Help my DAT is in 8 days and my scores are low!

[Brownie175]

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My DAT is on the 21st of June and I need some major help as what to do to bring up my scores.

Bio is my lowest science score I have been avg a 16 on BC. Doing Feralis notes did not help me at all I think it just over filled my brain. I don't think those notes worked for me this is the subject I need the most help with if anyone can actually suggest study material for me to cram in the next 8 days I would be really grateful.

My other section grades are low as well with avg of 18-19 but I have at least some idea of what I will be doing then next couple of days to improve but I have not the slightest clue what to do for Bio.

Any help or advice would be really appreciated!

 

[helloboys]

Can you reschedule it and take it after a month+? Because you will need more time to improve those scores. How long have you been studying for the exam? What study material did you use. Did you by DAT destroyer?

 

[ncide]

What do you mean it over-filled your brain? Ferralis' notes are from an AP Biology preparatory book, it isn't anywhere near the level of depth you'll get into in a dental or medical school.

Sit down and learn the material. Go over it again if you don't feel comfortable about it. Delay the exam if you need to.

 

[Brownie175]

Can you reschedule it and take it after a month+? Because you will need more time to improve those scores. How long have you been studying for the exam? What study material did you use. Did you by DAT destroyer?

I have been studying for 5 weeks and I went through 1/3 of bio destroyer and would get about more than half of my questions right but on BC it has not been going well at all. I really can't reschedule I am taking Summer classes and they start at the end of June.

 

[Brownie175]

What do you mean it over-filled your brain? Ferralis' notes are from an AP Biology preparatory book, it isn't anywhere near the level of depth you'll get into in a dental or medical school.

Sit down and learn the material. Go over it again if you don't feel comfortable about it. Delay the exam if you need to.

So I think it's just the way the notes are some sections I have no problem with them other sections I don't think it's helping. But honestly, even if I could go through all those notes one more time will it even help because the way I have always studied bio in college has been to memorize and I wouldn't have enough time to do that with notes I am already struggling with. So what should I do? Moving my exam is not an option.

 

[Faefly]

just postpone, 5 weeks are not enough for most people!
Why do you think it would be enough to you?
I would suggest paying 45 dollars for ap biology on educator.com for a month. Her videos are amazing. Very detailed though you would need more than week to see them all.

 

[ncide]

So I think it's just the way the notes are some sections I have no problem with them other sections I don't think it's helping. But honestly, even if I could go through all those notes one more time will it even help because the way I have always studied bio in college has been to memorize and I wouldn't have enough time to do that with notes I am already struggling with. So what should I do? Moving my exam is not an option.

You can purchase the CliffsNotes AP Biology book if you want the source to go off of. Repetition certainly helps.

 

[FeralisExtremum]

I hope you're not just studying off the notes and nothing else...you should be looking at the notes after you look at the material explained in a more comprehensive resource like a review book (ideally Cliff's AP Bio book). Trying to review bio off nothing but the notes would be a nightmare for most people. They're compressed and meant for review/retention, not first pass learning.

 

[tyjacobs]

My DAT is on the 21st of June and I need some major help as what to do to bring up my scores.

Bio is my lowest science score I have been avg a 16 on BC. Doing Feralis notes did not help me at all I think it just over filled my brain. I don't think those notes worked for me this is the subject I need the most help with if anyone can actually suggest study material for me to cram in the next 8 days I would be really grateful.

My other section grades are low as well with avg of 18-19 but I have at least some idea of what I will be doing then next couple of days to improve but I have not the slightest clue what to do for Bio.

Any help or advice would be really appreciated!

If you are super concerned about your scores, I suggest moving your date back a month to further prepare yourself so you feel more confident.

 

[Brownie175]

If you are super concerned about your scores, I suggest moving your date back a month to further prepare yourself so you feel more confident.

If I postpone my exam I will have to postpone submitting my application is that not going to also be a problem. I mean other than the fact I am taking summer classes and that's the biggest reason I am in such a time crunch to finish my exam. It seems a lot of people think that there is nothing I can do in a week to improve my scores... I don't know what to do my summer classes are not easy classes they are Calc 2 and Physics 2.

 

[Brownie175]

I hope you're not just studying off the notes and nothing else...you should be looking at the notes after you look at the material explained in a more comprehensive resource like a review book (ideally Cliff's AP Bio book). Trying to review bio off nothing but the notes would be a nightmare for most people. They're compressed and meant for review/retention, not first pass learning.

