- Joined
- Mar 20, 2014
- Messages
- 14
- Reaction score
- 9
Bio: 25 
GC: 26
Orgo: 25
PAT: 21
RC: 23
QR: 28
TS: 25
AA: 25
>1 year ago: (spring semester, freshman year) My DAT journey began at the end of my freshman year, when a senior in my school who was also pre -dental (and also went to the same high school as I did) got accepted into Colombia Dental with a DAT score of 24, which was 99.9 percentile. He became my role model, and towards the end of the semester, I asked him he could send me some information on how to be successful like him. He agreed and sent me a word document of his DAT breakdown, which was my first exposure to the DAT world. I was exposed to resources like Chad’s, Destroyer, Cliff’s AP Bio, etc. and saw that studying for the DAT takes a lot of work. Over that summer I borrowed KBB from the library and studied orgo. I also bought Princeton Review DAT and studied some orgo there as well. This studying helped me a lot in giving me a head start in orgo.
8 months ago: (fall semester/winter break, sophomore year) I studied Princeton DAT bio and took notes all fall semester into winter break. This helped me a lot in my anatomy class.
7 months ago: (spring semester, sophomore year) Although some people advised me against it, I still enrolled in the Kaplan DAT class. It took place every Sunday from 6-9 PM, and it forced me to study some DAT even when I had exams the next day (there was no way I was going to study for the DAT if I wasn’t forced to at the time). I got an AA 17 on the first diagnostic test, and thought I could improve it quickly.
5 months ago: (continued spring semester, sophomore year) I got AA 19 on the first Kaplan test, and at the time, I thought that was a good enough score and didn’t worry too much about the DAT, especially since I improved from the 17 earlier. I was already swamped with school work to be worrying about the DAT.
3 months ago: (start of summer vacation) After finals week, I was in the studying mood but was also tempted by the amount of “unpressured summer time” I had. Unfortunately, I fell victim, like most people, into relaxing. I lightly studied AP Cliffs, but didn’t take it too seriously. I made my first run through DAT Destroyer’s orgo and got about 75% wrong and got demotivated. It became harder and harder every day to concentrate, and eventually, I had to go to the library to study because I would get distracted at home. I studied Cliffs Bio, KBB Chemistry, and KBB Orgo and did 5 Math Destroyers. I would take very tedious notes using a failed method (see below in my AP Cliffs Biology section for more elaboration). Eventually, I lost motivation to study for the DAT.
2 months ago: (middle of summer vacation) Here was the low of my DAT journey. I pretty much stagnated and found it extremely difficult to study in this month. Some days, I wouldn’t study at all, and felt terrible because I basically existed as a parasite that leeched off its parents. My lack of motivation and discipline to study frustrated me and if I could change one thing about DAT studying, it would definitely be this entire month. Here’s a tip for everyone, not just pre-dents: NEVER get complacent. A lack of goals leads to unhappiness in life. If you want to lead a happy life, set big goals and dreams, go out there, and ACHIEVE them. I knew that the time was ticking, and that I was getting older. Everyone ages, I realized, so it’s what you become as an older person that matters. Are you going to be a poor, weak nobody, or are you going to be a respected, wealthy, and wise role model who people will talk about in the centuries to come? I also realized that the DAT is a once in a lifetime opportunity and a way to make a statement to myself, if I did well, that I could make a comeback, and that I had potential.
4 weeks ago: I began to realize the power of SDN. Every time I looked at an amazing breakdown on SDN (like the incredible AA28/27’s out there), I would get extremely motivated afterwards and start studying again. However, I would lose motivation after an hour or so of studying and get distracted. After experiencing this multiple times, I thought that a solution would be to go on SDN whenever I began to feel myself slipping. At first, I had to go on SDN every hour, but gradually, I started feeling motivated to study DAT on my own. I began to feel a fire growing inside me. At the end of this week, I looked at the calendar, saw that I only had 3 weeks to study, and ordered Bootcamp.
3 weeks ago: I did a Bootcamp test everyday as soon as I woke up. Since I had no testing stamina then, I would get really tired at the end of testing, spend the rest of the day getting distracted, and check my answers at the end of the day haphazardly. At the end of the week, I thought it might be better to document all my wrong answers in a word document so that I could review them later. I guess the biggest takeaways from this week were that Vicviper’s RC method didn’t work for Bootcamp (they did for Kaplan…you can see a jump from 14 to 24). You can see from my scores that when I used standard mapping for RC, my scores jumped from 18 to the 20s from there on out starting from the third test.
2 weeks ago: This was the most important week in my entire DAT journey. Specifically, it was the first day. I took my first achiever test and got extremely tired and demoralized by how difficult it was. I started to panic and started to take the DAT seriously. I went on SDN a lot to stay motivated and did not get distracted from this day forward. I studied ALL DAY that day, which I didn’t think was possible. I really surprised myself, and continued to do the same routine for the rest of the week: wake up, study, sleep. I studied around 14-16 hours a day. At the end of the week, I had to go to a job training and had to work a shift one day, which freaked me out because I needed every second I could get to study the DAT. Anyway, I did chem and bio destroyer sections and started redoing the orgo section. This time, I started taking notes on all the questions I got wrong starting with the bio section. I began to realize how much fun and interesting biology was and began to re-realize why I chose to major in it the first place. I wished at the time that I had found this fun earlier. At the end of the week, when I got two 17’s in a row, instead of becoming frustrated, I got even more determined.
Last week: I finished the orgo destroyer section and did all the chem questions that I didn’t know again. At night, I would review a section of the notes that I took on the destroyer questions. For bio, I would research the individual answer choices as well and made sure I thoroughly documented everything. I started doing Topscore, which apparently is representative of the real test. When I took the first Topscore Test, I thought that it was a piece of cake. I was super surprised when I saw my score and knew I still needed to practice some more. I discovered Feralis at this time and read and edited/annotated about 75% of it in two days. I began to feel that studying was becoming easier and that the hardest part in any studying process is the beginning of it. I took the DAT 2007 exam three days before the exam and got a 25 AA, 27 TS. I was in disbelief at these scores (none of my AA/TS were even CLOSE to those scores). I suspected that the exam was easier than the actual one so I went on SDN and my suspicions were confirmed. I didn’t take that score too seriously, but it did give me a boost of confidence that perhaps I could make it. The next (penultimate) day, I did the last Topscore, saw my scores, and pretty much confirmed my suspicion about the 2007 exam. This week, I continued to study 14-16 hours a day and if I wasn’t studying, I was at the bathroom or eating. It also became harder and harder to sleep as the days went on, but I managed to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night, which I am so glad I did because if I didn’t, sleep debt would have accumulated and I would have passed out.
