Tempest001
New Member
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Just took my DAT in September and got the scores back so here’s how my journey went.
Scores:
New Scale
QR - 490
RC - 440
Bio - 570
G. Chem - 500
O. Chem - 510
SNS - 530
PAT - 560
AA - 500
Old Scale (According to the table posted by the ADA which sometimes puts my new scale score in between old scale scores because the new scale has more increments)
QR - 23/24
RC - 22/23
Bio - 27/28
G. Chem - 24/25
O. Chem - 25
SNS - 26
PAT - 25
AA - 24/25
–Background
Current 4th year Bio major with a 3.98 total gpa and never took a standardized test like the SAT or ACT for college admissions, my only experience with standardized is a handful of AP tests of which I only passed 2-3. And I only ever used 1 service as my sole prep materials. Either Bootcamp or Booster.
–Test Prep
I actually had a unique experience when studying for the DAT. The first time I studied was the summer after my 2nd year of undergrad after asking the upperclassmen what the best time to start was. It’s a popular time that many people choose since most people have already completed their respective pre req series (Bio, G. Chem, and O. Chem) so it’s still pretty fresh in their minds. I used DAT Bootcamp and studied for 3 months in the summer and had the DAT scheduled the day before the first day back to college. Unfortunately, I went on to cancel a week before after looking at my scores on my practice exams. I had horrible RC and PAT scores on individual practice tests and on top of that I barely had taken any full lengths. I even started to think I wasn’t cut out for this and that maybe dentistry wasn’t for me if I can’t even get past the admission test. I think the main contributing factors to the downfall of my initial attempt were that I was working full time (approx. 35 hr a week) and I hadn’t been consistently practicing the skills needed for RC and PAT. I was arrogant after doing so well in my undergrad classes that I thought I could get away with just practicing a bit and letting off as the test date approached.
After cancelling that initial DAT I went through all of 3rd year without looking at the DAT again since I’m the type of person that can’t split my focus between my college classes and DAT prep. I want to always give one academic focus my full attention. So I waited until the summer after my 3rd year and I bought DAT Booster this time around. I cut my work to part time (Approx. 8 hours a week) and only worked mornings to get over the morning drowsiness and have the rest of the day to study. I scheduled the DAT again for the day before the first day of classes. I used the custom schedule builder in DAT Booster and set my DAT date 2 weeks before my actual date and I told the schedule builder to give me the weekends off, but I still studied on the weekends. That put my daily study time to around 5-6 hrs per day only on the weekdays in the generated schedule. I used the weekends to either review content, practice skills, catch up if I fell behind, or occasionally get ahead. I always wanted to give myself a full plate of studying because when I used a schedule builder last time and only had 2-3 hrs worth of content I would take the rest of the day off and that felt unproductive. Why did I do this? I wanted to give myself the feeling I was behind and that would motivate me to study and actually not fall behind. In reality I was ahead of schedule by a lot and by the time I got to the end of the schedule DAT Booster had created I had an extra 2 weeks before my actual test date. So I bought extra full lengths to not only cover more content that I hadn’t seen questions about, but also increase my stamina to be able to easily sit down and take a 5 hr long exam. It was very crucial for me to build this stamina since I had never taken an exam this long. At the peak I was taking like 3 full lengths a week towards the end of my studying and felt super prepared the day before.
–Studying/Test day experience
-RC and PAT
I consider RC and PAT what I call skills, they aren’t sections you can “study” like the sciences and math parts. They truly are skills you need to develop early and like any other skill that you stop practicing you can lose it to a degree. I really liked how DAT Booster schedule builder put the intro videos to RC and PAT early on, week 1/2, and instantly started to put me to practice. You must keep yourself accountable and practice these skills until the very last week of prep in my opinion.
Specifically for RC I used the vanilla method aka as reading the entire passage, highlighting, and then answering questions. I found I was always running out of time scrambling to answer the last questions without really thinking about the wording of the questions. After I made the switch to search and destroy I had more time to answer questions and my scores improved.
For PAT there’s no real tricks besides one that worked for me which was when I would get to the PAT section of a full length or just do an individual PAT test I would skip to the angle ranking and work from there, after finishing pattern folding I would do TFE and finally do keyholes. It’s a pretty weird strategy but this way I would force myself to do angle ranking in seconds and bank as much time for keyholes which I found when I spent more time I would get more correct naturally noticing more differences. Granted, my angle ranking scores were always low (around 5-8 /15) but all the other sections made up for it. I knew I wasn’t good at angle ranking so spending more time on it would have very diminished returns for me.
