DAT done, finally! VERY short breakdown

[Ninja9]

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So, today I met the big, bad DAT I've heard so much about.

Background information: I have the flu. Possibly swine flu, possibly some other wretched virus that decided to wreck havoc on my body on Friday, exactly one day after the window for re-scheduling had closed. Great. So basically my weekend of cramming, reviewing, and taking practice tests turned into various spurts of half-a**ed studying interrupted by fits of coughing, headaches, nausea, and a general feeling of "I don't want/can't move from this bed". So I wasn't expecting much.

I arrived at the Prometric center at 7:15am, went over some notes until 8, then went to sign in for my 8:30 test appointment.

With a pain in my stomach (either anxiety or further evidence of the swine flu), I slumped into my seat and began to tackle the test. At least until QR, that's what it seemed like I was doing.

Bio: Random. That's all.
Materials used: Kaplan BB, Destroyer, Cliffs AP Bio, Wikipedia and other random websites (mostly for illustrations).

Chem: In contrast to my practice tests, this section was highly calculation-based, which caught me off guard. Didn't do as well as I would have expected.
Materials used: KBB, Destroyer, that's about it...

OChem: During the test, I thought this was by far the easiest section, but I think I rushed it a little too much because I spent most of the time on the Chem section. Probably overlooked easy things, thought I did better. Oh well.
Materials Used: Destroyer, Kaplan flash cards

PAT: Not as hard as I expected it to be. To be honest, I didn't study for this section AT ALL with the exception of Top Score tests. Surprised and happy about my score.
Materials Used: Whatever was on TopScore

Reading Comprehension: P-I-A-N-O
So, I saw the first passage come up, "Cell Communication" or something like that, and thanks to this wonderful forum, I freaked. After a minute or two of irrational hyperventilating, I decided to tackle this section the way I had in practice tests: read the passage, answer the questions. No search and destroy, no mapping, just read, write keywords of each paragraph, and then answer the questions. And after all was said and done, Piano was NOT BAD. You have to use critcal thinking, yes, and some of the questions are worded weirdly, but nothing that can't be answered by READING the passage. Materials used: Reading Twilight and Harry Potter 😉

QR: Le sigh. By the time I got to QR, I definitely wanted to puke. Not from the test, as that was going fine, but from the bugs that had invaded my body and decided that today I would suck at math. What a shame, too, as on the Kaplan diagnostic I got a 25 and I've always gotten As/A+s in all my math classes. I'm pissed as hell about it, but it was simply a matter of time + flu + QR being last that culminated in my stinky score. Also, Sunday was supposed to be my day to heavily review QR, but that was cut VERY short by being sick (oh, and some football here and there 😛)
Materials Used: Destroyer (not the separate math one), some websites

Overall: I really don't like the way the center is set up. I felt like I was going into a gas chamber to take an already stressful test. But oh well, at least it's over and now I can finally recover!

Scores:
Bio 23 (98%)
GC 19 (73%)
OC 20 (81.3%)
PAT 21 (92.2%)
RC 21 (84.5%)
QR 16 (53.2%) 🙁

TS 21 (92.4%)
AA 20 (87.1%)

PS: Do you guys think I have a chance at getting in somewhere? I'm applying this year and my GPA is 4.0/4.0 (Bachelors in Env. Science with minor in Chem). I have some clubs and shadowing (around 50 hours) but no research.

Thanks to everyone on this forum to contributing. Boy does it feel good to be done! 👍

 

[wantVCUdental]

congrats, way to take down the piano 🙂

 

[whawha]

Great scores even with Piano 👍 I got very sick a day before my test too...I know how you were feeling that night. Great job!

 

[failedmagician]

way to make the piano look like a piece of cake!

 

[Ninja9]

Thanks everyone for your kind words!

So do you think I stand a shot, or should I retake bc of that stupid QR score?

 

[failedmagician]

Thanks everyone for your kind words!

So do you think I stand a shot, or should I retake bc of that stupid QR score?

You definitely stand a shot. Retake if your QR is under a cutoff for the school you want. Or if your low score is in a science/reading section IMO. 16 is above almost all of the cut offs.

 

[allstardentist]

you did fine. good work

 

[ZzZzSleepyhead]

Sweet job, I'm sure you'll be fine (especially with that gpa 😱)

Btw, seems like everyone is getting sick before their DATs lately >.>. I can vouch for Ninja that studying+taking the test sick is not a fun time. (Though I guess I'm lucky I didn't have swine flu 😀)

 

[Ninja9]

Thanks for the encouragement sleepyhead! Yea, I was doing fine until QR came around...then it was all downhill. After the test I felt so bad I could barely drive myself home. I literally thought I was going to puke all over the screen during QR. Do you think they would've considered that cheating?

 

[skiphotsauce]

Regardless of whether you were sick, you should be happy with those scores. Even though it's late, those are solid scores and with a 4.0 gpa, I imagine you would get some interviews. There is no reason not to apply now, you have nothing to lose. Judging from feedback on this forum, the QR is probably the least important section, just make sure the schools you apply to don't have a cutoff for that section.