feeling like i've plateaued, losing motivation

[getsome111]

Ive been a lurker here for a few months now and have picked up some of the recommended study materials. My testing date is starting to come down to the wire based on other commitments,I need to take my dat sometime in the next two weeks due to having guests visit. Living in new york has allowed me to choose to postpone the date until I feel im ready(problem=I don't ever think im going to feel ready). I've been really working hard lately to try to improve my practice test scores, but I have just not seemed to be able to make any improvements in the past month. It even feels like my practice test scores have been getting a little worse, and this is really killing my motivation. Its been almost 3 weeks since I went through my second pass in destroyer gen/ochem/mathdestroyer, almost every problem seemed trivial in ocher/genchem the second time but I think i'm starting to forget some of what i've learned.. any tips or advice? my next plan of action I think is to make note cards for the cliffs book as I feel pretty weak in phylogeny/devbio(consistently miss these questions). Im going to include my practice test scores in case people are interested

qvault bio: 20,21,22,19,20,20,22,22,20,21
qvault ochem: (website bugged for first test, cant see score) 22,22,26,20
qvault chem: (same bug) 24,20,21,24,24
qvault math: 23,23,22,22,23,26,22
qvault rc: 20
qvault pat: 21 (keyholes/angles easier than crackdat, holepunch is much more difficult, I had never seen a half fold before doing qvault pat)

crack dat pat, I didn't do all the tests in order, so ill show the order I did them in with the number of the test in parenthesis

(1)14,(8)16,(6)20,(10)22,(2)23,(3)23,(4)21

crack dat reading, I just started working on rc a few days ago

18,19,17,16,19,21,19 (im just reading the whole passage then searching as I go through the questions, I feel weakest in reading but am unsure of what to do, I think of myself as a pretty analytical reader when it comes to scientific papers but speed is clearly the issue. tips?)

my most recent scores in crack dat math were 20s about a week ago. I haven't paid this resource much attention

I also have achiever but I feel like it was a waste of money, the length of the problems makes it impossible for me to finish without guessing.

any input would be greatly appreciated.

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[Glimmer1991]

Okay, when I felt like I had plateaued, I scheduled my test for the next week and got that sucker over with.

I've seen Ari give this advice before, and I think it's very good: When you are more ready to get your test over with than you are nervous about taking it, it's time.

Schedule it for next week. Over the next seven days, REVIEW EVERYTHING YOU HAVE DONE. (Except not all of the practice tests; that would be unreasonable). During my last week, I went back over everything from Chad, everything from the Destroyer, everything in Cliff's AP Bio, everything in Barron's AP Bio, math destroyer tests 1-8, and 5 or 6 PAT tests. Since I had done it all so many times before, I only had to put in 7-8 hours a day and could sort of fly through all of it.

The two days before my test, I went over the bio topics (AGAIN!) that were giving me the hardest time, and it REALLY paid off. I reviewed all of my GC notes for Chad the day before, and I reviewed all of my OC notes the morning of my test (and my test was at 8:00, LOL). The review helped.

Buckle down and GET IT OVER WITH! It's the best feeling ever.

 

[getsome111]

thanks for the reply glimmer. I just scheduled for the 20th, I feel like a new man. If anyone else has done qvault and can chime in about how their other non bio sections stack up, please do

 

[yandillo]

I just took my Dat today and Idk abt qvault but 15-20 questions for Bio were verbatim from Destroyer and Bootcamp...like VERBATIM!!! I got a 22 in Bio thanks to that!!! Abt RC you'll be fine....English is my second language and I learned it 3 years ago....I got 18 with this strategy, I know I suck at it so I just focus on 2 passages,,,the easier ones,,,,and spent 50 mins making sure almost all the answers were correct and in the rest 10 mins I just search and destroy in the hardest one and clicked random answers,,,,,If I got 18 you'll be fine trust me..!!!