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Hey Guys,
Just took the DAT for the first time yesterday at the Seattle Prometric Center. This is my first post and thought I?d share some observations and suggestions.
Prometric Center-
? Bring your own water. The bathrooms stink and though they have cups there I wouldn?t recommend drinking from them.
? The computers suck big time: low refresh rate, terrible resolution and pretty slow. So, when you take your practice exam, reduce the resolution to 600x800 and turn down the refresh rate to as low as she?ll go (don?t practice on a laptop or LCD screen).
? The mice they have are terrible so try to practice with an old ball roller mouse (no scroll wheel).
? Also a bag to put all your things in for the locker is kinda handy, as is a sandwich.
The Test-
? The Break: no matter what the testers say, the test WILL resume without you if you take more than 15min for your break. There is no countdown clock for the break so it does throw you for a bit of a loop.
? If you took the Kaplan course, there are two differences between the computerized practice and the real thing. 1) you can?t go to ?item review? until you?ve seen all the Qs. 2) B/c of the low resolution the whole question often does not fit in the screen so you have to hit the ?next? or ?scroll down? button twice before moving on.
The content-
? The Bio was relatively easy compared to Kaplan, with a few I couldn?t remember. Ex: What sub-cellular structure causes muscle cells to have a striated appearance?
? Gen Chem: know the material Kaplan covers especially the formulas (PV=nRT, Osm. Pres. = MRT, etc.)
? O-chem: know how organic molecules behave in acidic/basic solutions. Ex: At a pH of 10 (or a 0.1M NaOH solution), Lysine will be appear as which of the following? Then you choose which end of the molecule gets stripped of H?s or overloaded with H?s.
? PAT: As everyone should know, the angle ranking is practically a joke (is this angle 88 deg or 87 deg? it?s that ridiculous). The pattern folding was easier than Kaplan though the key-holes were on average more difficult. The Cubes are a cake walk if you know how to count systematically. The key holes were slightly more difficult than Kaplan but I recommended doing as many of them as possible ahead of time so that you can blast through them (most time saved for me).
? Reading: Ignore Kaplan and read the text through fast then go back and find the specific details as needed. If you have a memory than spans more than 10 minutes you can answer 75% of the Q?s per text without going back. Topics: 1) Drug resistant bacteria, 2) Enzymatic Kinases, 3) The Aging process. Most important, Kaplan never showed us any Q?s that asked you to consider a synonym for a word or phrase in the text (i.e. which of the following is most like how word ?X? was used in the text). Also, you were asked to evaluate the authors tone and choose from a list of similar and dissimilar descriptive words. So, if your vocabulary sucks, don?t study SAT words, just make sure you look up every word you don?t know as your reading in general (my pocket electronic dictionary is a life saver).
? Q-Res: The math was easy if you can multiply decimals quickly. Also, practice as many of the coin combinations problems as possible (big time consumer as are the other word problems). Ex1: There are 1000 coins in bag, 30% are dimes, half as many are nickels and the balance is quarters, how much money is in the bag? Also a logic question was thrown in which I?d never even heard of before. Ex2: Building B is taller than C. Building D is taller than A but shorter an E, Building E is twice as tall as building B. which is the shortest?
Final piece of advice: I skipped the sections on the PAT and the Science I know I had trouble with and just entered D for all of them (shorter distance for pointer than going to A, and E is sometimes covered up). So I did the Bio and O-chem back to back which left me with over 45min to do the Gen Chem, my weakest area (mostly b/c of the math and formulas). In the PAT, I skipped in the top-front-end and continued through the others. That left me almost 20 minutes just to do the T-F-E. I also skipped all the lengthy calculation and word problems on the Math and came back to them once the basic math and trig were out of the way. I had time to review my marked Q?s in all sections of the test by this method.
Scores:
AA: 20 (86.1)
PAT 20 (88.2)
QR 18 (74.6)
RC 23 (92.0)
Bio 23 (98.5)
GenC 19 (75.0)
Ochem 19 (73.5)
TS 20 (86.9)
On average, these numbers are 2-4 points higher than what I was getting on the Kaplan practice tests, that is except for the PAT which was 2-3 points lower.