Last day: I knew that I needed to wind down my studying this day, so all I did was go over my notes. I had a doctor’s appointment that day, and got a bit worried that it would take away from my review time. Mostly, I went over my bio notes and used my college orgo textbook to answer my questions about how some of the Destroyer roadmap reactions worked before going to the doctor’s office. There, I studied my chem notes before my regular checkup. I thought that there was a good chance that I had some health problems due to my extreme studying over the past weeks. It turned out that my blood pressure was normal (I actually said “that’s surprising” out loud), and my posture was normal (also extremely surprising since I sat in a chair for most of the day). The only problem was the presence of a few white blood cells in my urine, which was to be tested through a blood and urine test tomorrow at another place. After that I got the meningitis booster vaccine, went to radiology to get my chest x-ray to confirm that everything was normal, and went back home. I was surprised that I was pretty much healthy and felt relaxed (first time in a while). That night, I really, really wanted to finish Feralis because I spent a lot of time editing/annotating it, but I knew that it would make me worried. Instead, I finished reviewing my chem notes and looked up how to do p-value questions because I was a bit paranoid from what I read on SDN. Finally, I called it quits and went to bed at 10:30 PM. I knew that there was no way I would fall asleep without some auditory aid, and that that night, it was critical that I get a lot of quality sleep. I listed to one of my favorite relaxation videos that took my mind completely off the DAT and put it in the spiritual realm. After that, I dosed off to sleep. I told myself that I was going to get whatever score I deserved, nothing more, nothing less.
D-Day: I unexpectedly woke up at 4 AM and didn’t fall back asleep until 6 AM because I was starving, and I couldn’t eat breakfast because I had to get my blood drawn at around 10 AM. I woke up at around 9:30 AM, and my mom and I went to the office and I had to get my blood drawn and urine test done. I drank a lot of water there, and when I got back, my mom prepared a lot of food for me: a peanut butter sandwich, oatmeal, milk, avocado/cheese sandwich, and a banana. I grabbed some snacks, my Passport, and my Driver’s License as my dad and I got into the car and drove to the Prometric Testing Center. During the car ride, my dad turned on the radio, which kept my mind off the DAT.
When I got to the Center, I noticed that other people there were older than I was. There was a waiting room that resembled a doctor’s office waiting room. The lady at the desk asked me to put my belongings in the locker and wait. While waiting, I just closed my eyes and tried to relax. When my named was called, I was directed to another room where they asked me to empty my pockets and used a metal detector on me. Then, I was seated at a desk where another lady asked me to sign a piece of paper, checked my IDs, and finger printed me three times (the machine had difficulty registering because I had “long fingers”). I was given two laminated sheets along with two black pens that resembled fine tip sharpie pens and was directed into the testing room, which was pretty much a computer lab. I was about to start, but noticed that my Driver’s License was missing. Luckily, an assistant walked into the room and was able to retrieve my ID. That being settled, I was ready to begin the test.
I actually got nervous as I faced the starting screen and could hear my own heart pounding against the headphones. It also didn’t help that the room was freezing cold. With whatever courage I had, I started the test. During the first ten questions of bio, I was super nervous and afraid that I would make a mistake. I could hear my own heart racing and my body was shivering due to nervousness and the cold temperature. There were a few questions I had never seen before, and I thought I was screwed, but I was reminded by the Colombia Dental student in his breakdown that when you get the feeling that you are screwed, you MUST continue. When I got to chem, I became a bit more relaxed because the questions were easier. The same thing happened with orgo and I began to gain control over myself. I finished SNS with 26 minutes to spare, so I went over the marked questions (I believe I marked about 7 questions in bio, 3 in chem, and 3 in orgo). After reviewing those, I went back to the beginning of bio to review all the other questions. Halfway through, I began setting up the PAT Cube Counting charts. I didn’t detect any errors until when I had about a minute left and I sensed an error in one problem. I was reluctant to change it, but I reasoned my way into changing it. After SNS was completed, I knew that the worst was over with and proceeded on to the PAT. The keyholes were okay, but the TFE was harder than expected. The angles were really hard for me because of how close they were and at that time I knew I had to speed up. It was actually a bit harder to twist my head when I was wearing the headphone (you can get a bit dizzy) and I tried my absolute best to rank the angles. I was squirming in my chair like a worm, but I didn’t care. I had to rush through cube counting so that I wouldn’t run out of time, and had about 10 minutes for pattern folding. The pattern folding, which is usually my best section, seemed a bit more challenging to me probably because I was overthinking.
When the break came up, I thought you needed to take the sheets and pens with you, but you don’t. I decided to forgo the snacks because I wasn’t hungry and went to the bathroom. In the mirror, I noticed how bloodshot my eyes were from being in the frigid tundra as well as staring intensely at the screen. Looking like a mess didn’t stop me though, and I looked in the mirror and told myself that I could do this. I stretched for a bit before going back to sign in. I had about 8 minutes left of my break so I sat on my hands for 6 minutes to warm them up and thought about my approach for critical reading. I started feeling anxious again, but thought to myself that I only had two more sections to go before I can leave. With a surge of courage, I clicked the End button and proceeded to the RC. The first passage was 16 paragraphs long, which really surprised me since I’ve read on SDN that they are usually 11 paragraphs long. Anyway, it wasn’t too bad and I had 38 minutes left, which is only slightly behind time. The next passage had 13 paragraphs long and at that time, I was thinking that I really needed to speed up, and finished with about 18 minutes left. The final passage was 11 paragraphs long, but was pretty fascinating. I rushed through the questions and managed to finish with about a minute left. I tried to sit on my hands as much as possible, but it was hard when I needed both hands to create the reading maps. All three passages were biology related, with one being a bit physics related. After RC, I thought to myself that I that QR should be a breeze, because QR has been my strongest section in practice tests. The first few questions were easy, but I hit a stumbling block early on. I thought hard about the question and really wanted to get it correct, but knew that I was wasting time, so I picked an answer, marked the question, and moved on. Thinking that I was on a time deficit, I rushed as fast as I could through the remaining questions, marking the ones I wasn’t sure of or that needed rechecking. I thought that I was actually screwing up this section by rushing through the questions and really didn’t want to mess up my best section. I had about 5 minutes remaining, and was surprised that I only marked 4 of them. I figured out/rechecked 3 of them, and the last one I just guessed on because I had no clue how to do it, even though it seemed like it was an easy question. With the math section done, I was exhausted and quickly did the survey, clicking “Satisfied” for many of the questions.
