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- May 18, 2008
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I am a sophomore at a small liberal arts school on the east coast. This forum helped me a ton in terms of what to get, what to study, and how to study. Whoever started this website is a genius and I hope I thank him/her personally one day. I am here to help you direct your studying. So feel free to ask me questions.
Study Materials:
~Kaplan Blue Book: Buy it and go over it first. This gives you good background knowledge about what you need to know overall. It is definitely not enough, but it is necessary. Yeah, the bio section sucks.
~Schaum's Bio: Overrated. I am a very visual learner and the pictures are not only scarce but they are also terrible. It was too dense for me to grasp the overall message of the chapter. Get Campbell's instead if you can.
~Campbell's Bio: Awesome. It takes a lifetime to get through, but it is worth it. Try buying it used. Fortunately, I had it from AP Bio. Does a fantastic job of explaining the concepts you need to know. Just read the sections that pertain to the DAT.
~Destroyer: Overrated but decent. OC and GC were definite overkill. The best part about this book for me was the fact that it pointed out my weak spots in bio, then I rad about them in Campbell. Truthfully, a lot of the orgo was useless, and I knew they wouldn't ask about it on the DAT.
~Achiever: Great for timing; awful at predicting your actual score. I would definitely buy this.
~Crack DAT PAT: Incredible. Buy it. I started out getting scores of 21, then I worked my way up to scores of 23 and 25.
~Crack DAT Math: Great for timing. TERRIBLE EXPLANATIONS. I was so pissed about the way they explained it.
I have posted the scores of my practice tests below. Needless to say, they freaked me out and made me study harder. The PAT on Achiever is ridiculous and the keyhole questions are nothing like the real thing. The main thing that was different about the DAT overall was the ranging level of difficulty. Each section on each practice test had questions that were all about the same level of difficulty. However, on the DAT you would get a question you had no idea about, then you would get a question a 2nd grader could answer. There were questions with a wider range of difficulty.
Kaplan Blue Book CD Test (I took this in May):
Bio 16
GC 18
OC 18
PAT 23
RC 19
QR 21
Achiever 1 (I took this two weeks before the DAT):
AA 20
PAT 20
QR 20
RC 21
Bio 17
GC 19
OC 20
TS 19
Achiever 2 (I took this one week before the DAT):
AA 18
PAT 18
QR 21
RC 19
Bio 16
GC 17
OC 18
TS 17
Achiever 3 (I took this two days before the DAT):
AA 21
PAT 21
QR 22
RC 26
Bio 17
GC 17
OC 23
TS 19
Here is my section by section breakdown of the test:
PAT: Straightforward. If you can handle Crack DAT, you can handle the real deal.
QR: You gotta be stupid fast.
OC: Know the basics.
GC: Conversions were huge.
Bio: I have only taken 2 bio classes and it was all molecular stuff, so I had no background in ecology, human physiology, or plants. It should be no surprise that I thought the hardest part was bio by far. I bet I directed 90% of my studying towards it, and there was still stuff I had never seen before.
RC: Very comparable to achiever, however there were more tone questions. Don't search and destroy; do yourself a favor and read the passage. Here's my strategy (and it works because I am a slow reader): give yourself 5-6 minutes to read the passage, then answer the questions in 14-minutes. Therefore, you have 20 minutes per passage. I used to do search and destroy and I sucked at RC. Then I started reading the whole thing and I knew the answers to most of the questions without even having to glance back down at the passage. Plus, tone questions are way easier. Make sure you stay on schedule in terms of timing though.
FINALLY, here are my scores:
PAT: 25
QR: 19
RC: 21
Bio: 19
GC: 21
OC: 26
TS:21
AA:21
Let me know what you think my chances are. My top choices are North Carolina, Colorado, Tufts, Creighton, and Case Western.
Study Materials:
~Kaplan Blue Book: Buy it and go over it first. This gives you good background knowledge about what you need to know overall. It is definitely not enough, but it is necessary. Yeah, the bio section sucks.
~Schaum's Bio: Overrated. I am a very visual learner and the pictures are not only scarce but they are also terrible. It was too dense for me to grasp the overall message of the chapter. Get Campbell's instead if you can.
~Campbell's Bio: Awesome. It takes a lifetime to get through, but it is worth it. Try buying it used. Fortunately, I had it from AP Bio. Does a fantastic job of explaining the concepts you need to know. Just read the sections that pertain to the DAT.
~Destroyer: Overrated but decent. OC and GC were definite overkill. The best part about this book for me was the fact that it pointed out my weak spots in bio, then I rad about them in Campbell. Truthfully, a lot of the orgo was useless, and I knew they wouldn't ask about it on the DAT.
~Achiever: Great for timing; awful at predicting your actual score. I would definitely buy this.
~Crack DAT PAT: Incredible. Buy it. I started out getting scores of 21, then I worked my way up to scores of 23 and 25.
~Crack DAT Math: Great for timing. TERRIBLE EXPLANATIONS. I was so pissed about the way they explained it.
I have posted the scores of my practice tests below. Needless to say, they freaked me out and made me study harder. The PAT on Achiever is ridiculous and the keyhole questions are nothing like the real thing. The main thing that was different about the DAT overall was the ranging level of difficulty. Each section on each practice test had questions that were all about the same level of difficulty. However, on the DAT you would get a question you had no idea about, then you would get a question a 2nd grader could answer. There were questions with a wider range of difficulty.
Kaplan Blue Book CD Test (I took this in May):
Bio 16
GC 18
OC 18
PAT 23
RC 19
QR 21
Achiever 1 (I took this two weeks before the DAT):
AA 20
PAT 20
QR 20
RC 21
Bio 17
GC 19
OC 20
TS 19
Achiever 2 (I took this one week before the DAT):
AA 18
PAT 18
QR 21
RC 19
Bio 16
GC 17
OC 18
TS 17
Achiever 3 (I took this two days before the DAT):
AA 21
PAT 21
QR 22
RC 26
Bio 17
GC 17
OC 23
TS 19
Here is my section by section breakdown of the test:
PAT: Straightforward. If you can handle Crack DAT, you can handle the real deal.
QR: You gotta be stupid fast.
OC: Know the basics.
GC: Conversions were huge.
Bio: I have only taken 2 bio classes and it was all molecular stuff, so I had no background in ecology, human physiology, or plants. It should be no surprise that I thought the hardest part was bio by far. I bet I directed 90% of my studying towards it, and there was still stuff I had never seen before.
RC: Very comparable to achiever, however there were more tone questions. Don't search and destroy; do yourself a favor and read the passage. Here's my strategy (and it works because I am a slow reader): give yourself 5-6 minutes to read the passage, then answer the questions in 14-minutes. Therefore, you have 20 minutes per passage. I used to do search and destroy and I sucked at RC. Then I started reading the whole thing and I knew the answers to most of the questions without even having to glance back down at the passage. Plus, tone questions are way easier. Make sure you stay on schedule in terms of timing though.
FINALLY, here are my scores:
PAT: 25
QR: 19
RC: 21
Bio: 19
GC: 21
OC: 26
TS:21
AA:21
Let me know what you think my chances are. My top choices are North Carolina, Colorado, Tufts, Creighton, and Case Western.