I need guidance/advice/help

[Moneyz511]

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I took the Kaplan DAT prep course over the summer and ended up studying 3 months and took the DATs and I did terrible. I scored a 15 and that was my first time taking it. It's funny because on the Kaplan practice tests I was scoring 19, 20 so I thought I had it. I have a 3.51 GPA and I graduated already. After I took the DAT and after that horrible experience I realized that Kaplan sucks! Nothing that Kaplan taught me or I reviewed was on the DAT. I feel like I should have taken the MCATS because of the stuff they made me review and memorize in the course was more MCAT related, even my friends who took the MCATs agreed with me.
So, what do I do now? How do I study for this exam (DAT) and what resources can I use to study bio, chem, orgo? What strategies should I can I go by? I need guidance. I feel lost.

 

[slm266]

Sorry to hear it didn't go as well as you had hoped. There are tons of threads that say "DAT Done...or DAT breakdown" where people explain what they did exactly on each section for success. Just take a little time to browse through. Hope all goes well.

 

[doc toothache]

You really thought Kaplan alone was going to do the trick?

 

[americanpierg]

Usually when someone gets a score thats slightly lower than what they usually got on practice tests, I just attribute it to luck, as a silly mistake here and there can easilly mean the difference between a 23 and a 20. But the difference between a 20 and a 15 is a whooooole lot more than just a "couple" of mistakes. It's like getting 30 more questions wrong out of 100... so something must have not been right with the way you went at your studying. Maybe all your Kaplan exams were the same thing reshuffled over and over again and you were bascially doing problems you saw a billion times over. You gotta get yourself exposed to a TON of different questions to get used to everything.

 

[Moneyz511]

Yeah I really thought Kaplan was going to do the trick and had complete faith in kaplan. Now I just a helping hand to find out what I can do to study and score about a 20 on this exam. and yes Kaplan kept giving me the same exams and tests over and over again so I did see the same material, although I did learn from my mistakes and did memorize the kaplan book from front cover to back.

 

[lumin33r]

I studied from the Kaplan book mainly for bio and took notes from Chad's videos (amazing btw) for orgo and general chem -- the link was posted several times in the forums). 🙂

Watching animations and making notes on them really helps for bio!
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=651930

 

[Moneyz511]

Thank you for the tip on Chads! I just placed an order for Topscore and the Destroyer. I hope they are helpful. how do I study with the destroyer? section by section? and try answering them and if i get them wrong, understand and memorize how the problem is done?
I'm bad at taking standardized exams. lol

 

[zellyen]

do the problems for destroyer, and look over the solutions even if you get them right. it will be hard the first time around just to let you know

 

[UCB05]

Thank you for the tip on Chads! I just placed an order for Topscore and the Destroyer. I hope they are helpful. how do I study with the destroyer? section by section? and try answering them and if i get them wrong, understand and memorize how the problem is done?
I'm bad at taking standardized exams. lol

First of all don't start Destroyer until you are positive you have adequately prepared using other resources - Chad's videos, Barron's/Cliff's Bio, etc. Destroyer might as well be called Soulcrusher for its effect on the unprepared.

 

[Moneyz511]

What other resources are there other than Chads, Cliffs, and Kaplan that you guys used to score extremely well and I'll take your advice on waiting to use the Destroyer until I have all the ground work down solid.

 

[The Anhedonia]

though i certainly agree that kaplan is a rip-off, i do not agree that it's completely useless. sure the class time is a complete waste, the lecturers are idiots, but the online materials available (tests, quizzes, workshops) are overall pretty solid.

i was scoring 17,18's on the practice tests, and ended up scoring a 23 on the real DAT. i'm not a particularly smart cookie either, i hadn't taken gen chem or math in at least 5 years, but kaplan was a decent outline.

 

[doc toothache]

What other resources are there other than Chads, Cliffs, and Kaplan that you guys used to score extremely well and I'll take your advice on waiting to use the Destroyer until I have all the ground work down solid.

They are generally referred to as textbooks.

 

[UCB05]

They are generally referred to as textbooks.

This is true. I spent at least 2 weeks reading nothing but the textbooks before even touching any sort of review book, and kept going back and reading through chapters even after that.

 

[an1423]

I was in the same shoes, but here it goes. For biology get cliffs ap biology which really helps and supplement it with destroyer and wikipedia. For chemistry, i thought tha blue kaplan book was great and really liked ChADS VIDEOS awsome, also get both the ACS BOOK FOR GENERAL CHEMISTRY AND ORGANIC CHEMISTRY. fOR oRGO, I THOUGHT acs was the most helpful and then dat destroyer. Finally, practice math because its tough. any other question feel free to pm me

 

[ads]

I took the Kaplan course and the only other resource I used was Cliffs AP Biology.....I did very well on the DAT

 

[davidius]

I also just took Kaplan, did all the online material (including the practice exams), assigned reading and went to class. I managed a 20 AA, 20 TS, 25 PAT.

I think it can be done it just depends on how you study, what you already know, and how good you are at taking tests (not stressing out). Sure there are other resources as well but I do think there might be such a thing as over-studying.