- Joined
- May 24, 2015
- Messages
- 175
- Reaction score
- 95
After 3 months of studying, it feels really strange being finally done with this exam! What a journey it has been!
Background: Human Bio major, will be entering my Junior year this fall semester.
I made a thread back in December asking for advice regarding when to take the DAT. I was sort of lost because I made the mistake of speaking with a horrible undergraduate advisor to plan out my sophomore year classes. As a result, I took Orgo 1 just this last semester and will yet to be taking Orgo II until this upcoming fall semester. I asked for people's advice on here to see what they think of taking the DAT without Orgo II. Everyone advised against doing that. As a result, my plan was to see how I perform in Orgo I, and take it at the end of 2016 after I am done taking Orgo II. I tried my best to excel in Orgo 1, and made sure that I understand every single thing in the class. I stayed after every class to ask questions and went to every single office hour that my professor and my TA held. I even watched Khan Academy videos on everything that I was even slightly unsure about. Near the end of the semester, I felt very confident in my Orgo understanding thanks to my wonderful professor and TA. I decided to instead study for the DAT as if I am taking it this summer (instead of having an unproductive summer) and see how it goes, and if I wasn't ready I would just take it later after taking Orgo II. And here I am.
******************************************************************
PAT: 21
QR: 21
RC: 21
BIO: 24
GC: 26
OC: 23
TS: 24
AA: 23
I decided to start by following my own variation of Ari's schedule, but I was too naive to take a day off every week as recommended because I thought that I could push myself.
I deactivated all my social media accounts because I tend to get distracted very easily.
******************************************************************
Materials used (in order of when I started using them)
Chad's Videos (10/10): I don't think I need to say anything about how great of a teacher Chad is. I did his quizzes 2x and went back to watch the video on anything I still struggled on the second time around. He teaches almost everything you need for GC and OC.
Cliff's AP Bio 1x (6/10) and Feralis's notes 2x (9/10): I read 2 sections of AP cliff's, then I would read Feralis's notes on those same sections the second day and take notes while reading his notes (Around 30 pages of notes total). Personally, I believe that physically writing down the notes instead of typing them helped me remember them better. If you don't have the time to write down the notes, I would recommend downloading a highlighter extension and just simply highlighting as you read along his notes. I went over my notes ~4 times and highlighted and even wrote things to the side.
Crash Course (on Youtube) (Biology as well as Anat. & Physio series) (10/10): The way I learn, I try my best to stay away from simply memorizing things and prefer to understand the detail of what I am learning, and the way their videos are made, they help me exactly do that. I tried making note cards the first two weeks of studying, but I rarely used them.
Khan Academy (7/10) Used this awesome FREE resource for Orgo. They have tons of detailed content that I used for anything that I was weak on and used to teach myself what I needed to know from Orgo II. Khan and Jay both teach this section and their material overlap, and Khan is awesome, but for me I preferred Jay's way of approaching Organic Chemistry.
Math Destroyer (10/10) I started this a month after I started studying, but if I could go back I would definitely start doing it from Day 1. This is the only thing that I used to study for QR and I thing it is great. I went through it only once, and I think it would've been very helpful if I finished it early and started doing it again.
DAT Destroyer (100000/10) I also started the Destroyer a month after studying, and my recommendation is to definitely plan on starting earlier, especially for Biology, and doing it at least 2 times. I still remember the first day that I did the Destroyer and I told Nancy this: I did so bad on all sections, I went to the living room, laid down on the couch, and just started staring at the ceiling doubting myself that I am not ready and should not take the DAT in the summer and that I've been wasting my time. BUT I realized that that's the BEST way to learn is to attack your weakness. That's what makes this resource so valuable, because what's the point of giving gimme questions that you wont learn anything from? I did the Destroyer 4X and I think it was definitely WORTH IT. Dr. Romano's roadmaps ARE AWESOME, I went over them so many times whenever it was a slow day at work. It baffles me when people say this is overkill. If you want a high score, get the word overkill out of your vocabulary. Professional athletes for most sports have their match only once a week for less than 2 hours, so is it overkill that they train 5 hours a day all week everyday???