On the test day experience, for RC I liked how difficult the DAT Booster exams were, the questions were out of order and had really complex questions sometimes. On the actual DAT the questions were for the most part in order so I actually finished with 10 mins to spare and re did the first passage I felt I had the most trouble with. My scores with RC always varied between 440 to around 520 on practice exams and I felt the RC had similar difficulty level for the questions so I honestly thought I would’ve scored a bit higher, but I’m happy regardless. Hopefully you get passages that are interesting to read.
For PAT I swear DAT Booster over prepped me, which I am super happy about, no complaints here. I found the angles to be of similar difficulty so I didn’t spend much time on them, but every other section I noticed never had any super hard ones that would have me scratching my head, staring at it like Booster did. I noticed I was going faster and ended up with 5-10 mins to spare so I rechecked a couple pattern foldings and TFE I marked.
General advice though for both of these since I felt that the timer was always on my mind for both these sections, don’t get stuck on the hard questions for too long. Each question is weighted equally so throw down an answer, mark, and come back if time permits.
-Bio
Studying Bio with Booster was great. The videos had great visuals, they provided great mnemonics, and the problem difficulty was on par with the difficulty of the real DAT. Being a Bio major I always liked to study Bio and after going through my 3rd year of college, the upper divs such as microbio, genetics, biochem, hormones, neuro, and ecology helped me get through the content review quicker as I was reviewing instead of learning for the first time. I tried using the anki flashcards to memorize the facts about all the animal phyla I struggled with but if I were to do it all over again I would make my own table with all the phyla and key characteristics so that I could see all of them together to compare and contrast them. When test day came around I felt like I was taking another practice test so I went through it and banked myself 10-15 mins to spend on G. chem and O. chem which for me always requires more time relative to Bio.
-G. Chem
Since G. chem has more formulas and constants you need to memorize as well as manual calculations you need to perform I recommend you get through as many practice questions as possible. The reason I emphasize this on G. chem is because you need to perform a truthful self reflection as to why you miss the questions you do: was it a content issue, miscalculation, etc. For example sometimes I would get questions wrong because I simply forgot the formula for osmotic pressure, or I forgot how to convert Atm to kPa, or maybe I missed a key detail in the question and didn’t take it into account. As soon as you identify why you missed a question and correct for it, your scores will improve! On test day I found the manual calculations were easier and there wasn’t that many of them so it went pretty much like all my practice exams.
-O. Chem
The notorious O. chem people are always anxious about dealing with. I actually liked O. chem more than G. chem during my undergrad classes. Some key factors to my success here would be memorizing the various aspects of the reactions. You not only have to be able to predict products if given the reactant and reagents, but also be able to work backwards to predict reagents and reactants for every type of reaction. Compare the reactions with similar reagents and take note of whether they accomplish the same goal on different reactants, or add the same functional group at different locations. Self reflection also goes a long way here, did you forget about rearrangements or confuse 2 reactions, did you not memorize the tables for NMRs and IRs, etc. Realizing where your weaknesses lie and improving upon them is the quickest way to bring down low scores. On test day I was going through most questions pretty smoothly. There was only 1-3 that I had to really stop and give a little extra time to think.
-QR
Getting through the content was mostly smooth, I had to spend a bit more time on the work rate and probability sections. After going through the question banks once I never did them again. The schedule builder wanted me to go through each of the question banks again but I found I would remember details about questions and know what the answers would be which led to poor practice. I instead focused on doing more and more practice tests which would give me questions and scenarios on the same concepts but in ways I had never seen before. I think this method was more useful because I was seeing multiple formats of questions and was prepared for any type of question they could throw at me. In QR I also felt the clock constantly working against me, but I practiced enough where I would always have 1-3 mins to spare and on the test it was a similar experience. I did have 2 questions on my test day that were statement sufficiency questions that were asking about abstract concepts I wish I had more experience with. I’ll elaborate, the questions were along the lines of “Is X an odd number?” and the statements were 1.) x+y is odd 2.) x•y is odd. These questions focused on the relationships between numbers rather than finding a numerical value, which I wish I had practiced more.
Another similar one was “There is a set of 25 observations (numbers), what is the maximum value of this set?” And the statements were 1.) The mean of the set is 50 2.) The range of the set is 25. I may have not remembered the exact numbers for the exact question but hopefully you guys get the type of question I’m referring to.
—Closing words
This test brought me to one of my lowest moments on my pre dental journey, it had me considering that I chose the wrong path. Despite this enormous setback I tried again after a year of not looking at it again and put my best foot forward. At the end of the day the DAT is one of the many metrics schools will evaluate you on, strive for the best score you can achieve but don’t beat yourself up over not getting the best score in the world. Look back on the obstacles you have overcome to get to this point, you have already proven you can overcome adversity. I wish everyone reading the best of luck on their pre dental paths and I will try my best to answer any questions you guys may have.
