- Joined
- May 19, 2015
- Messages
- 204
- Reaction score
- 168
I just retook my DAT yesterday, and I want to give some hope to anyone else who got demolished by the DAT the first time around. I first took the (Canadian) DAT in my second year when I thought I was invincible. I studied for a week, and most of that was playing with PAT problems.
My old scores:
Reading Comp: 23
Bio: 17
Chem: 17
TS: 17
AA: 19
PAT: 22
After retaking:
Reading Comp: 26
Bio: 20
Gen chem: 22
Ochem: 23
Quantitative: 21
TS: 21
AA: 22
PAT: 25
So as you can see, BIG improvement. Honestly I was going into it thinking I'd by happy with straight 19s, thats how scared I was. I studied for about 2 months. It was a roller coaster. The first two weeks I was working full time at a research lab with a part time job over top, and studying between. I quit the part time job. For the next three-ish weeks my studying was pretty laid back. Maybe 2 hours a day, up to 4 if I was feeling ambitious. Then I panicked, staying at my lab 12-13 hours a day, studying while I was waiting for things to finish.
I got Kaplan before I found this site and realized how awful it was. If you have a terrible background like me, and have a ton of money like I don't, then MAYBE it would be worth it. It's pretty vague and in some parts even wrong. Chad's is a must regardless of if you're a chem genius or chem brain-dead (like me). As everyone else says, Destroyer is a must if you want to do well. Now for the fun part:
BIO (20): I struggled HARD with biology. I've taken just enough bio classes for a minor, and many of them are quantitative bio classes. Saying my background was weak was an understatement. I hadn't taken classes that covered immunology, muscle or skeletal systems, and I hadn't seen embryology, reproductive, endocrine, nervous or digestive systems since high school. I used Kaplan as an outline for what to study from other sources; I'd read their notes, then go watch videos and google the topics I was rough on (everything). Khan academy was great for this. I did some destroyer, but I definitely ran out of time due to the fact that I underestimated how much I didn't know about anything. From the 200 questions I did, I think I had 2-3 questions on my real DAT I wouldn't have gotten without it though. It's crazy random, just learn as much about everything as you can. I know it sounds terrifying, but it's actually really manageable. I would google all terms/processes/whatever that I didn't know, and I made cue cards on Study Blue. It's an online cue card system that syncs to your phone. That made me really fun at parties (just kidding, what parties?).
Gen Chem (22): I pretty much just used Chad's, then practiced with the Kaplan quizzes. It was pretty straight forward if you know the formulas and general concepts from Chad's. Sorry I don't have much more to say about this!
Ochem (23): Ochem was literally the bane of my existence before the DAT. I avoiding studying it until 3 weeks before my test. I HATED ochem, and was always lost in my ochem 2 class. I watched Chad's, but what really made it hit home was essentially redoing an old class. I got access to the online assignments and practice material from the honors ochem 2 class at my university, and did everything on there at least once. Like Chad said, it really helps if you can start recognizing patterns, so you can predict what will happen even if you've never seen the specific reaction before. I feel like practice is the only way to do this. After redoing the course, I hit Destroyer hard. If you can do that, you can easily do the DAT. The actual DAT was very basic in comparison. Also, I took the free bootcamp test two days before my test, got 17 and pretended it didn't happen.
Quantitative (21): Okay, I'm actually really embarrassed about this one. I feel like I have to change my username to predent_wannabe_mathlete. I have no idea what happened. I practiced math when I was feeling fried from studying other sections. I did the tests on Kaplan and a bunch of Destroyer. The ones I got wrong were generally small calculation errors. On full length practice, I ALWAYS finished early. On the real test, at question 20 I had 17 minutes left. Whoops. The questions were the same type as I'd seen when I was studying, so I really have no idea how I got slowed down so much. Oh well. The only advice I have for this section besides practice goes out to my fellow Canadians: KNOW IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS. I had one question where I had to know how many ounces were in a pound. Probably common knowledge for Americans, but I had no idea. Whoops.
PAT (25): It's all practice. I had been using the angle ranking generator from DAT genius because it was free and I sucked at them. On there, if I got 1/3 right it was a great session. But it was way, way, WAY harder than the real thing. I had a couple crazy folding questions, and one keyhole where I swear they were all wrong answers, but the rest of it was pretty basic. One thing that really threw me off: for the hole punch, the proportions were off from all the practice I'd done. The actual DAT put this weird thick border around the hole punch surface so I thought all the punches were half punches. I figured it out though.
Reading (26): I didn't practice except for the full lengths I did. I'm a fairly avid reader, and I'm confident that's why this was such a breeze for me. Because of this, I prescribe everyone who is struggling with reading comp to go read Stephen King novels! He really is the best. Each of my passages was 14 decently short paragraphs.
Day before my DAT: I thought this was really important. From all the long days, my brain was getting REALLY fried. The day before my DAT I studied for about 2 hours in the morning, then went to the waterpark and went out for sushi. It really helped going into the real thing with a fresh mind. The only thing that threw me off the day of the test was that my laminated sheets were pink. I'm not sure if everyone's are pink and I just assumed they were white, but it was weird for me.
