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Well everyone, after all of the sweat, blood, and tears, the DAT came and went just like that. I'm very satisfied with everything EXCEPT RC and PA. The RC was insanely hard, and it's the lowest I've ever received, including all of my practice exams.
I'm really disappointed, as I hear schools value RC heavily in trying to determine whether or not you will succeed in d-school. Perceptual ability was also very hard, but at least I've seen people gain admission with similar scores. I hoped for higher, but oh well. I REALLY don't want to have to take this entire thing again just because of my RC. I need some honest opinions and/or consoling - I never thought I'd do that poorly on the RC.
Anyway, here are the scores. I can post a breakdown later, but right now I'm fuming over RC and don't really feel like thinking about it again, ha. So what do you think, am I screened out from a lot of schools because of this? I don't even know what the "cutoffs" are for RC at schools. My sciences are really good, so I'd be pretty upset if a school just brushed me aside because of one bad score.
PA - 18
QR - 19
RC - 17
Bio - 22
GC - 24
OC - 21
TS - 22
AA - 21
EDIT -- BREAKDOWN.
BIO
I flew through this section. No plants. No ecology. I had one or 2 questions that were a little puzzling that I wasn't sure about. I evidently got them wrong haha. The bio section was either really easy, or my materials prepared me well. I used qVault, cliffs, destroyer, and Alan's notes. The majority of my questions were very straight forward. I almost feel like I over studied for this section.
GC
I was getting 17s in top score, and 19 to 20 on qVault. I feel like this section was very similar to the 2007 sample. Most questions were set up just like it, where instead of doing the calculations, the answers were equations that represented the answer. I feel like if I didn't do destroyer, I would still have been fine. Chads videos prepared me for this section plenty.
OC
Another section that was very straight forward. There were a couple reactions where they asked what the reaction was rather than identify the products. Also know all of your gringard reactions! I had quite a few. Destroyer helped here, but chad laid the foundation for success once again. I owe that man a beer haha.
PAT
I thought I did better to be honest. I felt good at the break, but I think the keyholes probably got me. They were very nit picky. Nearly identical shapes with minute differences.
Top front end was very straight forward. CDP was on par for that section. A lot of structures were similar for the answers, but I was able to rule some of them out just by inconsistencies. This section was most similar to CDP for sure.
For angles, some were plain old gimmes. Where others were ridiculous. You could have told me every angle was the same and I would have believed you. Are 1 degree differences possible, because I feel like some of these were, ha.
Hole punches. OH BOY. Let me make this clear, the real pat will pull out folds you have never seen before. I had many "third folds". I also had one RIDICULOUS fold that was diagonal from the bottom right hole to the far left second hole. If you numbered the holes from 1 to 16, where the first row is 1,2,3,4 and the last row is 13,14,15,16, the diagonal fold was from hole 16 to hole 9 and flipped upwards. I saw it and was like WHAT?!?
For cubes, there were no illusions, just gaps with missing cubes in the center of the structure. Count carefully.
Paper folding wasn't too bad. I had almost no problems with shading. They were mostly complex shapes, which I feel like I'm a little better at than shading. But in the end I'm curious as to what gave me an 18. I felt like I got a 20.
QR
I'm terrible at math, and I thought this section was very straight forward. I know nothing about trig. I think I had like 2 trig questions. The rest were word problems and algebra, and conversions. Be good at conversions. I immediately guessed on the ones I didn't know how to do and got the easy points. There's plenty there. I did SOME of math destroyer, and a couple qVault tests. QVault was right on par in my opinion.
RC
Ugh. I don't have much to say here. I got destroyed. I still don't know what to do. I used search and destroy. If this is your method, I advise against it. If you get passages like I did you will be dead in the water. I never got less than a 18 in all my practice, and most were in the 20s. I don't recommend qVault. It's too easy. This blemish could put me at a great disadvantage, and if I could do it over I would have studied less science, and more PAT and reading. A lot of people don't practice reading a lot, and I was one of them. It cost me big time.
