DAT done! 8/12 ...advice please?

[whoknows5]

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hm. this is my first post...let's see how this goes.

first off, my summer has officially started (yay!).

score breakdown:
PAT 24
RC 25 (WITH the croc!)
QR 19
BIO 18
GC 18 (i had this one coming)
OC 22

AA 20, TS 19

PAT -- this was always my strong point going into the test. i was only aiming for 22, but i was super happy with a 24!

RC -- i got fungi, croc, and motion sense. i got nervous when i saw the croc passage, but it wasn't that bad...just needed to pay attention to the question and answers. EVERYTHING was s&d. this saved my AA, i think.

QR -- wish i had more time. my trick was to just make sure to put down an answer for every question. QR was never my strong point, so i was happy with this too.

BIO -- alright, i'll be honest. i wasn't expecting a high score after reading about how horrible kaplan was for this, but i didn't find out about it in time! boo, kaplan. i got ZERO endocrine questions (wthell?!). oh, and being a bio major didn't help much. sigh.

GC -- this was my WORST subject in my practice tests, so i just braced myself for it. i was definitely using my last minutes on this stuff. i think i tripped up because the calculation problems were set up in a way i wasn't used to. so were the conceptual questions. ugh, gen chem.

OC -- i was both surprised and happy that this was my highest score. in my last practice tests on kaplan, i was BOMBING this section. whew, what a relief!

the only thing i used to study was kaplan (online course). my mistake.

my sGPA is pretty freakin low... we're talking 3.0 here people (my oGPA is 3.3). but really, i just want to get into NYU or BU. that's all i wantttt. do i stand a chance if i try to apply (i'm applying next cycle btw)?

if i take it again, i'm waiting until june or july... taking this during the school year would not be feasible for me. i know if i take it again, the likelihood of some of my scores dropping is pretty high though...

just looking for an honest opinion (if those exist on the internet!).

now, onto the celebration! CHEERS and good luck to the rest of you who are taking it soon!

 

[276640]

Great scores! I definitely think you have a chance of getting into some schools with those scores. I saw you took the Kaplan online course. How did you do on the full length practice tests? I'm taking the DAT this Saturday morning, and I'm just wondering how representative my Kaplan scores will be to the real thing. Thanks!

 

[whoknows5]

Great scores! I definitely think you have a chance of getting into some schools with those scores. I saw you took the Kaplan online course. How did you do on the full length practice tests? I'm taking the DAT this Saturday morning, and I'm just wondering how representative my Kaplan scores will be to the real thing. Thanks!

hmmm...it definitely varies for all test takers. but i'll tell you my opinion.

i got pretty frustrated with kaplan practice tests because they were so up and down for me. but, at least for me, the TS was pretty accurate. as you probably read by now, the kaplan bio is pretty off from the real thing, so i wouldn't base my bio score off of that completely (i was getting 19s and 20s). GC is set up differently on the exam, but if it's a strong suit for you, then don't sweat it. after nailing down a method for QR, it was about the same as the exam...except the real exam has a lot more word problems, so watch out for those. my AA and PAT were higher than my practices.

i'm sure you'll do better than your practice exams if you just kill bio. good luck!