DAT Bootcamp (9/10) Great resource, I owe my PAT score to this website. I did the PAT generator almost everyday, spending 15 minutes on each section. I contacted Ari in late April asking him if there is a way that I can purchase DAT BC while there is a discount on it but purchase an additional few week extension because I wouldn't be taking it until August. He said that I shouldn't worry about that and gave me a couple of weeks for free. This should be a LEARNING resource and not a way of assessment. I spent the regular 4.5 hours doing the full length, but I would spend over 5 hours going over the questions in detail.
DAT Genius (7/10) Very good resource, if you want additional practice, try it out. I wanted to expose myself to more problems, especially for Bio because I heard it had very good explanations (and it does). Very good PAT section. I do think that one flaw with this is that for GC, it kind has overcomplicated calculation problems that don't test for you Chemistry understanding as much. On the actual DAT, the hardest calculation I had to do on GC is divide 2 number so that I get a 0.5 mol. The rest are all set up so you don't have to multiply them yourself.
******************************************************************
While I started doing full lengths, I was planning on doing all 5 BC and 5 Dat Genius, and then even go back the last week and redo the 5 bootcamp full lengths because I was too naive. I completely regret doing all 10 full lengths. I decided to speak with Nancy after doing my last DAT Genius full length (10th one) 2 weeks before the test and I think it was the best decision I made. She recommended against exhausting myself out like that especially during the last week. When I did full lengths, I noticed that my anxiety was increasing because it was just too much pressure. I also became very exhausted and noticed my productivity significantly decreased. I decided that on the last week, instead of re-doing the 5 BC full lengths to just re-do the destroyer and work on my weakness, and I am so glad I did that.
If I could go back, I would definitely have not done as many full lengths and would have done only 3 at most + the 2009 (4 total) especially not during the last week of studying. The rest I recommend be used as separate section practice problems. Also, don't use the scores to measure how ready you are. At one point when I was doing full lengths, I remember I scored a 18 or 19 on Orgo one day and then a 27 the day after. Like Nancy always says, if you don't know the problem, all the time in the world wont help you. So it's much better to focus on learning and strengthening your weaknesses than to just assess yourself using timed tests. Even Ari emphasizes that for Bootcamp you should use it as a learning tool and not for assessment, but we overlook that advice.
******************************************************************
******************************************************************
Alright so after calling Nancy and asking her what if I am not ready and mini-throwing up in my mouth the day before my test because I didn't want my family to be worried, let's go to Test Day:
Bio (24): My heart was beating so fast when I clicked start, it took me a few seconds to calm myself down and read the questions. This wont be new information but BREADTH of DEPTH. I told myself I was screwed while going through this because I must have marked like 7-8 questions, but when I went back to carefully do them at the end when I was calmer, I noticed they weren't bad at all and were pretty simple. There was only 2-3 questions that were just completely random. I used no notecards at all for Bio. When I study, I would make up my own random mnemonics and I think making those types of connections helps the most. An example of a silly mnemonic I made that made for Rhizopods. Rhizo reminded me of Roz which is Arabic for rice, so I instantly remembered that they are related to food spoilage.
GC (26): I am staying away from saying anything is hard or easy because it's all relative to the students' strength and weakness. I was very comfortable with General Chemistry because I had a really good professor and I do think that doing the Destroyer did an awesome job of preparing me for everything I would see.
OC (23): This is my proudest score. Having not taking Orgo II, I was so nervous for this section out of all the rest. I spent 2 weeks teaching myself everything I needed to know for Orgo II and almost giving up because I didn't even know what electron withdrawing/donating groups were before I started. But I believed in myself and tried my best. Again, Destroyer did a wonderful job preparing me for this section and I definitely recommend utilizing the road maps!