When the results popped up, and I saw an AA 25, I thought I was dreaming for a moment. Then, I asked “is this real?” as my eyes opened wider (they started to get foggy) to make sure that it was. I thought about the DAT 2007 test and laughed a bit inside. I didn’t take a close looker look at the other scores because I wanted to get out of the cold room as soon as possible. When I exited, I told the lady that I was done and she printed out my score. Slowly, as I recovered from the math section and the cold temperature, I began feeling a dulled happiness that gradually grew stronger. This was a moment I had replayed in my head every single day for the past two weeks and a goal that I’ve had for over a year. Most importantly, I had achieved the comeback and redeemed myself. I couldn’t believe that I was at the finish line. After gathering my belongings from the locker, I showed my dad my score and he was surprised as I was, since I’d told him about my practice tests scores. He was worried because I told him one time that I got an AA 19. He called my mom and told her and my sister about the news. After that, we went Costco shopping and life felt surreal.
Reflections: I could not have gotten this score without SDN. SDN was the first important tool that allowed me to get motivated and disciplined again. Seeing others getting insanely high scores motivated me immensely. The other important factor in my life was my mom and dad. My mom would prepare food for me every day and saved me a tremendous amount of time. My dad worked hard to support the family financially. I try not to take them for granted because I know plenty of people who have a parent missing (my neighbor/friend and my cousins), and I’ve seen how much harder it makes their life. With regards to studying strategy, in the last two weeks, it all came down to setting priorities to achieve my goals. Determine what the most important things are, develop a plan of action, and work ruthlessly to finish them. Also, it's not what you get on the practice tests, but what you learn from them. The DAT journey was truly life changing for me and I hope that the lessons that I've learned can help you guys succeed. Below is my review on all the materials I used, mostly in chronological order. It’s pretty long, so it’s up to you if you want to read it. Let me know if you have any questions!
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Materials used (in approximate chronological order): college courses, Princeton Review DAT (2012), Kaplan Online, DAT Question of the Day, Cliffs AP Biology (3rd Edition), Kaplan Blue Book, Math Destroyer (2012), DAT Destroyer (2012), Feralis Notes, Bootcamp, Achiever (5 Tests), TopScore
Wished I used: Chad’s Videos, maybe qvault
College Courses: Doing well in college courses makes your DAT studying significantly easier and the double benefit is that you increase your GPA. For Bio, you want to take relevant college courses such as evolution, molecular biology, and anatomy, all of which helped me tremendously. Working hard in these classes allowed me to understand key concepts and to form long term visual memories from the projects that I did, the textbooks I read, and the classes I attended. Over the years, the knowledge adds up. I barely spent any time on Chem compared to the other sections because I had taken Gen Chem in 10th grade, AP Chem in high school (got a 5), and 2 semesters of Gen Chem in college (they didn’t accept AP credit). As a result, I was able to focus on other sections that I wasn’t experienced with, such as organic chemistry, which I only took two semesters of in college.
Princeton Review DAT (2012): What I loved about this book was how easy it was to read, and I learned a lot from this book. The biology in this book is actually pretty modern, including things like 32/30 ATP for cellular respiration and an updated phylums section (which I think goes overboard, but can be useful for conquering those random/specific DAT questions). The chemistry section is actually pretty good for refreshing your memory about key concepts (coming from someone who’s taken 3 years of chem). While the bio and chem sections are great, I benefited by far from the book’s organic chemistry section. The book makes orgo so easy to understand, and I remember studying from this book to get the highest grade in the class on the first orgo exam. If you take a look at my scores (that I’ve attached below), you will notice that I jumped from a 19 to a 23 in one of the Achiever tests. This was because I read the entire PR orgo section the night before (my scores dropped after probably because Achiever 4 and 5 are notoriously hard and maybe because I forgot some stuff). If you are busy (hard college courses, extracurriculars, etc.), I highly recommend picking up this book, because of how friendly it is (and cost efficient it is – I got mine off Amazon for $5). You will learn a lot if you just read the bold and italicized words.
Kaplan Online: A good, but overvalued resource. Although Kaplan has a lot of good practice problems and resources, I think it is too expensive. The classes were easy for me since I already understood all the basic concepts that they introduced. Although other people advised me not to do Kaplan, I still did it because I wanted to force myself to study for the DAT during the school year. Perhaps Kaplan helped a bit, but I didn’t take full advantage of all the practice that they had, so a lot of the money I spent on this was wasted. What I liked about the Kaplan classroom, though, was the fact that dental students are teaching you. I was able to learn a bit about how dental school was like. I also like the laminated paper they provided, which I used for practice tests.
DAT Question of the Day: A great way to get some easy DAT practice every day. Just enter your email on their list and you’re good to go. At first the questions seemed hard and I got them wrong a lot of the time, but as time went by, I was able to get almost all of them right. It also introduced me to DAT Bootcamp by sending me periodic emails of profiles of successful students who’ve gotten high DAT scores and used Bootcamp. I was really motivated by those posts.
Cliffs AP Biology (3rd Edition): A well-known DAT resource (don’t get the 4th edition, it has less information due to the AP Biology change). What I liked about this book is that it is extremely detailed. However, my studying method made me find this book to be dull and boring. Let me explain: I started taking notes on this book three months ago using the Cornell Note taking strategy (fold the paper in half, write questions on the left, write the answers on right), which was my attempt to combine notes and flashcards. This was a big failure because it was so time consuming (because you have to invent questions based on the text, write their answers, and fold many sheets of paper) and eventually, I lost motivation. I recommend taking standard notes, meaning that you write everything you don’t know on a piece of paper, line by line in bullet format (like what you and I do in class). That way, you get your notes done much more quickly, and, most importantly, you can review them (which is the point of taking notes in the first place). Unfortunately, I neither finished taking notes on Cliffs (I had about 3 chapters left) nor reviewed them. However, that was entirely my fault, and I still think Cliffs is a good resource, but Feralis is better (I’ll elaborate later).
