How much detail on the DAT

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Skateguitar

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Hi my dental brothers and sisters, i am currently studying very hard for the dat, but i have a question, what is the level of detail in the DAT for the biology section? for example i am studying the glycolytic pathway (Glucose to pyruvate), but its just not sticking!!!

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Well if everything else sticks you should be so lucky.
 
haha, i wish, i just want to do well. How well i do now will dictate my quality of life in the future.
 
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my advice is to know everything you can. however, i too studied the citric acid cycle and calvin cycle very hard and knew every single step, but i could not believe that not even 1 question was about these cycles! no joke!
 
know the basics. I've taken the exam twice and Bio is all about the basics for the most part. Basics. Think of the things that you hear professors repeat over and over about the citric acid cycle, etc.
 
From what I remember, the bio section was primarily definitions and typical examples of various concepts. For many of the questions, if I had any idea of the concept, the answer was obvious. I'd recommend trying to cover as much volume as possible, because hitting specifics is nearly impossible. I studied the entire Kaplan book and 6 or 7 practice tests and still saw material that was completely new to me. Unless you are trying to get a perfect score, study in a way that will maximize your correct answers rather than worry about specifics that may or may not be on the test. Its unlikely youll get more than 1 or 2 biochem questions and it they may not even cover those cycles. Understand the basic concepts, and chances are you'll be able to derive the answer from the choices by elimination even if you don't know the material exactly.
 
I think for the pathways and cycles (glycolysis, Krebs, Calvin, etc.), you have to know the important molecules and input/output

but you don't have to know ALL the steps and the enzymes and structures and all that

and as said, you might not even get a question on it
 
From the practice DAT test ADA had and the DAT I took last october, I can tell you right now that biology questions are not about memorization of facts. They will not ask you what is the first enzyme in the glycolitic pathway (ya know, the priming enzyme)... however, they will ask you "why is the enzyme that primes the sugar important for the glycolytic pathway".... and they will give multiple choice, use strong reasoning skills and pick the correct answer.

The biology questions, at least the difficult ones, are only difficult cause they: A) require strong reasoning skills and B) require you to be somewhat familure with the topic they are talking about.
 
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