PAT (21): I expected higher for the section because I was feeling confident during this section, but I am happy with this score. Keyholes were actually same difficulty as bootcamp, TFE was surprisingly easier than bootcamp's practice tests and I do think that this section is easy as you practice. Also, I could have sworn one question had 2 exactly similar correct answers but one was a gray-ish dotted line and the other was a darker dotted line. Angles I felt the most confident with and I was averaging around 12-13/15 on Bootcamp. Keyholes/Cube counting were pretty easy, but I might have messed up on 1 cube counting structure which might have been what damaged my score. Keyholes was not bad at all and bootcamp did fantastic to prepare me for that section as well. I scored a less than 15 on my first practice test after 2 weeks of doing generators and it killed me, but with practice I improved and my average went up to around 22.
RC (21): I despised this section so much. First practice test I did less than 3 weeks ago, I scored a 16 on it. It takes me very long to read anything, even an article, because I have the habit of wanting to understand every bit of detail of what I read. English is not my first language BUT I told myself to never use that excuse when practicing for this section. I talked to so many people and my score slightly went up to 18/19. After reading many breakdowns, I was expecting all questions to be in order, but be very careful. Although my first and third passages were in order and very do-able, the second one was all over the place and took me much longer than I what I should have spent on this second passage, so be very careful in that not all passages are in order, which shocked me. I am very happy with this score.
QR (21): Practice makes perfect. I was over-confident with this section as I started studying for it because I was scoring ~35/40 on the Math Destroyer, so I decided to spend less time on it and more time on the sciences. I do regret this because I felt not as confident when I went back to doing the Math Destroyer the last 2 weeks. My recommendation si that you should do a Math test every single day no matter how confident you are. If you're not, then work on your weakness and understand how to do each problem! Time management is key for this section, skip the ones that take too long even if you know them until the end. There were only a couple that I wasn't sure how to do. Thank you Mr. Mostafa from the Orgoman staff for helping me with my weakness on this section!
******************************************************************
Finally, I would like to thank every single person who helped me throughout this long journey. @orgoman22 and @Ari Rezaei are great people who do their best to help everyone that seeks their help. Nancy is the one of the most caring people I had ever spoken with. Without her support, I would have over exhausted myself the week before and most definitely would not have done as well. Thank you to all of those awesome people who replied to my last two threads and those who messaged me wishing me good luck!
It has been a long journey, but it was definitely well worth it!
Sorry for all the grammar errors, and any question you have ask away and I am more than happy to help!
Background: Human Bio major, will be entering my Junior year this fall semester.
I made a thread back in December asking for advice regarding when to take the DAT. I was sort of lost because I made the mistake of speaking with a horrible undergraduate advisor to plan out my sophomore year classes. As a result, I took Orgo 1 just this last semester and will yet to be taking Orgo II until this upcoming fall semester. I asked for people's advice on here to see what they think of taking the DAT without Orgo II. Everyone advised against doing that. As a result, my plan was to see how I perform in Orgo I, and take it at the end of 2016 after I am done taking Orgo II. I tried my best to excel in Orgo 1, and made sure that I understand every single thing in the class. I stayed after every class to ask questions and went to every single office hour that my professor and my TA held. I even watched Khan Academy videos on everything that I was even slightly unsure about. Near the end of the semester, I felt very confident in my Orgo understanding thanks to my wonderful professor and TA. I decided to instead study for the DAT as if I am taking it this summer (instead of having an unproductive summer) and see how it goes, and if I wasn't ready I would just take it later after taking Orgo II. And here I am.
******************************************************************
PAT: 21
QR: 21
RC: 21
BIO: 24
GC: 26
OC: 23
TS: 24
AA: 23
I decided to start by following my own variation of Ari's schedule, but I was too naive to take a day off every week as recommended because I thought that I could push myself.
I deactivated all my social media accounts because I tend to get distracted very easily.
******************************************************************
Materials used (in order of when I started using them)
Chad's Videos (10/10): I don't think I need to say anything about how great of a teacher Chad is. I did his quizzes 2x and went back to watch the video on anything I still struggled on the second time around. He teaches almost everything you need for GC and OC.
Cliff's AP Bio 1x (6/10) and Feralis's notes 2x (9/10): I read 2 sections of AP cliff's, then I would read Feralis's notes on those same sections the second day and take notes while reading his notes (Around 30 pages of notes total). Personally, I believe that physically writing down the notes instead of typing them helped me remember them better. If you don't have the time to write down the notes, I would recommend downloading a highlighter extension and just simply highlighting as you read along his notes. I went over my notes ~4 times and highlighted and even wrote things to the side.
