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first off, thank you to everyone who participates in these forums. i havent posted anything yet but sdn was really helpful in answering dat (and on an unrelated topic, hpsp) questions. i only had three weeks to study before i head back to school (tomorrow). after a bit of gen chem review i took the free kaplan test and got, and what i was thinking:
bio: 14 (ouch...loved bio classes so far and almost majored in it)
chem: 17 (my least favorite subject - so i made myslef review this first, hence the 17)
orgo: 15 (orgo was always a pain)
pat: 22 (did lots of art so i always enjoy these puzzle problems)
rc: 0 (couldnt do it - passages were too boring and i think i was really hungry, so i got some cereal during this time.)
qr: 18 (haven't taken math since hs so i wasnt expecting much)
ts: 15
aa:14 (this was supposed to be easier than the real DAT???)
these sobering results got me really worried and made the next three weeks the most stressful this whole year. i was seriously freaking out during the last two days before the test.
bio: found my old ap bio text book, biology by campbell, and read basically the whole thing, except detailed information about plants. took me four days and i supplemented it with schuams review, which is very impressive in terms of clarity and depth, but for me, having a real bio textbook with lots of pretty pictures was invaluable. like other people said, bio was really random, and i had to guess the most in this section out of all the sciences. dat destroyer was very specific and very hard - not similar to the real test.
chem: the chem review i initially did was from khan academy, i watched a good number of hours, learning a lot, but it was too detailed for dat. might have gotten me an a in chem last year though. oh well ill use it for physics next semester. amazing man, sal. my sister had an old 2004 version of princeton review ap chem review, which became the bulk of my chem review and only took three days to go over. i really liked how they had solutions and explanations right next to the questions so theres no flipping around. destroyer was good, but much harder than the real thing.
orgo: i have no idea how i did so well. last year in orgo one and two, i never ever go higher than a C+ on the tests. luckily scaling and labs brought me to a B. anyway, i didnt use chads but i heard its amazing for this. i read through david kleins organic chemsitry as a second language - which saved me in orgo class, but didnt really help for the dat. i bought organic oddessey - i think i could do no more than a quarter of the problems. i did two chapters and quit, it took two much time and thats something i didnt have a lot of. overkill. BUT destroyer was very helpful. roadmaps! like chem and bio, the questions were really hard. it basically got down to me memorizing reactions but knowing nothing about the mechanism or chemsitry of it.
pat: practice does help. a lot. i used kaplan and barron (but i heard crack dat pat was good). i had good practice, but the real thing was so much harder...especially the angles. be prepared for lots of guessing. the multiple choice selections for this section is devious: something like 2-1-3-4 or 2-1-4-3 or 1-2-3-4 or 1-2-4-3. brutal.
rc: i remember someone here asking how the hell can you studying for the reading section. i dont know either, so i didnt. but during the test i found a technique that works fairly well: dont read the whole passage - skim and just try get the main idea of the paragraphs from the topic sentences and summarize it in ONE word or phrase. write that down to the corresponding number. then look at the questions and scan the the paragraph that concerns the topic. SKIM then SCAN - no reading. i saved myself from looking at a third of one of the passages this way, finished with 8 minutes left and emptyed the poland spring from my 15 min break before haha. for the other two passages i did end up scanning the whole thing, but it was still much faster than reading through it first. i know it sounds strange, but try it with a practice test, it might work for you.
example:
1)dogs are cool
2) ways their cool
3)history of canine domestication
4)german shepherds
5)clifford the big red dog
6)dogs and wolf hybrids
7)having a dog as a pet
8)those random episodes of arthur where pal speaks in a creepy english accent.