Kaplan Blue Book: I felt that KBB was not as good as Princeton Review in terms of clarity. I did the Cornell note taking method on the chem and orgo sections, which, as I stated earlier, was a huge failure. I honestly felt like I was wasting time and taking notes all day was really demotivating. I had about 4 chapters left of both chem and orgo before I couldn’t take it anymore.
Math Destroyer (2012): A solid resource for conquering the math section. I did the first five practice tests (timed, of course), and stopped afterwards because I lost motivation to study from Cliffs and KBB. In those five practice tests, I learned a lot about DAT math and mastered them quickly. By the fifth test, I got only two wrong, so I felt competent. The only other time I opened the book was the day before D-Day, when I looked at practice test 12 for the p-value questions, in case they showed up on the actual test, which they didn’t. Math Destroyer is one of the easiest ways to boost your math score, and I highly recommend to those struggling in math.
DAT Destroyer (2012): Dr. Romano’s amazing work has a huge bank of questions (with occasional humor in the explanations). The bio is pretty specific, which is good for tackling the random questions that may pop up on the DAT, the chem calculations sharpen your mental math/estimation skills, and the orgo roadmaps expose you a variety of reaction pathways. I started doing the orgo section, which destroyed me (I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?). I would get about 75% of them wrong, and lost motivation. Later, I move on to chem and did 30 problems in 30 minutes and went over the explanations. Then, I did bio, and would do 40 questions at a time in 30 minutes to simulate real testing conditions, but this time, took notes on the explanations for the ones I got wrong as well as research all the answer choices if there was an unfamiliar word. The standard note taking was really helpful, so I decided to do the entire orgo section again and take notes. I did the same for chem, except I only did it for the ones I got wrong. Later, I would study the notes before going to sleep. I didn’t do the math section because my weaknesses were in the sciences (as you can tell by my practice test scores). Overall, Destroyer allowed me to get a deeper understanding on all the sciences, and is a solid, core DAT resource that I highly recommend.
Feralis Notes: I wish I had discovered these excellent notes earlier, because they are a fantastic, concise summary of Cliffs (which I thought was long winded). A lot of answers to practice test questions can be found in these notes. I only read 75%, but learned so much from it. Feralis supplements Cliffs’ lack of anatomy as well as info from Destroyer and other resources such as Qvault to create an ultimate bio study guide. Make sure you download the Word doc, create a second version of it, and weed out any info that you already know so that your second time through will be easier. I was able to shorten the notes to about 59 pages and bolded key terms so that my eye could travel between them faster. Feralis goes bit overboard with plants though, and I think it’s ok to glance at or skip the leaf section, which I think is a tad too detailed. On the whole, I highly recommend reading Feralis for reinforcing your bio arsenal.
DAT Bootcamp: Bootcamp was the start of my practice testing phase. I’ve heard a lot about how great BC is, and I think it lives up to its hype. I appreciated DAT Bootcamp’s ease of use as well as the simplicity/portability of having the testing environment in a browser (as opposed to downloading software). It was really good practice with clear explanations, and towards the later practice tests, I would copy and paste all the questions I got wrong on a word document. The best thing about Bootcamp was definitely the PAT section. I was terrible with angles and was able to improve my accuracy with them by using the generator. One night I practiced the Hill method over and over again and saw my scores gradually rise. The RC on Bootcamp is both great practice and entertainment; the articles are actually interesting. You should buy Bootcamp for the good practice it offers as well as amazing PAT practice.
DAT Achiever (5 Tests): Achiever is notoriously difficult, but it was the most important testing software for me because it motivated me to a level that I didn’t think was possible. Taking Bootcamp tests didn’t frustrate me at all, but taking Achiever tests gave me headaches and destroyed my confidence. While taking these tests, I was challenged to my limits. It was the true wakeup call I needed all summer. The sciences had pretty specific questions, but I was able to learn from them and add them to my knowledge bank. The PAT is actually pretty good, and I would say that it along with Bootcamp PAT are representative of the actual PAT. The RC section seemed impossible to master, and I actually had to abandon the mapping method that I used in Bootcamp to pure S&D, which only produced a slight, but gradual increase in my score (I actually reverted back to mapping later). I was thinking that if I ever got such hard passages on the actual DAT, I would just use straight up S&D, so in a sense, Achiever helped me develop a backup strategy. I was actually very satisfied with the Achiever math, as I learned a lot useful tricks from their explanations. I recommend getting achiever so that you can get extra motivation; it was painful, but so worth it for me. An added bonus is that the Achiever software interface is close to the actual one.
TopScore Pro: I’ve heard great things about TopScore like how representative it is of the real test. I think it’s true for the sciences because they have a lot of generic questions with a few random/specific ones. However, I was disappointed by its PAT, which had parts like TFE and pattern folding straight up copied from the ADA 2007 test. Also, the angles are extremely easy; they have you compare acute and obtuse angles. The RC is actually pretty representative of the actual RC, and is great practice. The math is great as well and has some nice probability questions, but I notice that in the math and PAT sections, there are repeats/similarities in question types between practice tests. It would have been nicer to have brand new questions every time. Other recommendations would be to update the software so that it is more representative of the real one, and to update the website, which some people have claimed to look “shady”. Due to these factors, I would say that TopScore is a bit overvalued. However, the most important thing I gained from TopScore was exposure to “tricky” questions, kind of like the kinds you find on the SAT. For example, one question asked where the egg goes after ovulation. Instinctively, you would think the oviduct, but the answer was the body cavity. These tricky questions frustrated me like Achiever did, but made me more cautious of wording.
DAT 2007: This is the most representative DAT exam for me, but easier than the real exam. The biology has no random/specific questions (at least it seemed to me), and the chem and orgo are straightforward. The PAT is easier than the real thing as the keyholes and pattern folding on the real DAT are much harder. The angles are pretty representative though, as they are pretty close like in Bootcamp. The RC is completely unrepresentative and a bit harder because you have 15 minutes to do about 17 questions (that’s like 8 minutes to read and 7 minutes to do questions!) and you have to keep scrolling up to view the passage again. The math was slightly easier than the DAT as well. You should take this exam between 2-5 days before D-Day for a confidence boost.
