- Joined
- May 30, 2015
- Messages
- 67
- Reaction score
- 73
Tiny bit about myself:
I am a rising senior at NYU. I'm Latina, and a first generation American. I've been interested in dentistry since freshman year in high school. I was in the Summer Medical Dental Education Program at Columbia last summer, and it my dream dental school, especially since CUMC's patients are predominately Dominican and I am Dominican myself. When I was there the dean of admissions told me to make sure I got a minimum of 20 in every section, so that was my goal, and I am so happy I achieved it.
Official Scores
Bio: 22
GC: 23
OC: 26
PAT: 20
QR: 20
RC: 21
TS: 23
AA: 22
Practice scores
Kaplan scores AA/TS/Bio/GC/OC/RC/QR/PAT
Diagnostic: 16/15/12/14/20/16/16/15 (2 months before actual)
Full Length 1: 18/19/19/16/17/19/18/17 (5 weeks before actual)
Full Length 2: 19/21/19/20/19/17/18/22 (3 weeks before actual)
Full Length 3: 21/22/17/20/28/18/20/23 (1 week and a half before actual)
Full Length 4: 23/25/24/23/23/19/25/22 (3 days before actual)
Didn't take full length 5 because I was too lazy
Bootcamp
Bio: 26/23/20/20/21 (Test one and two I had taken my first week before hand so those scores are skewed.)
GC: 19/22/23/25/23
OC: 19/21/19/22/24
PAT: 20/20 (was too lazy to do anymore)
RC: Less than 15 (didn't try again because I don't enjoy torturing myself)
QR: 22 (figured I was fine and I didn't have to do anymore since it is considered harder than the actual)
DAT Genius
Bio: 24
Orgo: 25
Materials: Kaplan On Demand Course, DAT Destroyer(2013), Math Destroyer (2013), Bootcamp, and casually Chad's videos.
*I bought Chad's videos when I finished the Kaplan course. I probably watched 1/4 of all the available videos (gc, orgo, bio, qr together). I only watched them when I was too lazy to do any studying; I would play a video and just watch it. I never took notes or anything. I did, however, take all of the GC quizzes.
Study Schedule: I followed the Kaplan syllabus exactly. I did all the readings, watched all the class sessions, did all the review (except for QR because it was too much). I spent 4 weeks taking the Kaplan class and left my last full lengths so that I could spread the tests out and test my knowledge. During these four weeks I studied about 8-9 hours a day with only 2 days off.
Then I took about two weeks to go through all of the destroyer. I went through 30 OC, 30 GC, 40 Bio questions each day. Although I did not finish the bio section in that time I moved on to Bootcamp and did 40 questions from destroyer every day after I finished what I had planned for Bootcamp. I did 1 orgo, gen chem, and bio test everyday, so I did it in 5 days. I would review the test immediately after taking it, and I would also review the ones I have taken in the same subject right before I would start a new test. For example, by the third day, I would first review the two bio tests I took and then I would take the bio test scheduled for that day. The original plan was to do a PAT test everyday too, but I only did the first two because I was lazy. The next two days I went over the QR section of the destroyer twice and the did the first two math destroyer tests.
Then I had one week to casually study, and I would just do bootcamp TFE generators when I was bored, watch some of chad's videos, do some random questions from the destroyer and did the free tests for bio and orgo on DAT genius.
So, unlike most people who slack in the beginning and buckle up at the end, I was going hard for the first month and then slacked for the second. I started off studying for about 8-9 hours a day to 3-4 hours a day by the end.
Bio practice vs. actual: Kaplan is muchhhhhhhhhh more specific that the actual, but it still helped tremendously because I learned the bio basics from the kaplan material. Actually, everything was more specific than the actual, but there were about 10 questions I did not encounter at all while I was studying. I went through the destroyer 1.5 times. The destroyer was really helpful because it helped fill in the gaps.
GC practice vs. actual: Kaplan has way more calculations that the actual, and the questions were much more straight forward on the actual. I think the actual was a lot like Bootcamp. I went through the destroyer 1.25 times.
OC practice vs. actual: I think this is the most similar to Kaplan and Bootcamp. I went through the destroyer once for this. I actually bought organic odyssey but I didn't open it.
RC practice vs. actual: I found the passages to be just like Kaplan but only some of the questions (~6) required more effort. Less than a week before my exam, I took the first RC test on Bootcamp and got a "less than 15" and I almost died. I decided not to do anymore in bootcamp because I heard how much more difficult it was supposed to be so I convinced myself it wasn't worth it. Deep down I was freaking out though because I didn't want to believe that I could get around that score on the actual so I just ignored it and practiced using Kaplan's RC materials. I was most scared of this section. I cannot believe that I scored higher on the actual than on any of my practice tests!
