- Joined
- Sep 8, 2008
- Messages
- 83
- Reaction score
- 0
Score breakdown -
PA - 20
QR - 18
RC - 30
Bio - 29
GC - 27
OC - 26
TS - 28
AA - 26
I've got to say, I did a LOT better than I was expecting - I didn't use topscore or crackDAT so I was a little nervous after seeing all the materials that some other people were using. I took the Kaplan review course (never went to class but studied the book carefully and did all the online materials. Made tons of flashcards. I also used my old bio textbook and the ExamCrackers books for bio, chem and ochem as well as the Cliffs AP bio review. Here's a more detailed breakdown:
PA -
Keyholes are my weakness, I'm just bad at them. They were slightly harder than most of kaplan's online material, although I felt like it was hard not because the structures were complicated (they weren't as bad as some of the ones I'd seen in Kaplan) but because the answer choices were a lot more similar to each other.
Top/Front was comparable to kaplan; cube counting was easier (fewer cubes to count) and paper folding was a lot harder; that's usually the one I have the least trouble with but I really had to work at it. And angle ranking was harder than Kaplan (as some people have noted) but a lot of times you could just do biggest/smallest and narrow it down that way.
QR -
Really, really tough. I'm usually pretty good at math but it seemed pretty much impossible to me - I guessed a LOT of these because I had about 10 minutes left with 15 problems to go still. Every problem pretty much requires thinking and setting up equations, you can't just plug stuff into a formula. Luckily some of them can be guessed just by looking at answer choices - definitely practice using shortcuts because there's no time to do lots of long calculations. Practice permutations/combinations and trig problems, they seem to love those. I consider myself lucky to have gotten an 18 on this section, I was freaking out at the end there.
RC -
This section is the one I always seem to do well with - question difficulty and paragraph length was about what I expected or a little easier. I'm a fast reader and that's a huge advantage when you're skimming these paragraphs trying to find something specific. What I do is read the whole paragraph - actually making myself focus on it instead of just trying to skim through - and make quick notes on what each paragraph is about. That saves time when you're trying to figure out what paragraph you should be looking at to answer a particular question.
BIO-
I studied the most for bio - I made tons of flashcards from the kaplan white book, plus supplemented it with the ExamCrackers bio book, the Cliffs AP book and my bio textbook. Basically went through and read the whole thing, made flashcards on stuff that I thought might be significant. Plus doing the online Kaplan stuff. I felt pretty overprepared for this part, I felt like the DAT was less detailed than the questions that were asked in most of the kaplan materials; I think the DAT detail level was comparable to questions in the Cliff's AP review book.
CHEM, OCHEM -
I used (again) kaplan pretty much exclusively for the material, plus some online research about concepts I didn't understand. I went through the ExamCracker's 1001 questions for chem and ochem and tried to do every problem; that really helped because they're largely conceptual and showed me what concepts I was weak on. I'd definitely recommend those books. I don't think I saw anything on the DAT that wasn't covered in Kaplan though, but in chem/ochem you want to do as many different practice problems as possible.
If anyone has any questions feel free to ask - I used this board a lot to prepare myself mentally so hopefully this helps someone else!
PA - 20
QR - 18
RC - 30
Bio - 29
GC - 27
OC - 26
TS - 28
AA - 26
I've got to say, I did a LOT better than I was expecting - I didn't use topscore or crackDAT so I was a little nervous after seeing all the materials that some other people were using. I took the Kaplan review course (never went to class but studied the book carefully and did all the online materials. Made tons of flashcards. I also used my old bio textbook and the ExamCrackers books for bio, chem and ochem as well as the Cliffs AP bio review. Here's a more detailed breakdown:
PA -
Keyholes are my weakness, I'm just bad at them. They were slightly harder than most of kaplan's online material, although I felt like it was hard not because the structures were complicated (they weren't as bad as some of the ones I'd seen in Kaplan) but because the answer choices were a lot more similar to each other.
Top/Front was comparable to kaplan; cube counting was easier (fewer cubes to count) and paper folding was a lot harder; that's usually the one I have the least trouble with but I really had to work at it. And angle ranking was harder than Kaplan (as some people have noted) but a lot of times you could just do biggest/smallest and narrow it down that way.
QR -
Really, really tough. I'm usually pretty good at math but it seemed pretty much impossible to me - I guessed a LOT of these because I had about 10 minutes left with 15 problems to go still. Every problem pretty much requires thinking and setting up equations, you can't just plug stuff into a formula. Luckily some of them can be guessed just by looking at answer choices - definitely practice using shortcuts because there's no time to do lots of long calculations. Practice permutations/combinations and trig problems, they seem to love those. I consider myself lucky to have gotten an 18 on this section, I was freaking out at the end there.
RC -
This section is the one I always seem to do well with - question difficulty and paragraph length was about what I expected or a little easier. I'm a fast reader and that's a huge advantage when you're skimming these paragraphs trying to find something specific. What I do is read the whole paragraph - actually making myself focus on it instead of just trying to skim through - and make quick notes on what each paragraph is about. That saves time when you're trying to figure out what paragraph you should be looking at to answer a particular question.
BIO-
I studied the most for bio - I made tons of flashcards from the kaplan white book, plus supplemented it with the ExamCrackers bio book, the Cliffs AP book and my bio textbook. Basically went through and read the whole thing, made flashcards on stuff that I thought might be significant. Plus doing the online Kaplan stuff. I felt pretty overprepared for this part, I felt like the DAT was less detailed than the questions that were asked in most of the kaplan materials; I think the DAT detail level was comparable to questions in the Cliff's AP review book.
CHEM, OCHEM -
I used (again) kaplan pretty much exclusively for the material, plus some online research about concepts I didn't understand. I went through the ExamCracker's 1001 questions for chem and ochem and tried to do every problem; that really helped because they're largely conceptual and showed me what concepts I was weak on. I'd definitely recommend those books. I don't think I saw anything on the DAT that wasn't covered in Kaplan though, but in chem/ochem you want to do as many different practice problems as possible.
If anyone has any questions feel free to ask - I used this board a lot to prepare myself mentally so hopefully this helps someone else!
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