Crash Course (on Youtube) (Biology as well as Anat. & Physio series) (10/10): The way I learn, I try my best to stay away from simply memorizing things and prefer to understand the detail of what I am learning, and the way their videos are made, they help me exactly do that. I tried making note cards the first two weeks of studying, but I rarely used them.
Khan Academy (7/10) Used this awesome FREE resource for Orgo. They have tons of detailed content that I used for anything that I was weak on and used to teach myself what I needed to know from Orgo II. Khan and Jay both teach this section and their material overlap, and Khan is awesome, but for me I preferred Jay's way of approaching Organic Chemistry.
Math Destroyer (10/10) I started this a month after I started studying, but if I could go back I would definitely start doing it from Day 1. This is the only thing that I used to study for QR and I thing it is great. I went through it only once, and I think it would've been very helpful if I finished it early and started doing it again.
DAT Destroyer (100000/10) I also started the Destroyer a month after studying, and my recommendation is to definitely plan on starting earlier, especially for Biology, and doing it at least 2 times. I still remember the first day that I did the Destroyer and I told Nancy this: I did so bad on all sections, I went to the living room, laid down on the couch, and just started staring at the ceiling doubting myself that I am not ready and should not take the DAT in the summer and that I've been wasting my time. BUT I realized that that's the BEST way to learn is to attack your weakness. That's what makes this resource so valuable, because what's the point of giving gimme questions that you wont learn anything from? I did the Destroyer 4X and I think it was definitely WORTH IT. Dr. Romano's roadmaps ARE AWESOME, I went over them so many times whenever it was a slow day at work. It baffles me when people say this is overkill. If you want a high score, get the word overkill out of your vocabulary. Professional athletes for most sports have their match only once a week for less than 2 hours, so is it overkill that they train 5 hours a day all week everyday???
DAT Bootcamp (9/10) Great resource, I owe my PAT score to this website. I did the PAT generator almost everyday, spending 15 minutes on each section. I contacted Ari in late April asking him if there is a way that I can purchase DAT BC while there is a discount on it but purchase an additional few week extension because I wouldn't be taking it until August. He said that I shouldn't worry about that and gave me a couple of weeks for free. This should be a LEARNING resource and not a way of assessment. I spent the regular 4.5 hours doing the full length, but I would spend over 5 hours going over the questions in detail.
DAT Genius (7/10) Very good resource, if you want additional practice, try it out. I wanted to expose myself to more problems, especially for Bio because I heard it had very good explanations (and it does). Very good PAT section. I do think that one flaw with this is that for GC, it kind has overcomplicated calculation problems that don't test for you Chemistry understanding as much. On the actual DAT, the hardest calculation I had to do on GC is divide 2 number so that I get a 0.5 mol. The rest are all set up so you don't have to multiply them yourself.
******************************************************************
While I started doing full lengths, I was planning on doing all 5 BC and 5 Dat Genius, and then even go back the last week and redo the 5 bootcamp full lengths because I was too naive. I completely regret doing all 10 full lengths. I decided to speak with Nancy after doing my last DAT Genius full length (10th one) 2 weeks before the test and I think it was the best decision I made. She recommended against exhausting myself out like that especially during the last week. When I did full lengths, I noticed that my anxiety was increasing because it was just too much pressure. I also became very exhausted and noticed my productivity significantly decreased. I decided that on the last week, instead of re-doing the 5 BC full lengths to just re-do the destroyer and work on my weakness, and I am so glad I did that.
If I could go back, I would definitely have not done as many full lengths and would have done only 3 at most + the 2009 (4 total) especially not during the last week of studying. The rest I recommend be used as separate section practice problems. Also, don't use the scores to measure how ready you are. At one point when I was doing full lengths, I remember I scored a 18 or 19 on Orgo one day and then a 27 the day after. Like Nancy always says, if you don't know the problem, all the time in the world wont help you. So it's much better to focus on learning and strengthening your weaknesses than to just assess yourself using timed tests. Even Ari emphasizes that for Bootcamp you should use it as a learning tool and not for assessment, but we overlook that advice.
