DATQVault vs. DAT Achiever vs. TopScore Pro...and Chad vs. Orgoman vs DAT-To-Go?

[2thDMD]

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1. I wanted to hear from people who used only one of these products and how they felt it compared to (ie: prepared them for) the real DAT.
   
2. Also, I'm really interested to hear from people who utilized more than one of these products. For those that fall into this latter category, please rate the products you used against each other,....and also also against the real DAT.

Obviously, I have listed 3 softwares and 2 study-manual-systems and Chad's Videos/Quizzes, so we have an "apples to oranges to bananas" comparison, but I'm open to all feedback.

Please also enlighten us to any difficulties in verbiage / phrasing that you ran into with any of these study systems. I know that in the past I've used DAT Achiever and TSP and remember that some of the questions (can't remember which software system) were worded very oddly (as if the creator of the software wasn't a native english speaker, so some of the phrasing of the questions was rather confusing, and the explanation of the answers even more so).

2thDMD

 

[Dotoday]

People like Chads. I have seen the new Destroyer from orgoman. It is tough. Some say it matches the real thing. Personally, I like studying from the materials harder than the real exam. It really prepares you for anything that may be thrown at you. Destroyer is great for sciences and math. For RC and Perceptual, you can use other sfuff.
DAT-to Go is Garbage. There were many questions that had incorrect explanations and a very poorly worded questions. It is a true waste of money.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

 

[Sharon914]

Achiever has some pretty good problems. Chad is pretty good with the explanations.
New Destroyer has plenty of problems for Bio, Gen Chem and Orgo sections. There is a separate Math Destroyer that has a bunch of good problems with explanations.
Dat -to-go is crap!! I saw it and found many-many errors. I could not study from it because it gave me wrong information.

 

[2thDMD]

People like Chads. I have seen the new Destroyer from orgoman. It is tough. Some say it matches the real thing. Personally, I like studying from the materials harder than the real exam. It really prepares you for anything that may be thrown at you. Destroyer is great for sciences and math. For RC and Perceptual, you can use other sfuff.
DAT-to Go is Garbage. There were many questions that had incorrect explanations and a very poorly worded questions. It is a true waste of money.
Hope this helps. Good luck.

I agree on all counts.
Chad was my T.A. at ASU. Genuinely great guy, really smart and probably has more friends that Mark Zuckerberg because of the aforementioned reasons.

I, too, like to study with materials that are harder than the real test. I call it the "Michael Jordan" philosophy. He said in an interview that he pushes himself harder than any player or the game ever would, so that come game time there isn't anything that he hasn't seen, experienced or prepared for.

WRT DAT-To-Go, I feel the same way. While it was nice to have a study manual with a lot of (color) graphics, I did find a lot of typos ("Phage" instead of "Phase", and similar errors). I think that I'll relegate that to the perusal pile instead of core study aides.

 

[2thDMD]

Achiever has some pretty good problems. Chad is pretty good with the explanations.
New Destroyer has plenty of problems for Bio, Gen Chem and Orgo sections. There is a separate Math Destroyer that has a bunch of good problems with explanations.
Dat -to-go is crap!! I saw it and found many-many errors. I could not study from it because it gave me wrong information.

The problem I have with Achiever is that they don't offer a Mac version. I used to use them when I had a VMWare partition that allowed me to run Windows OS on the side, but I'm not willing to set all of that up on my new machine simply because the folks at Achiever are still clinging to the equivalent of a Commodore 64 mindset, when the rest of us live in the now, with iPads and smartphones and such. I mean, really...demographically Dentists are some of the most technologically savvy first-adopters of any profession out there. You'd think that a software company that is catering to this niche of soon-to-be professionals (many of whom are die-hard Mac users), would have a Mac version of their software (especially since their software has been around for MANY years). I've contacted them several times in the past to enquire if/when they'd have a Mac version (and if never, then why not). To no avail. Seems like a large (and growing larger by the day) missed opportunity on their part. Oh well, if they don't take care of their (potential) customers, someone else will.

 

[Glimmer1991]

Chad was the best resource I used. Hands down. The material he teaches is very concise and tailored to exactly what you need for the DAT. His quizzes were good, too.

The DAT Destroyer did not match the difficulty of the real test. It was much harder. I went through it multiple times, but it wasn't worth the time. The Math Destroyer was pretty good, but once again, there were some problems on there that were just SUPER hard. I definitely didn't learn that book through-and-through, although I was pretty solid on the regular old Destroyer by test time. Let me repeat, though: it is much harder than the real thing.

I didn't use Achiever... I'm also a Mac user, but I wouldn't have bought it, anyways. I never did a practice test. The only reason why I think it *could* be useful is for the PAT practice. I've heard it's harder than Crack PAT, and Crack PAT was WAY easier than what I got on my real test.

 

[biomolecmed]

Achiever and Chads are pretty good. Good amount of problems with explanations. New Destroyer is a beast. It came out this year with many new tough problems. It has solutions and explanations. It is not easy. However, just like any other books, if you master and understanf all the solutions, you should be good for the real DAT.

DAT to Go, I saw and could not study from it. Seemed like a teacher reading a textbook to me. Just could not learn from it.