No I am not looking at feralis notes alone I did the ap bio cliff books 2x but I just don't think the notes are my cup of tea if anything I found them very discouraging I have gone through them once. But clearly, as my scores indicate I am missing information to be strong in the bio section.

 

[FeralisExtremum]

No I am not looking at feralis notes alone I did the ap bio cliff books 2x but I just don't think the notes are my cup of tea if anything I found them very discouraging I have gone through them once. But clearly, as my scores indicate I am missing information to be strong in the bio section.

Setting the notes aside, how well are you retaining what you read in Cliff's? Mastery of that book alone should be getting you higher than 16's in practice.

 

[helloboys]

Honestly taking only two summer classes shouldn't be a big deal. Push your test to the beginning of August or end of July. You can continue studying for the DAT and taking two classes. It is better than doing poorly on the DAT. You could still submit your application on time after taking the DAT.

 

[Dentalisgoal]

My DAT is on the 21st of June and I need some major help as what to do to bring up my scores.

Bio is my lowest science score I have been avg a 16 on BC. Doing Feralis notes did not help me at all I think it just over filled my brain. I don't think those notes worked for me this is the subject I need the most help with if anyone can actually suggest study material for me to cram in the next 8 days I would be really grateful.

My other section grades are low as well with avg of 18-19 but I have at least some idea of what I will be doing then next couple of days to improve but I have not the slightest clue what to do for Bio.

Any help or advice would be really appreciated!

What helped me was making anki cards over the bootcamp test and not just from the question but even the explanation and i did the same for destroyer.

ex: Take a BC bio exam --> go over it --> make flashcards, if you come across a topic that you've never read or even heard about before find it in feralis or khan academy and make cards to help you remember the general details.

but don't over do the cards- i do about 50-60 cards per exam and then go over the cards before you take the next test!

Also, look up bar charts for biology, easy read and it'll help you figure out which areas you need to focus on more! hope that helped! Good luck!

 

[Sweet_Tooth]

So I think it's just the way the notes are some sections I have no problem with them other sections I don't think it's helping. But honestly, even if I could go through all those notes one more time will it even help because the way I have always studied bio in college has been to memorize and I wouldn't have enough time to do that with notes I am already struggling with. So what should I do? Moving my exam is not an option.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but for the DAT biology section and all the sections in general, memorization is a must...You have to remember and retain the information so that you can answer questions on it, no?

I took my DAT on 6/13 (might be posting a breakdown soon?) and got a 21 on bio. I felt that out of all the sections bio was the easiest section to study "last minute" for. Unlike the chemistries which required weeks of content review and lots of practice problems, bio is pretty straightforward. I used ferali's and my notes from my college courses (biochem, intro bios, etc). I bought Cliff's AP also but was barely able to get through it for some reason (it was really boring??). I also did up to around 250 of the destroyer biology problems.

I also HIGHLY recommend this youtube channel, specifically any video from this AP biology playlist: AP Biology Video Essentials - YouTube

For any concepts I needed to relearn I would watch videos from this channel and would take notes while watching as needed. He explains the concepts in an easy to understand way and explains them at the perfect level of detail for DAT. I would highly recommend searching his page for some of the topics you're rusty on and watching the corresponding videos!

My advice to you is to buckle down and take advantage of these last 8 (now 7?) days you have. You could even delay it by like a week or two weeks (before your classes start too get too in depth hopefully) and if you are efficient you could still cover a lot of ground review wise. I think if only your bio score is low, you don't have much to worry about, if you can get a good set of notes, even your notes from your college classes, and go over the basics every day/every other day, along with taking consistent practice tests and going over your answers, you can be fine. I was literally studying for bio so last minute, up to the morning before my exam I was still reviewing my notes and I swear it helped lol

 

[FoulSmellingFuso]

Bio is definitely the most crammable section. I studied for about 10 weeks while taking 15units courseload at school with midterms and reports. I think GC and OC takes time to sink in and understand, but I definitely crammed all of bio in about the last week. I did all the BC questions, and went over every word of explanation. Whatever I didnt understand I wrote down on printing paper and reviewed it. I went from scoring 17s to 19s to 20 and 21 towards the end. Id read all my notes I wrote down before I take the next test and before I went to bed each night.

I thought I was least prepped for BIO bc i took my lower divs a while ago but ended up pulling out a 24 on bio.
So is it possible to learn bio in a week? YES, given you're ready in other sections alrdy.
Recommended? No, the less risky way is to postpone. But if you want to do a sink or swim like me, it's possible.