qr: this is basically math destroyer, maybe even a little easier. like people said, time is the main factor - i didnt have time to review and gusesed the last quesition right before the clock stopped. destroyer saved me on this section. make sure you know your trig really well, trying to recal which quandrant is negative and deriving stuff from sin2x + cos2x = 1 took up valuable time. supplementing all of this was barrons and kaplan dat book. barrons pat section is kind of ok, but most of it is crap. the cd is way too easy (i looked at the first five questions of a practice test in the cd and stoppped using it). some of the material is wrong, some of the answers were wrong. check the amazon reviews and see for yourself. kaplan also had lots of mistakes but, it had nicer presentation, and contrary to what people say, these two books actually do contain every thing you need to know - the only thing is that i found it impossible to learn from these books. i dont know why, but i ended up just using them for the sample questions, which were similar but easier than the actual dat.
after a very tedious three weeks i finally entered prometric:
pat: 23 /94.7
qr: 22 /96.4
rc: 25 /97.2
bio: 23 /97.4
chem: 2 5/97.1
orgo: 29 /99.3
ts: 25 /99.3
aa: 25 /99.8
i was shocked when i saw my score. i think the difficulty of destroyer got me too worried. when i had a day left before the test and i was still getting more than have of the destoryer questions wrong, i couldnt help but feel pessimistic. the dat experience wasnt that bad, i only got three hours of sleep before hand - which remineds me of another tip - sleep very well a few days before because you might not be able to sleep/want to cram the night before - but prometric was very comfortable, the chair was adjustable, and they had noise cancelling earmuffs. the popup calculator sucks, and not being able to erase sucks. having a metal detector wand waved at you, your id checked, and fingerprint scanned everytime you leave and enter isnt fun, but its kind of cool. make sure you use your the 15 min break to strech and eat.
overall, i would say get dat destroyer, math destoyer if your really bad at it, schuams, and an ap chem review book. orgo...again, i got really lucky, or maybe it was because i had very tough, but brilliant professors. oh also get the kaplan blue book for quick referencing and test questions, i mean its only $40 on amazon, were already paying $300 for the exam and up to $300 on destroyer. o try to take the exam right after you finish your required classes - dont wait for all the material to slowly but surely seep out of your brain! good luck to everyone with their studies, the most important formula to remember is: dat score=time*effort. if i had to do it again i wouldnt do 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 3.5 weeks - go for at least two months of a summer vacation. maybe tell your friends you got the rare, but highly contagious goat flu.
bio: 14 (ouch...loved bio classes so far and almost majored in it)
chem: 17 (my least favorite subject - so i made myslef review this first, hence the 17)
orgo: 15 (orgo was always a pain)
pat: 22 (did lots of art so i always enjoy these puzzle problems)
rc: 0 (couldnt do it - passages were too boring and i think i was really hungry, so i got some cereal during this time.)
qr: 18 (haven't taken math since hs so i wasnt expecting much)
ts: 15
aa:14 (this was supposed to be easier than the real DAT???)
these sobering results got me really worried and made the next three weeks the most stressful this whole year. i was seriously freaking out during the last two days before the test.
bio: found my old ap bio text book, biology by campbell, and read basically the whole thing, except detailed information about plants. took me four days and i supplemented it with schuams review, which is very impressive in terms of clarity and depth, but for me, having a real bio textbook with lots of pretty pictures was invaluable. like other people said, bio was really random, and i had to guess the most in this section out of all the sciences. dat destroyer was very specific and very hard - not similar to the real test.
chem: the chem review i initially did was from khan academy, i watched a good number of hours, learning a lot, but it was too detailed for dat. might have gotten me an a in chem last year though. oh well ill use it for physics next semester. amazing man, sal. my sister had an old 2004 version of princeton review ap chem review, which became the bulk of my chem review and only took three days to go over. i really liked how they had solutions and explanations right next to the questions so theres no flipping around. destroyer was good, but much harder than the real thing.
orgo: i have no idea how i did so well. last year in orgo one and two, i never ever go higher than a C+ on the tests. luckily scaling and labs brought me to a B. anyway, i didnt use chads but i heard its amazing for this. i read through david kleins organic chemsitry as a second language - which saved me in orgo class, but didnt really help for the dat. i bought organic oddessey - i think i could do no more than a quarter of the problems. i did two chapters and quit, it took two much time and thats something i didnt have a lot of. overkill. BUT destroyer was very helpful. roadmaps! like chem and bio, the questions were really hard. it basically got down to me memorizing reactions but knowing nothing about the mechanism or chemsitry of it.