GC: 26
Orgo: 25
PAT: 21
RC: 23
QR: 28
TS: 25
AA: 25
>1 year ago: (spring semester, freshman year) My DAT journey began at the end of my freshman year, when a senior in my school who was also pre -dental (and also went to the same high school as I did) got accepted into Colombia Dental with a DAT score of 24, which was 99.9 percentile. He became my role model, and towards the end of the semester, I asked him he could send me some information on how to be successful like him. He agreed and sent me a word document of his DAT breakdown, which was my first exposure to the DAT world. I was exposed to resources like Chad’s, Destroyer, Cliff’s AP Bio, etc. and saw that studying for the DAT takes a lot of work. Over that summer I borrowed KBB from the library and studied orgo. I also bought Princeton Review DAT and studied some orgo there as well. This studying helped me a lot in giving me a head start in orgo.
8 months ago: (fall semester/winter break, sophomore year) I studied Princeton DAT bio and took notes all fall semester into winter break. This helped me a lot in my anatomy class.
7 months ago: (spring semester, sophomore year) Although some people advised me against it, I still enrolled in the Kaplan DAT class. It took place every Sunday from 6-9 PM, and it forced me to study some DAT even when I had exams the next day (there was no way I was going to study for the DAT if I wasn’t forced to at the time). I got an AA 17 on the first diagnostic test, and thought I could improve it quickly.
5 months ago: (continued spring semester, sophomore year) I got AA 19 on the first Kaplan test, and at the time, I thought that was a good enough score and didn’t worry too much about the DAT, especially since I improved from the 17 earlier. I was already swamped with school work to be worrying about the DAT.
3 months ago: (start of summer vacation) After finals week, I was in the studying mood but was also tempted by the amount of “unpressured summer time” I had. Unfortunately, I fell victim, like most people, into relaxing. I lightly studied AP Cliffs, but didn’t take it too seriously. I made my first run through DAT Destroyer’s orgo and got about 75% wrong and got demotivated. It became harder and harder every day to concentrate, and eventually, I had to go to the library to study because I would get distracted at home. I studied Cliffs Bio, KBB Chemistry, and KBB Orgo and did 5 Math Destroyers. I would take very tedious notes using a failed method (see below in my AP Cliffs Biology section for more elaboration). Eventually, I lost motivation to study for the DAT.
2 months ago: (middle of summer vacation) Here was the low of my DAT journey. I pretty much stagnated and found it extremely difficult to study in this month. Some days, I wouldn’t study at all, and felt terrible because I basically existed as a parasite that leeched off its parents. My lack of motivation and discipline to study frustrated me and if I could change one thing about DAT studying, it would definitely be this entire month. Here’s a tip for everyone, not just pre-dents: NEVER get complacent. A lack of goals leads to unhappiness in life. If you want to lead a happy life, set big goals and dreams, go out there, and ACHIEVE them. I knew that the time was ticking, and that I was getting older. Everyone ages, I realized, so it’s what you become as an older person that matters. Are you going to be a poor, weak nobody, or are you going to be a respected, wealthy, and wise role model who people will talk about in the centuries to come? I also realized that the DAT is a once in a lifetime opportunity and a way to make a statement to myself, if I did well, that I could make a comeback, and that I had potential.
4 weeks ago: I began to realize the power of SDN. Every time I looked at an amazing breakdown on SDN (like the incredible AA28/27’s out there), I would get extremely motivated afterwards and start studying again. However, I would lose motivation after an hour or so of studying and get distracted. After experiencing this multiple times, I thought that a solution would be to go on SDN whenever I began to feel myself slipping. At first, I had to go on SDN every hour, but gradually, I started feeling motivated to study DAT on my own. I began to feel a fire growing inside me. At the end of this week, I looked at the calendar, saw that I only had 3 weeks to study, and ordered Bootcamp.
3 weeks ago: I did a Bootcamp test everyday as soon as I woke up. Since I had no testing stamina then, I would get really tired at the end of testing, spend the rest of the day getting distracted, and check my answers at the end of the day haphazardly. At the end of the week, I thought it might be better to document all my wrong answers in a word document so that I could review them later. I guess the biggest takeaways from this week were that Vicviper’s RC method didn’t work for Bootcamp (they did for Kaplan…you can see a jump from 14 to 24). You can see from my scores that when I used standard mapping for RC, my scores jumped from 18 to the 20s from there on out starting from the third test.
2 weeks ago: This was the most important week in my entire DAT journey. Specifically, it was the first day. I took my first achiever test and got extremely tired and demoralized by how difficult it was. I started to panic and started to take the DAT seriously. I went on SDN a lot to stay motivated and did not get distracted from this day forward. I studied ALL DAY that day, which I didn’t think was possible. I really surprised myself, and continued to do the same routine for the rest of the week: wake up, study, sleep. I studied around 14-16 hours a day. At the end of the week, I had to go to a job training and had to work a shift one day, which freaked me out because I needed every second I could get to study the DAT. Anyway, I did chem and bio destroyer sections and started redoing the orgo section. This time, I started taking notes on all the questions I got wrong starting with the bio section. I began to realize how much fun and interesting biology was and began to re-realize why I chose to major in it the first place. I wished at the time that I had found this fun earlier. At the end of the week, when I got two 17’s in a row, instead of becoming frustrated, I got even more determined.
Last week: I finished the orgo destroyer section and did all the chem questions that I didn’t know again. At night, I would review a section of the notes that I took on the destroyer questions. For bio, I would research the individual answer choices as well and made sure I thoroughly documented everything. I started doing Topscore, which apparently is representative of the real test. When I took the first Topscore Test, I thought that it was a piece of cake. I was super surprised when I saw my score and knew I still needed to practice some more. I discovered Feralis at this time and read and edited/annotated about 75% of it in two days. I began to feel that studying was becoming easier and that the hardest part in any studying process is the beginning of it. I took the DAT 2007 exam three days before the exam and got a 25 AA, 27 TS. I was in disbelief at these scores (none of my AA/TS were even CLOSE to those scores). I suspected that the exam was easier than the actual one so I went on SDN and my suspicions were confirmed. I didn’t take that score too seriously, but it did give me a boost of confidence that perhaps I could make it. The next (penultimate) day, I did the last Topscore, saw my scores, and pretty much confirmed my suspicion about the 2007 exam. This week, I continued to study 14-16 hours a day and if I wasn’t studying, I was at the bathroom or eating. It also became harder and harder to sleep as the days went on, but I managed to get at least 7 hours of sleep per night, which I am so glad I did because if I didn’t, sleep debt would have accumulated and I would have passed out.