Overall, figure out what works for you, DON'T neglect the areas you're scared of, and it'll all be worth it at the end!
(Sorry for rambling)
My old scores:
Reading Comp: 23
Bio: 17
Chem: 17
TS: 17
AA: 19
PAT: 22
After retaking:
Reading Comp: 26
Bio: 20
Gen chem: 22
Ochem: 23
Quantitative: 21
TS: 21
AA: 22
PAT: 25
So as you can see, BIG improvement. Honestly I was going into it thinking I'd by happy with straight 19s, thats how scared I was. I studied for about 2 months. It was a roller coaster. The first two weeks I was working full time at a research lab with a part time job over top, and studying between. I quit the part time job. For the next three-ish weeks my studying was pretty laid back. Maybe 2 hours a day, up to 4 if I was feeling ambitious. Then I panicked, staying at my lab 12-13 hours a day, studying while I was waiting for things to finish.
I got Kaplan before I found this site and realized how awful it was. If you have a terrible background like me, and have a ton of money like I don't, then MAYBE it would be worth it. It's pretty vague and in some parts even wrong. Chad's is a must regardless of if you're a chem genius or chem brain-dead (like me). As everyone else says, Destroyer is a must if you want to do well. Now for the fun part:
BIO (20): I struggled HARD with biology. I've taken just enough bio classes for a minor, and many of them are quantitative bio classes. Saying my background was weak was an understatement. I hadn't taken classes that covered immunology, muscle or skeletal systems, and I hadn't seen embryology, reproductive, endocrine, nervous or digestive systems since high school. I used Kaplan as an outline for what to study from other sources; I'd read their notes, then go watch videos and google the topics I was rough on (everything). Khan academy was great for this. I did some destroyer, but I definitely ran out of time due to the fact that I underestimated how much I didn't know about anything. From the 200 questions I did, I think I had 2-3 questions on my real DAT I wouldn't have gotten without it though. It's crazy random, just learn as much about everything as you can. I know it sounds terrifying, but it's actually really manageable. I would google all terms/processes/whatever that I didn't know, and I made cue cards on Study Blue. It's an online cue card system that syncs to your phone. That made me really fun at parties (just kidding, what parties?).
Gen Chem (22): I pretty much just used Chad's, then practiced with the Kaplan quizzes. It was pretty straight forward if you know the formulas and general concepts from Chad's. Sorry I don't have much more to say about this!
Ochem (23): Ochem was literally the bane of my existence before the DAT. I avoiding studying it until 3 weeks before my test. I HATED ochem, and was always lost in my ochem 2 class. I watched Chad's, but what really made it hit home was essentially redoing an old class. I got access to the online assignments and practice material from the honors ochem 2 class at my university, and did everything on there at least once. Like Chad said, it really helps if you can start recognizing patterns, so you can predict what will happen even if you've never seen the specific reaction before. I feel like practice is the only way to do this. After redoing the course, I hit Destroyer hard. If you can do that, you can easily do the DAT. The actual DAT was very basic in comparison. Also, I took the free bootcamp test two days before my test, got 17 and pretended it didn't happen.
Quantitative (21): Okay, I'm actually really embarrassed about this one. I feel like I have to change my username to predent_wannabe_mathlete. I have no idea what happened. I practiced math when I was feeling fried from studying other sections. I did the tests on Kaplan and a bunch of Destroyer. The ones I got wrong were generally small calculation errors. On full length practice, I ALWAYS finished early. On the real test, at question 20 I had 17 minutes left. Whoops. The questions were the same type as I'd seen when I was studying, so I really have no idea how I got slowed down so much. Oh well. The only advice I have for this section besides practice goes out to my fellow Canadians: KNOW IMPERIAL MEASUREMENTS. I had one question where I had to know how many ounces were in a pound. Probably common knowledge for Americans, but I had no idea. Whoops.
PAT (25): It's all practice. I had been using the angle ranking generator from DAT genius because it was free and I sucked at them. On there, if I got 1/3 right it was a great session. But it was way, way, WAY harder than the real thing. I had a couple crazy folding questions, and one keyhole where I swear they were all wrong answers, but the rest of it was pretty basic. One thing that really threw me off: for the hole punch, the proportions were off from all the practice I'd done. The actual DAT put this weird thick border around the hole punch surface so I thought all the punches were half punches. I figured it out though.
Reading (26): I didn't practice except for the full lengths I did. I'm a fairly avid reader, and I'm confident that's why this was such a breeze for me. Because of this, I prescribe everyone who is struggling with reading comp to go read Stephen King novels! He really is the best. Each of my passages was 14 decently short paragraphs.
Day before my DAT: I thought this was really important. From all the long days, my brain was getting REALLY fried. The day before my DAT I studied for about 2 hours in the morning, then went to the waterpark and went out for sushi. It really helped going into the real thing with a fresh mind. The only thing that threw me off the day of the test was that my laminated sheets were pink. I'm not sure if everyone's are pink and I just assumed they were white, but it was weird for me.
Overall, figure out what works for you, DON'T neglect the areas you're scared of, and it'll all be worth it at the end!
(Sorry for rambling)
gj tho on scores
Congratulations!