 

[mahveen]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but for the DAT biology section and all the sections in general, memorization is a must...You have to remember and retain the information so that you can answer questions on it, no?

I took my DAT on 6/13 (might be posting a breakdown soon?) and got a 21 on bio. I felt that out of all the sections bio was the easiest section to study "last minute" for. Unlike the chemistries which required weeks of content review and lots of practice problems, bio is pretty straightforward. I used ferali's and my notes from my college courses (biochem, intro bios, etc). I bought Cliff's AP also but was barely able to get through it for some reason (it was really boring??). I also did up to around 250 of the destroyer biology problems.

I also HIGHLY recommend this youtube channel, specifically any video from this AP biology playlist: AP Biology Video Essentials - YouTube

For any concepts I needed to relearn I would watch videos from this channel and would take notes while watching as needed. He explains the concepts in an easy to understand way and explains them at the perfect level of detail for DAT. I would highly recommend searching his page for some of the topics you're rusty on and watching the corresponding videos!

My advice to you is to buckle down and take advantage of these last 8 (now 7?) days you have. You could even delay it by like a week or two weeks (before your classes start too get too in depth hopefully) and if you are efficient you could still cover a lot of ground review wise. I think if only your bio score is low, you don't have much to worry about, if you can get a good set of notes, even your notes from your college classes, and go over the basics every day/every other day, along with taking consistent practice tests and going over your answers, you can be fine. I was literally studying for bio so last minute, up to the morning before my exam I was still reviewing my notes and I swear it helped lol

how were you scoring for each section on bootcamp? And what do you think the difficulty level was comparing bootcamp to the real dat?

 

[Sweet_Tooth]

how were you scoring for each section on bootcamp? And what do you think the difficulty level was comparing bootcamp to the real dat?

my bootcamp scores were so varied, I always scored drastically different, I remember I got a 16 on one and a 23 on another lol. But mostly 18 and 19s and sometimes 20s I think is what I got on the bio bootcamps. I think it's important to not focus on the score that the practice test gives you as much as to focus on actually learning from the material and seeing what mistakes you made.

The difficulty was around the same actually, like in terms of detail. The real DAT bio is definitely more annoying in the fact that the questions are not as well-distributed topic wise as bootcamp is lol. Bootcamp bio tests always had the perfect amount of questions for each topic (like an exact number of anatomy questions, an exact number of questions on photosynthesis/plants, etc) but on the real thing I swear I got like 15 questions about development only (like endoderm/mesoderm/ectoderm, oocytes and spermatocytes etc) and like 10 questions on genetics and literally one or two questions on photosynthesis and cellular respiration. I didn't even get that many anatomy and physiology questions which was frustrating because I spent so much time studying for that lol. Your best bet is to just try and know a little bit about everything and to be prepared to answer more questions about certain topics than others

 

[mahveen]

my bootcamp scores were so varied, I always scored drastically different, I remember I got a 16 on one and a 23 on another lol. But mostly 18 and 19s and sometimes 20s I think is what I got on the bio bootcamps. I think it's important to not focus on the score that the practice test gives you as much as to focus on actually learning from the material and seeing what mistakes you made.

The difficulty was around the same actually, like in terms of detail. The real DAT bio is definitely more annoying in the fact that the questions are not as well-distributed topic wise as bootcamp is lol. Bootcamp bio tests always had the perfect amount of questions for each topic (like an exact number of anatomy questions, an exact number of questions on photosynthesis/plants, etc) but on the real thing I swear I got like 15 questions about development only (like endoderm/mesoderm/ectoderm, oocytes and spermatocytes etc) and like 10 questions on genetics and literally one or two questions on photosynthesis and cellular respiration. I didn't even get that many anatomy and physiology questions which was frustrating because I spent so much time studying for that lol. Your best bet is to just try and know a little bit about everything and to be prepared to answer more questions about certain topics than others

how about the other sections? how were those compared to the bootcamp exams?

 

[Sweet_Tooth]

how about the other sections? how were those compared to the bootcamp exams?

Bootcamp was on point for all the sections, I don't get how people would call bootcamp "harder" than the real thing because I felt that the difficulty was almost perfectly equivalent, I would highly recommend using bootcamp as your main resource due to how similar it is to the real DAT, especially QR! For RC, the real DAT had a lot more biology based passages. Maybe it was just my version of the exam but the reading comp honestly felt like a second bio section! So be prepared for that, I know some of the passages in RC practice tests on bootcamp aren't as strictly biology based (I know some of them were more physics based?)

