Difficulty of Canadian dat and US dat?

[jiminniecity]

I'll be taking the canadian dat in november but have been studying off dat materials recommended by american students (dat bootcamp, destroyer etc..) For those who have taken both exams, how would you compare the two? I'm mostly worried about the bio section, since there's just so much information to cover, what would you recommend focusing on? Thanks!

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[TherealnorthOMFS]

I don't want to scare you by no means man, It's definitely doable to crush the canadian DAT. Having said that, I took the canadian DAT last november and Took the american DAT just recently on august 10th. IMO the canadian biology section was more detailed and more plant/fungi/ecology/dev bio focused than human phys focused. I felt I was decently prepared for it but I only scored 19 (I was averaging around 35/40 on the boot camp tests). At the time I only did the first 5 boot camp tests, did a bunch of princeton practices from a prep course I took and I also did all of DAT destroyer 2009. On the recent american DAT that I took, I did all of boot camp, focused on all the random **** in bio (i.e. diversity unit etc...) and did 95% of the questions from destroyer 2017 and I ended up scoring 26. Personally I found my bio version to be well balanced, and slightly easier than the canadian DAT. Take away is that there are no shortcuts, you have to know all units well, and given enough study time you can crush it no problem.
p.s. you know those plant life cycles like ferns and stuff that you'd be tempted to skip? don't skip them.

Cheers.

 

[jiminniecity]

I don't want to scare you by no means man, It's definitely doable to crush the canadian DAT. Having said that, I took the canadian DAT last november and Took the american DAT just recently on august 10th. IMO the canadian biology section was more detailed and more plant/fungi/ecology/dev bio focused than human phys focused. I felt I was decently prepared for it but I only scored 19 (I was averaging around 35/40 on the boot camp tests). At the time I only did the first 5 boot camp tests, did a bunch of princeton practices from a prep course I took and I also did all of DAT destroyer 2009. On the recent american DAT that I took, I did all of boot camp, focused on all the random **** in bio (i.e. diversity unit etc...) and did 95% of the questions from destroyer 2017 and I ended up scoring 26. Personally I found my bio version to be well balanced, and slightly easier than the canadian DAT. Take away is that there are no shortcuts, you have to know all units well, and given enough study time you can crush it no problem.
p.s. you know those plant life cycles like ferns and stuff that you'd be tempted to skip? don't skip them.

Cheers.

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS INFO! How long did it take you to prepare for the canadian dat? And by plants section do you also mean study for the chapter regarding plant growth (monocot vs. dicot, secondary/primary growth etc..) aside from the fungi/ferns?

 

[Roc Marciano]

p.s. you know those plant life cycles like ferns and stuff that you'd be tempted to skip? don't skip them.

****, good to know lol. I haven't been able to get through that stuff even once tbh. I hope I can get it all down in time.

 

[amariesa]

I scored 23ish on bio and 27ish on chem using bootcamp, datvault, I used dat destroyer and a few other materials. I scored 22ish in bio and 21ish in chem. Personally, I felt like it was much harder on the cDAT than practice US DAT material. I remember guessing on the cDAT RC portion for 12 of the last questions because the time crunch was insane and all three passages were heavy bio terms and medical condition descriptions. I thought I bombed, but ended with a 20 in RC so not too bad - I guess other people guessed on the last bit too. But in comparison to the US practice material with one two medium, and one hard passage, I find it misleading.

 

[TherealnorthOMFS]

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS INFO! How long did it take you to prepare for the canadian dat? And by plants section do you also mean study for the chapter regarding plant growth (monocot vs. dicot, secondary/primary growth etc..) aside from the fungi/ferns?

yup, definitely don't skip on the monocots/dicot thing. If you check out feralis' notes about plants, it covers everything that you could be asked. Essentially the material from cliffs. As for how long I studied, don't gauge yourself by how long others study imo. I think that the bio section hugely depends on your background. BUT personally for the cDAT I was mainly studying over weekends during the summer and whenever I could during the school year.
For american dat, I reviewed evolution/eco/diversity/plants/fungi etc... for a couple weeks and reviewed human stuff/micro/development/biochem in a couple days. majority of my time studying bio was doing questions and learning from my mistakes. I wasn't actively memorizing and going over concepts much cus I knew a large chunk of it from my undergrad courses. like I said it depends on your background.

 

[jiminniecity]

yup, definitely don't skip on the monocots/dicot thing. If you check out feralis' notes about plants, it covers everything that you could be asked. Essentially the material from cliffs. As for how long I studied, don't gauge yourself by how long others study imo. I think that the bio section hugely depends on your background. BUT personally for the cDAT I was mainly studying over weekends during the summer and whenever I could during the school year.
For american dat, I reviewed evolution/eco/diversity/plants/fungi etc... for a couple weeks and reviewed human stuff/micro/development/biochem in a couple days. majority of my time studying bio was doing questions and learning from my mistakes. I wasn't actively memorizing and going over concepts much cus I knew a large chunk of it from my undergrad courses. like I said it depends on your background.

thank you so much for this info, it was super helpful! ^^