Scores:
New Scale
QR - 490
RC - 440
Bio - 570
G. Chem - 500
O. Chem - 510
SNS - 530
PAT - 560
AA - 500
Old Scale (According to the table posted by the ADA which sometimes puts my new scale score in between old scale scores because the new scale has more increments)
QR - 23/24
RC - 22/23
Bio - 27/28
G. Chem - 24/25
O. Chem - 25
SNS - 26
PAT - 25
AA - 24/25
–Background
Current 4th year Bio major with a 3.98 total gpa and never took a standardized test like the SAT or ACT for college admissions, my only experience with standardized is a handful of AP tests of which I only passed 2-3. And I only ever used 1 service as my sole prep materials. Either Bootcamp or Booster.
–Test Prep
I actually had a unique experience when studying for the DAT. The first time I studied was the summer after my 2nd year of undergrad after asking the upperclassmen what the best time to start was. It’s a popular time that many people choose since most people have already completed their respective pre req series (Bio, G. Chem, and O. Chem) so it’s still pretty fresh in their minds. I used DAT Bootcamp and studied for 3 months in the summer and had the DAT scheduled the day before the first day back to college. Unfortunately, I went on to cancel a week before after looking at my scores on my practice exams. I had horrible RC and PAT scores on individual practice tests and on top of that I barely had taken any full lengths. I even started to think I wasn’t cut out for this and that maybe dentistry wasn’t for me if I can’t even get past the admission test. I think the main contributing factors to the downfall of my initial attempt were that I was working full time (approx. 35 hr a week) and I hadn’t been consistently practicing the skills needed for RC and PAT. I was arrogant after doing so well in my undergrad classes that I thought I could get away with just practicing a bit and letting off as the test date approached.
After cancelling that initial DAT I went through all of 3rd year without looking at the DAT again since I’m the type of person that can’t split my focus between my college classes and DAT prep. I want to always give one academic focus my full attention. So I waited until the summer after my 3rd year and I bought DAT Booster this time around. I cut my work to part time (Approx. 8 hours a week) and only worked mornings to get over the morning drowsiness and have the rest of the day to study. I scheduled the DAT again for the day before the first day of classes. I used the custom schedule builder in DAT Booster and set my DAT date 2 weeks before my actual date and I told the schedule builder to give me the weekends off, but I still studied on the weekends. That put my daily study time to around 5-6 hrs per day only on the weekdays in the generated schedule. I used the weekends to either review content, practice skills, catch up if I fell behind, or occasionally get ahead. I always wanted to give myself a full plate of studying because when I used a schedule builder last time and only had 2-3 hrs worth of content I would take the rest of the day off and that felt unproductive. Why did I do this? I wanted to give myself the feeling I was behind and that would motivate me to study and actually not fall behind. In reality I was ahead of schedule by a lot and by the time I got to the end of the schedule DAT Booster had created I had an extra 2 weeks before my actual test date. So I bought extra full lengths to not only cover more content that I hadn’t seen questions about, but also increase my stamina to be able to easily sit down and take a 5 hr long exam. It was very crucial for me to build this stamina since I had never taken an exam this long. At the peak I was taking like 3 full lengths a week towards the end of my studying and felt super prepared the day before.
–Studying/Test day experience
-RC and PAT
I consider RC and PAT what I call skills, they aren’t sections you can “study” like the sciences and math parts. They truly are skills you need to develop early and like any other skill that you stop practicing you can lose it to a degree. I really liked how DAT Booster schedule builder put the intro videos to RC and PAT early on, week 1/2, and instantly started to put me to practice. You must keep yourself accountable and practice these skills until the very last week of prep in my opinion.
Specifically for RC I used the vanilla method aka as reading the entire passage, highlighting, and then answering questions. I found I was always running out of time scrambling to answer the last questions without really thinking about the wording of the questions. After I made the switch to search and destroy I had more time to answer questions and my scores improved.
For PAT there’s no real tricks besides one that worked for me which was when I would get to the PAT section of a full length or just do an individual PAT test I would skip to the angle ranking and work from there, after finishing pattern folding I would do TFE and finally do keyholes. It’s a pretty weird strategy but this way I would force myself to do angle ranking in seconds and bank as much time for keyholes which I found when I spent more time I would get more correct naturally noticing more differences. Granted, my angle ranking scores were always low (around 5-8 /15) but all the other sections made up for it. I knew I wasn’t good at angle ranking so spending more time on it would have very diminished returns for me.