pat: practice does help. a lot. i used kaplan and barron (but i heard crack dat pat was good). i had good practice, but the real thing was so much harder...especially the angles. be prepared for lots of guessing. the multiple choice selections for this section is devious: something like 2-1-3-4 or 2-1-4-3 or 1-2-3-4 or 1-2-4-3. brutal.
rc: i remember someone here asking how the hell can you studying for the reading section. i dont know either, so i didnt. but during the test i found a technique that works fairly well: dont read the whole passage - skim and just try get the main idea of the paragraphs from the topic sentences and summarize it in ONE word or phrase. write that down to the corresponding number. then look at the questions and scan the the paragraph that concerns the topic. SKIM then SCAN - no reading. i saved myself from looking at a third of one of the passages this way, finished with 8 minutes left and emptyed the poland spring from my 15 min break before haha. for the other two passages i did end up scanning the whole thing, but it was still much faster than reading through it first. i know it sounds strange, but try it with a practice test, it might work for you.
example:
1)dogs are cool
2) ways their cool
3)history of canine domestication
4)german shepherds
5)clifford the big red dog
6)dogs and wolf hybrids
7)having a dog as a pet
8)those random episodes of arthur where pal speaks in a creepy english accent.
qr: this is basically math destroyer, maybe even a little easier. like people said, time is the main factor - i didnt have time to review and gusesed the last quesition right before the clock stopped. destroyer saved me on this section. make sure you know your trig really well, trying to recal which quandrant is negative and deriving stuff from sin2x + cos2x = 1 took up valuable time. supplementing all of this was barrons and kaplan dat book. barrons pat section is kind of ok, but most of it is crap. the cd is way too easy (i looked at the first five questions of a practice test in the cd and stoppped using it). some of the material is wrong, some of the answers were wrong. check the amazon reviews and see for yourself. kaplan also had lots of mistakes but, it had nicer presentation, and contrary to what people say, these two books actually do contain every thing you need to know - the only thing is that i found it impossible to learn from these books. i dont know why, but i ended up just using them for the sample questions, which were similar but easier than the actual dat.
after a very tedious three weeks i finally entered prometric:
pat: 23 /94.7
qr: 22 /96.4
rc: 25 /97.2
bio: 23 /97.4
chem: 2 5/97.1
orgo: 29 /99.3
ts: 25 /99.3
aa: 25 /99.8
i was shocked when i saw my score. i think the difficulty of destroyer got me too worried. when i had a day left before the test and i was still getting more than have of the destoryer questions wrong, i couldnt help but feel pessimistic. the dat experience wasnt that bad, i only got three hours of sleep before hand - which remineds me of another tip - sleep very well a few days before because you might not be able to sleep/want to cram the night before - but prometric was very comfortable, the chair was adjustable, and they had noise cancelling earmuffs. the popup calculator sucks, and not being able to erase sucks. having a metal detector wand waved at you, your id checked, and fingerprint scanned everytime you leave and enter isnt fun, but its kind of cool. make sure you use your the 15 min break to strech and eat.
overall, i would say get dat destroyer, math destoyer if your really bad at it, schuams, and an ap chem review book. orgo...again, i got really lucky, or maybe it was because i had very tough, but brilliant professors. oh also get the kaplan blue book for quick referencing and test questions, i mean its only $40 on amazon, were already paying $300 for the exam and up to $300 on destroyer. o try to take the exam right after you finish your required classes - dont wait for all the material to slowly but surely seep out of your brain! good luck to everyone with their studies, the most important formula to remember is: dat score=time*effort. if i had to do it again i wouldnt do 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 3.5 weeks - go for at least two months of a summer vacation. maybe tell your friends you got the rare, but highly contagious goat flu.
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