KAPLAN class is useless and destructive to you in many ways.
1. It is a complete waste of money
2. IT is a complete waste of time spent in a useless class that teaches you nothing. Not to mention the time you lost traveling to and from the class. Precious time that you can use to study.
I never took the class, I've only sat-in a couple to see if I should take the class and that was my conclusion. It's a complete waste because there are other students there so the information they teaches you is very general it doesn't cater to your specific needs.
I think the best way to prepare for the DAT is to first figure out how much time you will realistically need to be really prepared.
And also this is extremely important, give yourself a treat for doing good. For an example, I promised myself a back-packing through europe trip if I get scores of 21 and above on my science average and it really pushes me to study when I really just wanted to burn all my books and forget about dental school. I also promised myself a Louis Vuitton bag if I get any score that fits into the "100 percentile" and that also pushes me to study some more when I thought I just couldn't anymore. The point is. Give yourself rewards for motivation because sometimes the motivation of getting into dental school disappears when studying becomes overwhelming.
Make a study schedule and stick to it like glue.
I myself set aside 1 and a half month of complete concentration. Meaning beside going to work, I did nothing else but study. ( no clubs, bars, travels, fine-dining, shopping... all the fun stuff during the last two week stretch)
Review all your basic sciences. Use all the resources available to you.
I studied from MCAT books, my science books, my notebooks, my DAT review books. I made flashcards for all ORganic reactions.
After about two weeks of review I did my first practice test, and then really go back and review my weak subjects. then I take another practice test at the end of my third week and then I review my weak subjects again, then I take another practice test half-way into my fourth week... and have practice test every two days in my fifth week. I have my final practice test on the third day before my test and study some more. on the day before the test I went out with my friends the whole day and then went to bed at 10 only to lie awake the whole night stressing about the test and fell asleep for about one hour then wake up and took the test.
Beside reading materials, I bought Topscore for the practice test. In general I thought the topscore test was wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy harder than the real test in terms of the sciences. In fact, I finished all my science sections early with 15-20 minutes to go over my answers on the real test.
I got scores of about 16 on all my science topscore practice tests which does not correlate with my actual scores at all. THe reading and math don't correlate either cause I did well on my topscore practice math and did bad on the real thing.
Anyhow, consider buying TOPSCORE, and DAT destroyer.. I've never heard of DAT Destroyer until last week when I stumbled onto this site. I wish I'd known about it when I was preparing for my DAT, it would probably helped my math score.
Anyhow, goodluck! and most important of all BE CONFIDENT!