On the test day experience, for RC I liked how difficult the DAT Booster exams were, the questions were out of order and had really complex questions sometimes. On the actual DAT the questions were for the most part in order so I actually finished with 10 mins to spare and re did the first passage I felt I had the most trouble with. My scores with RC always varied between 440 to around 520 on practice exams and I felt the RC had similar difficulty level for the questions so I honestly thought I would’ve scored a bit higher, but I’m happy regardless. Hopefully you get passages that are interesting to read.
For PAT I swear DAT Booster over prepped me, which I am super happy about, no complaints here. I found the angles to be of similar difficulty so I didn’t spend much time on them, but every other section I noticed never had any super hard ones that would have me scratching my head, staring at it like Booster did. I noticed I was going faster and ended up with 5-10 mins to spare so I rechecked a couple pattern foldings and TFE I marked.
General advice though for both of these since I felt that the timer was always on my mind for both these sections, don’t get stuck on the hard questions for too long. Each question is weighted equally so throw down an answer, mark, and come back if time permits.
-Bio
Studying Bio with Booster was great. The videos had great visuals, they provided great mnemonics, and the problem difficulty was on par with the difficulty of the real DAT. Being a Bio major I always liked to study Bio and after going through my 3rd year of college, the upper divs such as microbio, genetics, biochem, hormones, neuro, and ecology helped me get through the content review quicker as I was reviewing instead of learning for the first time. I tried using the anki flashcards to memorize the facts about all the animal phyla I struggled with but if I were to do it all over again I would make my own table with all the phyla and key characteristics so that I could see all of them together to compare and contrast them. When test day came around I felt like I was taking another practice test so I went through it and banked myself 10-15 mins to spend on G. chem and O. chem which for me always requires more time relative to Bio.
-G. Chem
Since G. chem has more formulas and constants you need to memorize as well as manual calculations you need to perform I recommend you get through as many practice questions as possible. The reason I emphasize this on G. chem is because you need to perform a truthful self reflection as to why you miss the questions you do: was it a content issue, miscalculation, etc. For example sometimes I would get questions wrong because I simply forgot the formula for osmotic pressure, or I forgot how to convert Atm to kPa, or maybe I missed a key detail in the question and didn’t take it into account. As soon as you identify why you missed a question and correct for it, your scores will improve! On test day I found the manual calculations were easier and there wasn’t that many of them so it went pretty much like all my practice exams.
-O. Chem
The notorious O. chem people are always anxious about dealing with. I actually liked O. chem more than G. chem during my undergrad classes. Some key factors to my success here would be memorizing the various aspects of the reactions. You not only have to be able to predict products if given the reactant and reagents, but also be able to work backwards to predict reagents and reactants for every type of reaction. Compare the reactions with similar reagents and take note of whether they accomplish the same goal on different reactants, or add the same functional group at different locations. Self reflection also goes a long way here, did you forget about rearrangements or confuse 2 reactions, did you not memorize the tables for NMRs and IRs, etc. Realizing where your weaknesses lie and improving upon them is the quickest way to bring down low scores. On test day I was going through most questions pretty smoothly. There was only 1-3 that I had to really stop and give a little extra time to think.
-QR
Getting through the content was mostly smooth, I had to spend a bit more time on the work rate and probability sections. After going through the question banks once I never did them again. The schedule builder wanted me to go through each of the question banks again but I found I would remember details about questions and know what the answers would be which led to poor practice. I instead focused on doing more and more practice tests which would give me questions and scenarios on the same concepts but in ways I had never seen before. I think this method was more useful because I was seeing multiple formats of questions and was prepared for any type of question they could throw at me. In QR I also felt the clock constantly working against me, but I practiced enough where I would always have 1-3 mins to spare and on the test it was a similar experience. I did have 2 questions on my test day that were statement sufficiency questions that were asking about abstract concepts I wish I had more experience with. I’ll elaborate, the questions were along the lines of “Is X an odd number?” and the statements were 1.) x+y is odd 2.) x•y is odd. These questions focused on the relationships between numbers rather than finding a numerical value, which I wish I had practiced more.
Another similar one was “There is a set of 25 observations (numbers), what is the maximum value of this set?” And the statements were 1.) The mean of the set is 50 2.) The range of the set is 25. I may have not remembered the exact numbers for the exact question but hopefully you guys get the type of question I’m referring to.
—Closing words
This test brought me to one of my lowest moments on my pre dental journey, it had me considering that I chose the wrong path. Despite this enormous setback I tried again after a year of not looking at it again and put my best foot forward. At the end of the day the DAT is one of the many metrics schools will evaluate you on, strive for the best score you can achieve but don’t beat yourself up over not getting the best score in the world. Look back on the obstacles you have overcome to get to this point, you have already proven you can overcome adversity. I wish everyone reading the best of luck on their pre dental paths and I will try my best to answer any questions you guys may have.
Last edited:
