my vision was blurry from it.
Here's my scores. I'm satisfied with them although I do wish I did a little better on certain parts. I studied with Kaplan, Achiever, and Crack PAT. Along with this, anytime I could think of that I needed clarification on something I used an old textbook from class or searched around the internet until I found a good explanation. My biggest regret is not getting Destroyer since so many people think it helps so much. I didn't get it at first because it was so expensive, and by the time I realized what an asset it would be it was too close to test time. Ok, back to those scores:
PAT: 20
BIO: 18
GC: 19
OC: 22
RC: 23
QR: 18
TS: 20
AA: 20
PAT: Keyhole and TFE were pretty much on par with crack dat. I had to practice like crazy to get TFE down, but by the day of the test I was usually getting at least 13/15. Hole punching was MUCH easier than crack dat in my opinion. Usually I have a hard time with it but I thought it was the easiest section on the PAT. Folding was a lot harder than in practice. Word of advice (or at least it helped me): go back if you have time and count your cubes all over. I found about 4 mistakes doing this which I'm sure made a difference in my score.
BIO: Most upset about this section. I've never gotten less than an A in a bio class, but it was so random I don't think that if I studied even another month I would have thought to read about some of the questions on there. Perhaps it doesn't help that I wasn't a bio major and the only upper levels I've taken are phys, biochem, and genetics. Or perhaps destroyer would have helped with the randomness. Who knows
GC: A fair amount of concepts with some calculations. Don't remember much about this part
OC: Reasonably easy and pretty basic. Don't waste too much time learning obscure reactions. I also had a CNMR question which sucked since I only remembered to study HNMR and IR for some reason.
RC: No FRAP! It was actually pretty easy. Very few tone questions and more that you could just go pick out from the passage. There were a few tricky true and false questions though.
QR: All about the time. I went through and only answered what didn't take to much thought and then went back. I was still slightly short for time and had to guess on a few questions.
Overall not as bad as expected. I took an achiever test the day before and that really brought down my spirits because I got a 16. Don't worry, it's not representative of how you will do.
So I have a 3.91 GPA, 3.96 science GPA. I'm hoping to get into UPenn or UNC (out of state). Do I have a reasonable chance with that? I know my scores aren't killer but I hope they aren't that bad either.
First of all, here is what I did that was a bad idea...getting no sleep the night before. I was so nervous that I was wired the whole night and got maybe 2 hours of sleep. That sure didn't help when I was looking at this old computer screen and trying to focus on the PAT. I swore my vision was blurry from it.
Here's my scores. I'm satisfied with them although I do wish I did a little better on certain parts. I studied with Kaplan, Achiever, and Crack PAT. Along with this, anytime I could think of that I needed clarification on something I used an old textbook from class or searched around the internet until I found a good explanation. My biggest regret is not getting Destroyer since so many people think it helps so much. I didn't get it at first because it was so expensive, and by the time I realized what an asset it would be it was too close to test time. Ok, back to those scores:
PAT: 20
BIO: 18
GC: 19
OC: 22
RC: 23
QR: 18
TS: 20
AA: 20
PAT: Keyhole and TFE were pretty much on par with crack dat. I had to practice like crazy to get TFE down, but by the day of the test I was usually getting at least 13/15. Hole punching was MUCH easier than crack dat in my opinion. Usually I have a hard time with it but I thought it was the easiest section on the PAT. Folding was a lot harder than in practice. Word of advice (or at least it helped me): go back if you have time and count your cubes all over. I found about 4 mistakes doing this which I'm sure made a difference in my score.
BIO: Most upset about this section. I've never gotten less than an A in a bio class, but it was so random I don't think that if I studied even another month I would have thought to read about some of the questions on there. Perhaps it doesn't help that I wasn't a bio major and the only upper levels I've taken are phys, biochem, and genetics. Or perhaps destroyer would have helped with the randomness. Who knows
GC: A fair amount of concepts with some calculations. Don't remember much about this part
OC: Reasonably easy and pretty basic. Don't waste too much time learning obscure reactions. I also had a CNMR question which sucked since I only remembered to study HNMR and IR for some reason.
RC: No FRAP! It was actually pretty easy. Very few tone questions and more that you could just go pick out from the passage. There were a few tricky true and false questions though.
QR: All about the time. I went through and only answered what didn't take to much thought and then went back. I was still slightly short for time and had to guess on a few questions.
Overall not as bad as expected. I took an achiever test the day before and that really brought down my spirits because I got a 16. Don't worry, it's not representative of how you will do.
So I have a 3.91 GPA, 3.96 science GPA. I'm hoping to get into UPenn or UNC (out of state). Do I have a reasonable chance with that? I know my scores aren't killer but I hope they aren't that bad either.
