Hi guys, I have benefited a lot from reading other members feedback, so I thought I would play my part and share my scores and resources used. This was my first time doing the American DAT. I did my Canadian DAT last year in November, relied solely on Kaplan and ended up with:
Bio: 19, Chem: 19, PAT: 18, RC: 19
I thought I was ready (well Kaplan certainly told me so LOL). I was waitlisted at a Canadian Dental school this summer, so I had my hopes set on that. My backup was to do a research masters, but late July I decided to decline masters and re-apply to several dental schools (last time I only applied to one, I was missing pre-reqs, which I am taking now). Anyhow, long story short, I started studying in August, a few hours everyday, and here's how I did:
PAT 19 (67.8)
QR 23 (98.8)
RC 22 (84.4)
Bio 23 (97.4)
Gen. Chem 26 (98.8)
Orgo 19 (71.1)
TS 22 (95.6)
AA 23 (98.7)
cDAT in Nov:
BIO 23
Chem 30
PAT 18
AA 25
TS 25
Here's the resources I used:
Bio: Cliff's AP Bio, I think this book is pretty much all you need to do well on the bio section. There were only a handful of questions (I would say about 4) on the actual DAT, that were not covered in this book. When I did the test initially, I marked close to 10-15 questions. Some of the questions might stump you initially, but don't let that throw you off, just mark the question and pick C (just in case you don't get enough time in the end), and move on. I finished this section in about 30 mins, and came back after I finished the other two sections, and went through the marked questions. I think in the end I was unsure about 4 questions.
Gen. Chem: CHAD'S VIDEOS! That is all I used to study for general chem, watched his movies once, did all the quizzes, did not even bother going back to the Kaplan book. I felt like the questions on the actual DAT were even easier then his quiz questions lol. My advice is to watch all the videos and do the quizzes at the end, that's a good way of testing whether you actually remember the concepts a few days after watching the videos. I finished this section in 30 mins and I had 2 questions marked.
Orgo: I used Chad's Videos for this section as well, but I did not finish watching them all, I stopped at section 3.5. I started using Chad's videos near the beginning of September, so I knew I don't have enough time to watch and remember everything. Also, I don't like orgo so I figured I would just try and nail Bio and Gen. Chem to bring my TS up. I was able to answer all the questions pertaining to the sections I covered with Chad, other ones I just guessed, I was able to reduce the options down to 2 or 3 for most of them. I spent maybe 15-20 mins on this section and then went back to Bio to look at the marked questions.
PAT: I used Crack DAT PAT, but I only practiced about 3-4 tests before the test. I should have practiced more, but I would recommend using Crack DAT PAT, it did help me improve. My eyes were literally burning by the time I got to cube counting, I spent more time then I usually do on this section and didn't have enough time left for Pattern Folding
RC: I got one RC passage trial with Crack DAT PAT. I practiced that passage and that's all I did for this section. I used a new strategy where I went straight to the 1st question and started reading, if I didn't find the answer to it within the first two paragraphs, I would mark it and go on to the next question. This way I was reading the passage but answering questions along the way. I had a LOT of inference questions, I think about 2-3 with each passage, but I finished all passages with about 4-5 minutes left.
QR: I did not prepare for this section; I love math and physics and took several of these courses in uni, so I knew I would be okay. I was REALLY exhausted by the time I got to this section, some questions were ridiculously easy, others were just lengthy, involved long calculations. I didn't know how to do 3 questions: two of them involved conversion factors that I didn't know, so I couldn't even answer them
. Another one involved a formula that I didn't have memorized. I finished this section with 6-7 minutes left.
I hope this was helpful to some of you, if you have any questions shoot away!
Bio: 19, Chem: 19, PAT: 18, RC: 19
I thought I was ready (well Kaplan certainly told me so LOL). I was waitlisted at a Canadian Dental school this summer, so I had my hopes set on that. My backup was to do a research masters, but late July I decided to decline masters and re-apply to several dental schools (last time I only applied to one, I was missing pre-reqs, which I am taking now). Anyhow, long story short, I started studying in August, a few hours everyday, and here's how I did:
PAT 19 (67.8)
QR 23 (98.8)
RC 22 (84.4)
Bio 23 (97.4)
Gen. Chem 26 (98.8)
Orgo 19 (71.1)
TS 22 (95.6)
AA 23 (98.7)
cDAT in Nov:
BIO 23
Chem 30
PAT 18
AA 25
TS 25
Here's the resources I used:
Bio: Cliff's AP Bio, I think this book is pretty much all you need to do well on the bio section. There were only a handful of questions (I would say about 4) on the actual DAT, that were not covered in this book. When I did the test initially, I marked close to 10-15 questions. Some of the questions might stump you initially, but don't let that throw you off, just mark the question and pick C (just in case you don't get enough time in the end), and move on. I finished this section in about 30 mins, and came back after I finished the other two sections, and went through the marked questions. I think in the end I was unsure about 4 questions.
Gen. Chem: CHAD'S VIDEOS! That is all I used to study for general chem, watched his movies once, did all the quizzes, did not even bother going back to the Kaplan book. I felt like the questions on the actual DAT were even easier then his quiz questions lol. My advice is to watch all the videos and do the quizzes at the end, that's a good way of testing whether you actually remember the concepts a few days after watching the videos. I finished this section in 30 mins and I had 2 questions marked.
Orgo: I used Chad's Videos for this section as well, but I did not finish watching them all, I stopped at section 3.5. I started using Chad's videos near the beginning of September, so I knew I don't have enough time to watch and remember everything. Also, I don't like orgo so I figured I would just try and nail Bio and Gen. Chem to bring my TS up. I was able to answer all the questions pertaining to the sections I covered with Chad, other ones I just guessed, I was able to reduce the options down to 2 or 3 for most of them. I spent maybe 15-20 mins on this section and then went back to Bio to look at the marked questions.
PAT: I used Crack DAT PAT, but I only practiced about 3-4 tests before the test. I should have practiced more, but I would recommend using Crack DAT PAT, it did help me improve. My eyes were literally burning by the time I got to cube counting, I spent more time then I usually do on this section and didn't have enough time left for Pattern Folding
RC: I got one RC passage trial with Crack DAT PAT. I practiced that passage and that's all I did for this section. I used a new strategy where I went straight to the 1st question and started reading, if I didn't find the answer to it within the first two paragraphs, I would mark it and go on to the next question. This way I was reading the passage but answering questions along the way. I had a LOT of inference questions, I think about 2-3 with each passage, but I finished all passages with about 4-5 minutes left.
QR: I did not prepare for this section; I love math and physics and took several of these courses in uni, so I knew I would be okay. I was REALLY exhausted by the time I got to this section, some questions were ridiculously easy, others were just lengthy, involved long calculations. I didn't know how to do 3 questions: two of them involved conversion factors that I didn't know, so I couldn't even answer them
. Another one involved a formula that I didn't have memorized. I finished this section with 6-7 minutes left.I hope this was helpful to some of you, if you have any questions shoot away
!
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