******************************************************************
******************************************************************
Alright so after calling Nancy and asking her what if I am not ready and mini-throwing up in my mouth the day before my test because I didn't want my family to be worried, let's go to Test Day:
Bio (24): My heart was beating so fast when I clicked start, it took me a few seconds to calm myself down and read the questions. This wont be new information but BREADTH of DEPTH. I told myself I was screwed while going through this because I must have marked like 7-8 questions, but when I went back to carefully do them at the end when I was calmer, I noticed they weren't bad at all and were pretty simple. There was only 2-3 questions that were just completely random. I used no notecards at all for Bio. When I study, I would make up my own random mnemonics and I think making those types of connections helps the most. An example of a silly mnemonic I made that made for Rhizopods. Rhizo reminded me of Roz which is Arabic for rice, so I instantly remembered that they are related to food spoilage.
GC (26): I am staying away from saying anything is hard or easy because it's all relative to the students' strength and weakness. I was very comfortable with General Chemistry because I had a really good professor and I do think that doing the Destroyer did an awesome job of preparing me for everything I would see.
OC (23): This is my proudest score. Having not taking Orgo II, I was so nervous for this section out of all the rest. I spent 2 weeks teaching myself everything I needed to know for Orgo II and almost giving up because I didn't even know what electron withdrawing/donating groups were before I started. But I believed in myself and tried my best. Again, Destroyer did a wonderful job preparing me for this section and I definitely recommend utilizing the road maps!
PAT (21): I expected higher for the section because I was feeling confident during this section, but I am happy with this score. Keyholes were actually same difficulty as bootcamp, TFE was surprisingly easier than bootcamp's practice tests and I do think that this section is easy as you practice. Also, I could have sworn one question had 2 exactly similar correct answers but one was a gray-ish dotted line and the other was a darker dotted line. Angles I felt the most confident with and I was averaging around 12-13/15 on Bootcamp. Keyholes/Cube counting were pretty easy, but I might have messed up on 1 cube counting structure which might have been what damaged my score. Keyholes was not bad at all and bootcamp did fantastic to prepare me for that section as well. I scored a less than 15 on my first practice test after 2 weeks of doing generators and it killed me, but with practice I improved and my average went up to around 22.
RC (21): I despised this section so much. First practice test I did less than 3 weeks ago, I scored a 16 on it. It takes me very long to read anything, even an article, because I have the habit of wanting to understand every bit of detail of what I read. English is not my first language BUT I told myself to never use that excuse when practicing for this section. I talked to so many people and my score slightly went up to 18/19. After reading many breakdowns, I was expecting all questions to be in order, but be very careful. Although my first and third passages were in order and very do-able, the second one was all over the place and took me much longer than I what I should have spent on this second passage, so be very careful in that not all passages are in order, which shocked me. I am very happy with this score.
QR (21): Practice makes perfect. I was over-confident with this section as I started studying for it because I was scoring ~35/40 on the Math Destroyer, so I decided to spend less time on it and more time on the sciences. I do regret this because I felt not as confident when I went back to doing the Math Destroyer the last 2 weeks. My recommendation si that you should do a Math test every single day no matter how confident you are. If you're not, then work on your weakness and understand how to do each problem! Time management is key for this section, skip the ones that take too long even if you know them until the end. There were only a couple that I wasn't sure how to do. Thank you Mr. Mostafa from the Orgoman staff for helping me with my weakness on this section!
******************************************************************
Finally, I would like to thank every single person who helped me throughout this long journey. @orgoman22 and @Ari Rezaei are great people who do their best to help everyone that seeks their help. Nancy is the one of the most caring people I had ever spoken with. Without her support, I would have over exhausted myself the week before and most definitely would not have done as well. Thank you to all of those awesome people who replied to my last two threads and those who messaged me wishing me good luck!
It has been a long journey, but it was definitely well worth it!
Sorry for all the grammar errors, and any question you have ask away and I am more than happy to help!
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