Hope this helped,
eran
Just took the DAT for the first time yesterday at the Seattle Prometric Center. This is my first post and thought I?d share some observations and suggestions.
Prometric Center-
? Bring your own water. The bathrooms stink and though they have cups there I wouldn?t recommend drinking from them.
? The computers suck big time: low refresh rate, terrible resolution and pretty slow. So, when you take your practice exam, reduce the resolution to 600x800 and turn down the refresh rate to as low as she?ll go (don?t practice on a laptop or LCD screen).
? The mice they have are terrible so try to practice with an old ball roller mouse (no scroll wheel).
? Also a bag to put all your things in for the locker is kinda handy, as is a sandwich.
The Test-
? The Break: no matter what the testers say, the test WILL resume without you if you take more than 15min for your break. There is no countdown clock for the break so it does throw you for a bit of a loop.
? If you took the Kaplan course, there are two differences between the computerized practice and the real thing. 1) you can?t go to ?item review? until you?ve seen all the Qs. 2) B/c of the low resolution the whole question often does not fit in the screen so you have to hit the ?next? or ?scroll down? button twice before moving on.
The content-
? The Bio was relatively easy compared to Kaplan, with a few I couldn?t remember. Ex: What sub-cellular structure causes muscle cells to have a striated appearance?
? Gen Chem: know the material Kaplan covers especially the formulas (PV=nRT, Osm. Pres. = MRT, etc.)
? O-chem: know how organic molecules behave in acidic/basic solutions. Ex: At a pH of 10 (or a 0.1M NaOH solution), Lysine will be appear as which of the following? Then you choose which end of the molecule gets stripped of H?s or overloaded with H?s.
? PAT: As everyone should know, the angle ranking is practically a joke (is this angle 88 deg or 87 deg? it?s that ridiculous). The pattern folding was easier than Kaplan though the key-holes were on average more difficult. The Cubes are a cake walk if you know how to count systematically. The key holes were slightly more difficult than Kaplan but I recommended doing as many of them as possible ahead of time so that you can blast through them (most time saved for me).
? Reading: Ignore Kaplan and read the text through fast then go back and find the specific details as needed. If you have a memory than spans more than 10 minutes you can answer 75% of the Q?s per text without going back. Topics: 1) Drug resistant bacteria, 2) Enzymatic Kinases, 3) The Aging process. Most important, Kaplan never showed us any Q?s that asked you to consider a synonym for a word or phrase in the text (i.e. which of the following is most like how word ?X? was used in the text). Also, you were asked to evaluate the authors tone and choose from a list of similar and dissimilar descriptive words. So, if your vocabulary sucks, don?t study SAT words, just make sure you look up every word you don?t know as your reading in general (my pocket electronic dictionary is a life saver).
? Q-Res: The math was easy if you can multiply decimals quickly. Also, practice as many of the coin combinations problems as possible (big time consumer as are the other word problems). Ex1: There are 1000 coins in bag, 30% are dimes, half as many are nickels and the balance is quarters, how much money is in the bag? Also a logic question was thrown in which I?d never even heard of before. Ex2: Building B is taller than C. Building D is taller than A but shorter an E, Building E is twice as tall as building B. which is the shortest?
Final piece of advice: I skipped the sections on the PAT and the Science I know I had trouble with and just entered D for all of them (shorter distance for pointer than going to A, and E is sometimes covered up). So I did the Bio and O-chem back to back which left me with over 45min to do the Gen Chem, my weakest area (mostly b/c of the math and formulas). In the PAT, I skipped in the top-front-end and continued through the others. That left me almost 20 minutes just to do the T-F-E. I also skipped all the lengthy calculation and word problems on the Math and came back to them once the basic math and trig were out of the way. I had time to review my marked Q?s in all sections of the test by this method.
Scores:
AA: 20 (86.1)
PAT 20 (88.2)
QR 18 (74.6)
RC 23 (92.0)
Bio 23 (98.5)
GenC 19 (75.0)
Ochem 19 (73.5)
TS 20 (86.9)
On average, these numbers are 2-4 points higher than what I was getting on the Kaplan practice tests, that is except for the PAT which was 2-3 points lower.
Hope this helped,
eran