For PAT the difficulty was also the same, especially keyholes and TFE

 

[Lolo390]

Bootcamp was on point for all the sections, I don't get how people would call bootcamp "harder" than the real thing because I felt that the difficulty was almost perfectly equivalent, I would highly recommend using bootcamp as your main resource due to how similar it is to the real DAT, especially QR! For RC, the real DAT had a lot more biology based passages. Maybe it was just my version of the exam but the reading comp honestly felt like a second bio section! So be prepared for that, I know some of the passages in RC practice tests on bootcamp aren't as strictly biology based (I know some of them were more physics based?)

For PAT the difficulty was also the same, especially keyholes and TFE

So I noticed you said that BC QR was super similar to the real exam and I was wondering if could expand on that a little more. I feel like each of the QR exams have very very similar questions asked and I'm started to get the hang of those questions - but I fear that the real exam won't be similar difficulty/content wise. How did you feel BC compared in that sense?

 

[FoulSmellingFuso]

BC QR was very similar to the real exam, and I think if you could consistently score above 20 on BC QR, say twice or 3x in a row, you can stop with prepping for QR. The real exam QR difficulty wise I would say is similar to the BC qr as well, perhaps not as structured in terms of # of questions per topic, but feels very similar. I started out couldn't really finishing the BC QR, but then I learned the few concepts that I missed, sped up my pace, then got to 20. My scores on BC (4 total):
1. 29/40 (19)
2. 24/40 (don't think I finished on time, definitely could do the problems, just ran out of time). (17)
3. 32/40 (19)
4. 35/40( score of 20 on BC)
After test 4 and about a week before my test, I stopped working on QR since I felt ready. Scored a 24 QR on the DAT on 5/24/2017.

 

[Lolo390]

BC QR was very similar to the real exam, and I think if you could consistently score above 20 on BC QR, say twice or 3x in a row, you can stop with prepping for QR. The real exam QR difficulty wise I would say is similar to the BC qr as well, perhaps not as structured in terms of # of questions per topic, but feels very similar. I started out couldn't really finishing the BC QR, but then I learned the few concepts that I missed, sped up my pace, then got to 20. My scores on BC (4 total):
1. 29/40 (19)
2. 24/40 (don't think I finished on time, definitely could do the problems, just ran out of time). (17)
3. 32/40 (19)
4. 35/40( score of 20 on BC)
After test 4 and about a week before my test, I stopped working on QR since I felt ready. Scored a 24 QR on the DAT on 5/24/2017.

So I find myself having to pause.. I spoke to one of my friends about this and they said for now it might be okay to do that to at least see if i have the potential to work it out before seeing the answers... but during the Full Lengths to take as similarly to the real exam. However, doing this i feel like the scores i'm getting aren't real representations of how I'll really do under a time crunch. How did you manage time? Do you think the fact that I pause and prob take an extra 5-7 minutes when I take the tests could be hurting me?! ahhh

 

[FoulSmellingFuso]

So I find myself having to pause.. I spoke to one of my friends about this and they said for now it might be okay to do that to at least see if i have the potential to work it out before seeing the answers... but during the Full Lengths to take as similarly to the real exam. However, doing this i feel like the scores i'm getting aren't real representations of how I'll really do under a time crunch. How did you manage time? Do you think the fact that I pause and prob take an extra 5-7 minutes when I take the tests could be hurting me?! ahhh

Yes, i would say it's hurting you to spend time you don't have. Part of the dat comes down to an educated guess under time crunch. Learning to deal with time during practice will give you a real and fair assessment of your abilities with the questions; remember timing is part of the exam. It's not helping you at all to get a higher score than you deserve on the practice tests, you're simply setting yourself up for a rude and regretful awakening on the real test on your abilities. Basically don't cheat yourself during practice is what I'm saying.

 

[Sweet_Tooth]

So I noticed you said that BC QR was super similar to the real exam and I was wondering if could expand on that a little more. I feel like each of the QR exams have very very similar questions asked and I'm started to get the hang of those questions - but I fear that the real exam won't be similar difficulty/content wise. How did you feel BC compared in that sense?

Yes there's definitely a pattern to the questions! You're definitely on the right track if you picked up on that, you need to just get a hang of the questions and learn the technique to approaching them. Like an earlier poster said, the real QR section is not as perfectly engineered as the BC QR so the question distribution is a little different but the types of questions are mostly the same! I did get 3-4 questions that I had never seen before though