DAT Retake

lol. I am waiting somebody responds to your questions. because they are my weakest points too.

 

If you want craploads of PAT practice, get Crack the PAT. It has 1000+ problems but it ain't cheap neither...

 

If I were you, I'd retake - like you said yourself, your PAT and RC scores are kind of low, and RC is arguably one of the most important questions while a few people (in other threads) have said that some schools weigh the PAT score heavily. Some might tell you that your QR score is fine, but I think it'd be good if you could raise that a few points too.

Btw... great job on the OC section!! As far as how to prepare for the second time around. You mentioned that you started using Destroyer towards the end, which makes me think that you really didn't get to take full advantage of it. Go back through Destroyer and do all the problems and thoroughly read and UNDERSTAND the answers - I think I probably went through Destroyer (for Bio, GChem, and OChem) about 3 times over. Unless you have a photographic memory (unlike 99.9% of us), repetition is key. You're right - you should do a lot of problems (Destroyer will certainly help you out with that ) in the next 2 months... this will definitely challenge your knowledge base. The key isn't just to do the problems - if you get something wrong and you don't understand why it's wrong, look it up... don't just move on and hope that you won't see it on the actual exam.

I think Achiever is GREAT. It has 3 full-length practice exams that are broken down into each of the sections (TS, PAT, RC, QR) so you don't necessarily have to take a complete full-length in one sitting. Also, I thought the PAT software in Achiever was awesome... I had real trouble with TFE when I started studying for PAT, but the Achiever answers present the object in 3D, and it also allows you to rotate the object so that you can see what it looks like from all angles.

For RC... unless you're a piss-poor reader (or if you're ESL), I think strategy is everything for this section. Once you find a strategy that works for you, it's all about timed practice. What was your approach for this section?

 

I have almost identical scores except my rc was higher. I decided to retake but the only thing I am worried about is doing worse on the sections I did well on...similar to your concern. What is your GPA?

 

I definitely give you a ton of credit since English is your second language - many people don't appreciate how difficult it is to learn the language when you're not born into it, so your RC score could be explained by that.

At this point, you have a decision to make. Either emphasize (in your applications) that English is your second language and hope that adcoms will recognize and correlate that with your performance on the RC section, or really focus for the next 2 months or so on doing a lot of practice passages.

I'm not sure which is the better option (maybe some other SDNers with more experience with adcoms can comment?), but my own opinion is that adcoms see so many applications that they may not be completely sympathetic to that fact that you're using ESL as an excuse for your RC score since the ability to read and assimilate a ton of information in an efficient manner during dental school is really crucial - and apparently the RC section is a "good" measure of your ability to do that.

If you choose the latter option, practice practice practice is key. This is the strategy I used (which I learned from a post by another SDNer), and it worked pretty well for me. Here goes: Don't even bother reading the full passage on the first screen for each passage. By the time you get to the questions, I feel like you probably would've forgotten about 75% of what you just read (especially in a pressure-filled test-taking situation). Go straight to the first question and start skimming the passage (starting at the beginning) for the answer - once you find the answer, stop reading and move on to the next question. If the first question is a "tone" or "main idea" question, mark it (and make a mental note of it) and move on to the next question. After doing all the questions for a particular passage, you'll find that you've essentially read through the entire passage, and you should be able to answer any tone or main idea questions.

Using this strategy will definitely take practice and it definitely depends upon your ability to read quickly, so it may not necessarily work for you since you're ESL. But, I think with plenty of practice, you should be good to go.

Hope this helps, and best of luck!