Last day: I knew that I needed to wind down my studying this day, so all I did was go over my notes. I had a doctor’s appointment that day, and got a bit worried that it would take away from my review time. Mostly, I went over my bio notes and used my college orgo textbook to answer my questions about how some of the Destroyer roadmap reactions worked before going to the doctor’s office. There, I studied my chem notes before my regular checkup. I thought that there was a good chance that I had some health problems due to my extreme studying over the past weeks. It turned out that my blood pressure was normal (I actually said “that’s surprising” out loud), and my posture was normal (also extremely surprising since I sat in a chair for most of the day). The only problem was the presence of a few white blood cells in my urine, which was to be tested through a blood and urine test tomorrow at another place. After that I got the meningitis booster vaccine, went to radiology to get my chest x-ray to confirm that everything was normal, and went back home. I was surprised that I was pretty much healthy and felt relaxed (first time in a while). That night, I really, really wanted to finish Feralis because I spent a lot of time editing/annotating it, but I knew that it would make me worried. Instead, I finished reviewing my chem notes and looked up how to do p-value questions because I was a bit paranoid from what I read on SDN. Finally, I called it quits and went to bed at 10:30 PM. I knew that there was no way I would fall asleep without some auditory aid, and that that night, it was critical that I get a lot of quality sleep. I listed to one of my favorite relaxation videos that took my mind completely off the DAT and put it in the spiritual realm. After that, I dosed off to sleep. I told myself that I was going to get whatever score I deserved, nothing more, nothing less.
D-Day: I unexpectedly woke up at 4 AM and didn’t fall back asleep until 6 AM because I was starving, and I couldn’t eat breakfast because I had to get my blood drawn at around 10 AM. I woke up at around 9:30 AM, and my mom and I went to the office and I had to get my blood drawn and urine test done. I drank a lot of water there, and when I got back, my mom prepared a lot of food for me: a peanut butter sandwich, oatmeal, milk, avocado/cheese sandwich, and a banana. I grabbed some snacks, my Passport, and my Driver’s License as my dad and I got into the car and drove to the Prometric Testing Center. During the car ride, my dad turned on the radio, which kept my mind off the DAT.
When I got to the Center, I noticed that other people there were older than I was. There was a waiting room that resembled a doctor’s office waiting room. The lady at the desk asked me to put my belongings in the locker and wait. While waiting, I just closed my eyes and tried to relax. When my named was called, I was directed to another room where they asked me to empty my pockets and used a metal detector on me. Then, I was seated at a desk where another lady asked me to sign a piece of paper, checked my IDs, and finger printed me three times (the machine had difficulty registering because I had “long fingers”). I was given two laminated sheets along with two black pens that resembled fine tip sharpie pens and was directed into the testing room, which was pretty much a computer lab. I was about to start, but noticed that my Driver’s License was missing. Luckily, an assistant walked into the room and was able to retrieve my ID. That being settled, I was ready to begin the test.
I actually got nervous as I faced the starting screen and could hear my own heart pounding against the headphones. It also didn’t help that the room was freezing cold. With whatever courage I had, I started the test. During the first ten questions of bio, I was super nervous and afraid that I would make a mistake. I could hear my own heart racing and my body was shivering due to nervousness and the cold temperature. There were a few questions I had never seen before, and I thought I was screwed, but I was reminded by the Colombia Dental student in his breakdown that when you get the feeling that you are screwed, you MUST continue. When I got to chem, I became a bit more relaxed because the questions were easier. The same thing happened with orgo and I began to gain control over myself. I finished SNS with 26 minutes to spare, so I went over the marked questions (I believe I marked about 7 questions in bio, 3 in chem, and 3 in orgo). After reviewing those, I went back to the beginning of bio to review all the other questions. Halfway through, I began setting up the PAT Cube Counting charts. I didn’t detect any errors until when I had about a minute left and I sensed an error in one problem. I was reluctant to change it, but I reasoned my way into changing it. After SNS was completed, I knew that the worst was over with and proceeded on to the PAT. The keyholes were okay, but the TFE was harder than expected. The angles were really hard for me because of how close they were and at that time I knew I had to speed up. It was actually a bit harder to twist my head when I was wearing the headphone (you can get a bit dizzy) and I tried my absolute best to rank the angles. I was squirming in my chair like a worm, but I didn’t care. I had to rush through cube counting so that I wouldn’t run out of time, and had about 10 minutes for pattern folding. The pattern folding, which is usually my best section, seemed a bit more challenging to me probably because I was overthinking.
When the break came up, I thought you needed to take the sheets and pens with you, but you don’t. I decided to forgo the snacks because I wasn’t hungry and went to the bathroom. In the mirror, I noticed how bloodshot my eyes were from being in the frigid tundra as well as staring intensely at the screen. Looking like a mess didn’t stop me though, and I looked in the mirror and told myself that I could do this. I stretched for a bit before going back to sign in. I had about 8 minutes left of my break so I sat on my hands for 6 minutes to warm them up and thought about my approach for critical reading. I started feeling anxious again, but thought to myself that I only had two more sections to go before I can leave. With a surge of courage, I clicked the End button and proceeded to the RC. The first passage was 16 paragraphs long, which really surprised me since I’ve read on SDN that they are usually 11 paragraphs long. Anyway, it wasn’t too bad and I had 38 minutes left, which is only slightly behind time. The next passage had 13 paragraphs long and at that time, I was thinking that I really needed to speed up, and finished with about 18 minutes left. The final passage was 11 paragraphs long, but was pretty fascinating. I rushed through the questions and managed to finish with about a minute left. I tried to sit on my hands as much as possible, but it was hard when I needed both hands to create the reading maps. All three passages were biology related, with one being a bit physics related. After RC, I thought to myself that I that QR should be a breeze, because QR has been my strongest section in practice tests. The first few questions were easy, but I hit a stumbling block early on. I thought hard about the question and really wanted to get it correct, but knew that I was wasting time, so I picked an answer, marked the question, and moved on. Thinking that I was on a time deficit, I rushed as fast as I could through the remaining questions, marking the ones I wasn’t sure of or that needed rechecking. I thought that I was actually screwing up this section by rushing through the questions and really didn’t want to mess up my best section. I had about 5 minutes remaining, and was surprised that I only marked 4 of them. I figured out/rechecked 3 of them, and the last one I just guessed on because I had no clue how to do it, even though it seemed like it was an easy question. With the math section done, I was exhausted and quickly did the survey, clicking “Satisfied” for many of the questions.