I'm glad to be done but that reading score is going to haunt me for a while.
I'm really disappointed, as I hear schools value RC heavily in trying to determine whether or not you will succeed in d-school. Perceptual ability was also very hard, but at least I've seen people gain admission with similar scores. I hoped for higher, but oh well. I REALLY don't want to have to take this entire thing again just because of my RC. I need some honest opinions and/or consoling - I never thought I'd do that poorly on the RC.
Anyway, here are the scores. I can post a breakdown later, but right now I'm fuming over RC and don't really feel like thinking about it again, ha. So what do you think, am I screened out from a lot of schools because of this? I don't even know what the "cutoffs" are for RC at schools. My sciences are really good, so I'd be pretty upset if a school just brushed me aside because of one bad score.
PA - 18
QR - 19
RC - 17
Bio - 22
GC - 24
OC - 21
TS - 22
AA - 21
EDIT -- BREAKDOWN.
BIO
I flew through this section. No plants. No ecology. I had one or 2 questions that were a little puzzling that I wasn't sure about. I evidently got them wrong haha. The bio section was either really easy, or my materials prepared me well. I used qVault, cliffs, destroyer, and Alan's notes. The majority of my questions were very straight forward. I almost feel like I over studied for this section.
GC
I was getting 17s in top score, and 19 to 20 on qVault. I feel like this section was very similar to the 2007 sample. Most questions were set up just like it, where instead of doing the calculations, the answers were equations that represented the answer. I feel like if I didn't do destroyer, I would still have been fine. Chads videos prepared me for this section plenty.
OC
Another section that was very straight forward. There were a couple reactions where they asked what the reaction was rather than identify the products. Also know all of your gringard reactions! I had quite a few. Destroyer helped here, but chad laid the foundation for success once again. I owe that man a beer haha.
PAT
I thought I did better to be honest. I felt good at the break, but I think the keyholes probably got me. They were very nit picky. Nearly identical shapes with minute differences.
Top front end was very straight forward. CDP was on par for that section. A lot of structures were similar for the answers, but I was able to rule some of them out just by inconsistencies. This section was most similar to CDP for sure.
For angles, some were plain old gimmes. Where others were ridiculous. You could have told me every angle was the same and I would have believed you. Are 1 degree differences possible, because I feel like some of these were, ha.
Hole punches. OH BOY. Let me make this clear, the real pat will pull out folds you have never seen before. I had many "third folds". I also had one RIDICULOUS fold that was diagonal from the bottom right hole to the far left second hole. If you numbered the holes from 1 to 16, where the first row is 1,2,3,4 and the last row is 13,14,15,16, the diagonal fold was from hole 16 to hole 9 and flipped upwards. I saw it and was like WHAT?!?
For cubes, there were no illusions, just gaps with missing cubes in the center of the structure. Count carefully.
Paper folding wasn't too bad. I had almost no problems with shading. They were mostly complex shapes, which I feel like I'm a little better at than shading. But in the end I'm curious as to what gave me an 18. I felt like I got a 20.
QR
I'm terrible at math, and I thought this section was very straight forward. I know nothing about trig. I think I had like 2 trig questions. The rest were word problems and algebra, and conversions. Be good at conversions. I immediately guessed on the ones I didn't know how to do and got the easy points. There's plenty there. I did SOME of math destroyer, and a couple qVault tests. QVault was right on par in my opinion.
RC
Ugh. I don't have much to say here. I got destroyed. I still don't know what to do. I used search and destroy. If this is your method, I advise against it. If you get passages like I did you will be dead in the water. I never got less than a 18 in all my practice, and most were in the 20s. I don't recommend qVault. It's too easy. This blemish could put me at a great disadvantage, and if I could do it over I would have studied less science, and more PAT and reading. A lot of people don't practice reading a lot, and I was one of them. It cost me big time.
I'm glad to be done but that reading score is going to haunt me for a while.
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