QR practice vs. actual: I think QR was pretty good. My exam just had more trig than any of the tests ever did (kaplan or bootcamp). Math destroyer was good for the trig, but I only did the first two tests.
PAT practice vs. actual: Angle Ranking, hole punching and pattern folding were much easier on Kaplan, but the others were on par. For Bootcamp, only TFE, pattern folding and cube counting were on par. The actual was harder in the other sections.
Day Before: I was totally relaxed the whole day before my exam. I was taking it easy, just casually doing some problems in the destroyer, watching some of Chad's videos, etc. Then the night came, I literally couldn't sleep because I had messed up my sleeping schedule. I had been constantly falling asleep at 5am, and now I had to wake up at 5am
. Around 1am, I decided I needed to do something with my life, so I headed to the pharmacy to buy something to help me sleep (thank God for living in NYC). Before I fell asleep, I cried a bit because I felt guilty for not studying night and day throughout the whole 8 weeks, but thank God that stuff kicked in and knocked me out for a bit.Test day:
Bio: Most of the questions were really simple. I was so surprised. I couldn't believe my eyes. There were only 10 questions that were not super simple, and ~5 of those I had never seen before in my life. In those 10 questions I made educated guesses based on what is definitely NOT the answer, and I suppose it worked.
GC: I was also surprised on how straight forward it was. I literally only had 3 calculation questions, and they were either simple numbers or the answers were set up at the formula on how to get to the answer, like shown in some bootcamp questions.
OC: The section was very straight forward. There was one problem I got that had some reagent I had never seen before, not even in destroyer! But I wouldn't doubt it if it is in organic odyssey.
PAT: This section was actually harder than Bootcamp for me! Keyholes was not fun. I had two of those rocks people talk about and all I did was laugh and guess because there isn't really anything else to do there. I always bombed this in all of my practice tests so I was prepared to do badly on this part of the PAT. TFE was pretty easy compared to all the practice I did. This is my favorite section of the PAT (I did the TFE generators for fun...only this though). Angle Ranking was ridiculous!!!! I was staring at them like...excuse me, I think you just copied the same angle and put it as each answer choice. I swear if there would've been an answer choice that said, "they're all the same" I would've chosen that. I always sucked at angle ranking and this one was the hardest I had seen. I wasn't confident in ANY of the 15. Hole Punching was really hard too. I would always get 15/15 on Kaplan and I got 13/15 on the two bootcamp tests, but this was not fun! But if you take your time it will be fine. Cube counting was normal. I did the tally method. Pattern folding was not bad. It was actually really comparable to Bootcamp, so it was fine.
When I finished this section I was thinking that I had done a decent job, but not great (I guessed right).
RC: I was so scared when I had to come back from the break for this because I did not feel prepared for RC. Then again, I felt as prepared as I would have ever been. I could neverrrrrrrrrrrrr read at a decent pace. It always takes me forever to read something, so I always ran out of time on practice tests, and the actual was not an exception. I think the only thing that saved me was that, for the first time ever, I skipped around. I was doing the mapping method for the first passage and that worked out fine, but I only had ~3o minutes left when I finished the first one (and it was only 7 paragraphs
so you already know how slow I read). I started freaking out, started on search and destroy for the second passage but it was soooooooo boring I didn't even want to deal with it so I chose an answer for all the questions pertaining to that passage and moved on the next one. My last article was very interesting, so I read it and answered the questions at the same time. I got really lucky because my first question was in the first paragraph, my second was in the second paragraph and so forth, so it was pretty good. Then I had ten minutes left over and I went back to the passage from hell (aka the second one) and tried to answer some until my time went out. In total, I probably purely guessed on 8 questions (all belonging the that thing they thought was a passage in between the first and third passage).When the time ran out, I was convinced I had gotten a 12 on this section and I would have to retake the DAT again next summer. I was so depressed for like a whole 10 seconds, but then I had to get it together because I had QR.
QR: This section was a bit harder than I expected because it had a lot more trig and geometry than I had hoped. I just worked on the problems I knew how to do right away, guessed and marked anything that I did not immediately know how to do. I think this is what saved my QR scored because if I would have taken my time getting through those problems, I would've flat out failed. So when I went through what I knew how to do I went over the stuff I marked (which were like 10 problems), and I was only confident in one answer out of those, so I just hoped for the best and tried to figure something out until my time ran out.
When I was taking the survey at the end I almost cried!!!!! I literally teared up. I was so convinced RC and QR killed me. I was ready to have a terrible day. When I got to the end of the survey I waited until I clicked the last one just so I could have my last moment before absolute depression. Then when I saw my score it felt like my life had meaning again.
SOOOOO, do not jump to any conclusions about how you did because you never know!!!!