When the results popped up, and I saw an AA 25, I thought I was dreaming for a moment. Then, I asked “is this real?” as my eyes opened wider (they started to get foggy) to make sure that it was. I thought about the DAT 2007 test and laughed a bit inside. I didn’t take a close looker look at the other scores because I wanted to get out of the cold room as soon as possible. When I exited, I told the lady that I was done and she printed out my score. Slowly, as I recovered from the math section and the cold temperature, I began feeling a dulled happiness that gradually grew stronger. This was a moment I had replayed in my head every single day for the past two weeks and a goal that I’ve had for over a year. Most importantly, I had achieved the comeback and redeemed myself. I couldn’t believe that I was at the finish line. After gathering my belongings from the locker, I showed my dad my score and he was surprised as I was, since I’d told him about my practice tests scores. He was worried because I told him one time that I got an AA 19. He called my mom and told her and my sister about the news. After that, we went Costco shopping and life felt surreal.
Reflections: I could not have gotten this score without SDN. SDN was the first important tool that allowed me to get motivated and disciplined again. Seeing others getting insanely high scores motivated me immensely. The other important factor in my life was my mom and dad. My mom would prepare food for me every day and saved me a tremendous amount of time. My dad worked hard to support the family financially. I try not to take them for granted because I know plenty of people who have a parent missing (my neighbor/friend and my cousins), and I’ve seen how much harder it makes their life. With regards to studying strategy, in the last two weeks, it all came down to setting priorities to achieve my goals. Determine what the most important things are, develop a plan of action, and work ruthlessly to finish them. Also, it's not what you get on the practice tests, but what you learn from them. The DAT journey was truly life changing for me and I hope that the lessons that I've learned can help you guys succeed. Below is my review on all the materials I used, mostly in chronological order. It’s pretty long, so it’s up to you if you want to read it. Let me know if you have any questions!
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Materials used (in approximate chronological order): college courses, Princeton Review DAT (2012), Kaplan Online, DAT Question of the Day, Cliffs AP Biology (3rd Edition), Kaplan Blue Book, Math Destroyer (2012), DAT Destroyer (2012), Feralis Notes, Bootcamp, Achiever (5 Tests), TopScore
Wished I used: Chad’s Videos, maybe qvault
College Courses: Doing well in college courses makes your DAT studying significantly easier and the double benefit is that you increase your GPA. For Bio, you want to take relevant college courses such as evolution, molecular biology, and anatomy, all of which helped me tremendously. Working hard in these classes allowed me to understand key concepts and to form long term visual memories from the projects that I did, the textbooks I read, and the classes I attended. Over the years, the knowledge adds up. I barely spent any time on Chem compared to the other sections because I had taken Gen Chem in 10th grade, AP Chem in high school (got a 5), and 2 semesters of Gen Chem in college (they didn’t accept AP credit). As a result, I was able to focus on other sections that I wasn’t experienced with, such as organic chemistry, which I only took two semesters of in college.
Princeton Review DAT (2012): What I loved about this book was how easy it was to read, and I learned a lot from this book. The biology in this book is actually pretty modern, including things like 32/30 ATP for cellular respiration and an updated phylums section (which I think goes overboard, but can be useful for conquering those random/specific DAT questions). The chemistry section is actually pretty good for refreshing your memory about key concepts (coming from someone who’s taken 3 years of chem). While the bio and chem sections are great, I benefited by far from the book’s organic chemistry section. The book makes orgo so easy to understand, and I remember studying from this book to get the highest grade in the class on the first orgo exam. If you take a look at my scores (that I’ve attached below), you will notice that I jumped from a 19 to a 23 in one of the Achiever tests. This was because I read the entire PR orgo section the night before (my scores dropped after probably because Achiever 4 and 5 are notoriously hard and maybe because I forgot some stuff). If you are busy (hard college courses, extracurriculars, etc.), I highly recommend picking up this book, because of how friendly it is (and cost efficient it is – I got mine off Amazon for $5). You will learn a lot if you just read the bold and italicized words.
Kaplan Online: A good, but overvalued resource. Although Kaplan has a lot of good practice problems and resources, I think it is too expensive. The classes were easy for me since I already understood all the basic concepts that they introduced. Although other people advised me not to do Kaplan, I still did it because I wanted to force myself to study for the DAT during the school year. Perhaps Kaplan helped a bit, but I didn’t take full advantage of all the practice that they had, so a lot of the money I spent on this was wasted. What I liked about the Kaplan classroom, though, was the fact that dental students are teaching you. I was able to learn a bit about how dental school was like. I also like the laminated paper they provided, which I used for practice tests.
DAT Question of the Day: A great way to get some easy DAT practice every day. Just enter your email on their list and you’re good to go. At first the questions seemed hard and I got them wrong a lot of the time, but as time went by, I was able to get almost all of them right. It also introduced me to DAT Bootcamp by sending me periodic emails of profiles of successful students who’ve gotten high DAT scores and used Bootcamp. I was really motivated by those posts.
Cliffs AP Biology (3rd Edition): A well-known DAT resource (don’t get the 4th edition, it has less information due to the AP Biology change). What I liked about this book is that it is extremely detailed. However, my studying method made me find this book to be dull and boring. Let me explain: I started taking notes on this book three months ago using the Cornell Note taking strategy (fold the paper in half, write questions on the left, write the answers on right), which was my attempt to combine notes and flashcards. This was a big failure because it was so time consuming (because you have to invent questions based on the text, write their answers, and fold many sheets of paper) and eventually, I lost motivation. I recommend taking standard notes, meaning that you write everything you don’t know on a piece of paper, line by line in bullet format (like what you and I do in class). That way, you get your notes done much more quickly, and, most importantly, you can review them (which is the point of taking notes in the first place). Unfortunately, I neither finished taking notes on Cliffs (I had about 3 chapters left) nor reviewed them. However, that was entirely my fault, and I still think Cliffs is a good resource, but Feralis is better (I’ll elaborate later).
Kaplan Blue Book: I felt that KBB was not as good as Princeton Review in terms of clarity. I did the Cornell note taking method on the chem and orgo sections, which, as I stated earlier, was a huge failure. I honestly felt like I was wasting time and taking notes all day was really demotivating. I had about 4 chapters left of both chem and orgo before I couldn’t take it anymore.
Math Destroyer (2012): A solid resource for conquering the math section. I did the first five practice tests (timed, of course), and stopped afterwards because I lost motivation to study from Cliffs and KBB. In those five practice tests, I learned a lot about DAT math and mastered them quickly. By the fifth test, I got only two wrong, so I felt competent. The only other time I opened the book was the day before D-Day, when I looked at practice test 12 for the p-value questions, in case they showed up on the actual test, which they didn’t. Math Destroyer is one of the easiest ways to boost your math score, and I highly recommend to those struggling in math.
DAT Destroyer (2012): Dr. Romano’s amazing work has a huge bank of questions (with occasional humor in the explanations). The bio is pretty specific, which is good for tackling the random questions that may pop up on the DAT, the chem calculations sharpen your mental math/estimation skills, and the orgo roadmaps expose you a variety of reaction pathways. I started doing the orgo section, which destroyed me (I thought it was supposed to be the other way around?). I would get about 75% of them wrong, and lost motivation. Later, I move on to chem and did 30 problems in 30 minutes and went over the explanations. Then, I did bio, and would do 40 questions at a time in 30 minutes to simulate real testing conditions, but this time, took notes on the explanations for the ones I got wrong as well as research all the answer choices if there was an unfamiliar word. The standard note taking was really helpful, so I decided to do the entire orgo section again and take notes. I did the same for chem, except I only did it for the ones I got wrong. Later, I would study the notes before going to sleep. I didn’t do the math section because my weaknesses were in the sciences (as you can tell by my practice test scores). Overall, Destroyer allowed me to get a deeper understanding on all the sciences, and is a solid, core DAT resource that I highly recommend.
Feralis Notes: I wish I had discovered these excellent notes earlier, because they are a fantastic, concise summary of Cliffs (which I thought was long winded). A lot of answers to practice test questions can be found in these notes. I only read 75%, but learned so much from it. Feralis supplements Cliffs’ lack of anatomy as well as info from Destroyer and other resources such as Qvault to create an ultimate bio study guide. Make sure you download the Word doc, create a second version of it, and weed out any info that you already know so that your second time through will be easier. I was able to shorten the notes to about 59 pages and bolded key terms so that my eye could travel between them faster. Feralis goes bit overboard with plants though, and I think it’s ok to glance at or skip the leaf section, which I think is a tad too detailed. On the whole, I highly recommend reading Feralis for reinforcing your bio arsenal.
DAT Bootcamp: Bootcamp was the start of my practice testing phase. I’ve heard a lot about how great BC is, and I think it lives up to its hype. I appreciated DAT Bootcamp’s ease of use as well as the simplicity/portability of having the testing environment in a browser (as opposed to downloading software). It was really good practice with clear explanations, and towards the later practice tests, I would copy and paste all the questions I got wrong on a word document. The best thing about Bootcamp was definitely the PAT section. I was terrible with angles and was able to improve my accuracy with them by using the generator. One night I practiced the Hill method over and over again and saw my scores gradually rise. The RC on Bootcamp is both great practice and entertainment; the articles are actually interesting. You should buy Bootcamp for the good practice it offers as well as amazing PAT practice.
DAT Achiever (5 Tests): Achiever is notoriously difficult, but it was the most important testing software for me because it motivated me to a level that I didn’t think was possible. Taking Bootcamp tests didn’t frustrate me at all, but taking Achiever tests gave me headaches and destroyed my confidence. While taking these tests, I was challenged to my limits. It was the true wakeup call I needed all summer. The sciences had pretty specific questions, but I was able to learn from them and add them to my knowledge bank. The PAT is actually pretty good, and I would say that it along with Bootcamp PAT are representative of the actual PAT. The RC section seemed impossible to master, and I actually had to abandon the mapping method that I used in Bootcamp to pure S&D, which only produced a slight, but gradual increase in my score (I actually reverted back to mapping later). I was thinking that if I ever got such hard passages on the actual DAT, I would just use straight up S&D, so in a sense, Achiever helped me develop a backup strategy. I was actually very satisfied with the Achiever math, as I learned a lot useful tricks from their explanations. I recommend getting achiever so that you can get extra motivation; it was painful, but so worth it for me. An added bonus is that the Achiever software interface is close to the actual one.
TopScore Pro: I’ve heard great things about TopScore like how representative it is of the real test. I think it’s true for the sciences because they have a lot of generic questions with a few random/specific ones. However, I was disappointed by its PAT, which had parts like TFE and pattern folding straight up copied from the ADA 2007 test. Also, the angles are extremely easy; they have you compare acute and obtuse angles. The RC is actually pretty representative of the actual RC, and is great practice. The math is great as well and has some nice probability questions, but I notice that in the math and PAT sections, there are repeats/similarities in question types between practice tests. It would have been nicer to have brand new questions every time. Other recommendations would be to update the software so that it is more representative of the real one, and to update the website, which some people have claimed to look “shady”. Due to these factors, I would say that TopScore is a bit overvalued. However, the most important thing I gained from TopScore was exposure to “tricky” questions, kind of like the kinds you find on the SAT. For example, one question asked where the egg goes after ovulation. Instinctively, you would think the oviduct, but the answer was the body cavity. These tricky questions frustrated me like Achiever did, but made me more cautious of wording.
DAT 2007: This is the most representative DAT exam for me, but easier than the real exam. The biology has no random/specific questions (at least it seemed to me), and the chem and orgo are straightforward. The PAT is easier than the real thing as the keyholes and pattern folding on the real DAT are much harder. The angles are pretty representative though, as they are pretty close like in Bootcamp. The RC is completely unrepresentative and a bit harder because you have 15 minutes to do about 17 questions (that’s like 8 minutes to read and 7 minutes to do questions!) and you have to keep scrolling up to view the passage again. The math was slightly easier than the DAT as well. You should take this exam between 2-5 days before D-Day for a confidence boost.
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), but I'm only applying to one school, and it's a school in my home state. 
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