Need some 411

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DrSal

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hello!

For those of you who have taken the DAT, i have some quick questions. Just some background; I had taken the MCAt before, and have all my princeton review books. I have since changed my plans and am interested in studying for the DAT.

1. can you give me a layout of the exam? I understand that there's a math section, and a spatial type section.

2. Can you explain the scoring...i looked at some posts and people are listing all these abbreviations... i'm not familiar with them.

3.Is there a "DAT study list" somehwere that could guide me during my self-study?

4. What additional study aids would you recommend? In addition to PR, i have the kaplan MCAT book, and all the science stuff offered by exam krackers, and even their osmosis cds (God...what a dork!!! 😉)

I am not interested in taking a course... i took one for the mCAt, and it was helpful of course...but i can't make that financial sacrifice at this time. Plus i think i need to put in time and sweat and not just money to do well.

Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!
 
DrSal said:
hello!

For those of you who have taken the DAT, i have some quick questions. Just some background; I had taken the MCAt before, and have all my princeton review books. I have since changed my plans and am interested in studying for the DAT.

1. can you give me a layout of the exam? I understand that there's a math section, and a spatial type section.

2. Can you explain the scoring...i looked at some posts and people are listing all these abbreviations... i'm not familiar with them.

3.Is there a "DAT study list" somehwere that could guide me during my self-study?

4. What additional study aids would you recommend? In addition to PR, i have the kaplan MCAT book, and all the science stuff offered by exam krackers, and even their osmosis cds (God...what a dork!!! 😉)

I am not interested in taking a course... i took one for the mCAt, and it was helpful of course...but i can't make that financial sacrifice at this time. Plus i think i need to put in time and sweat and not just money to do well.

Any help will be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Just to warn you, you will probably be flamed for switching from pre-med to pre-dent.

That being said, I recommend doing a search on your questions. If you are sincere about the need to "put in time", it doesn't take that long to search. 🙂

Good luck.
 
1. check out http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/testing/dat/index.asp to find out all about the actual exam. you'll be able to find the scope of the exam, how to register for it, etc. www.kaptest.com under the pre-dental section also has some good basic info about the test.

2. The abbreviations you see are as follows:
PA - perceptual abiility
QR - quantitative reasoning
RC - reading comprehension
Bio - bio
GC - general chem
OC - ochem
TS - total science (bio, gc, and oc)
AA - academic average (everything except perceptual)

Each section is out of 30 possible points. 17 is average in each section (around 50th percentile give or take a few) and 20's are what most people on this site seem to be going for.

3. like i said, check out the ada website for the scope of the exam

4. most people will agree that the "kaplan blue book" is a must. just look up "kaplan dat" on amazon or ebay, you can probably find it for around $50 or less. you'll probably find that alot of the info in there is very similar to your kaplan mcat materials, but there are some differences (classification on dat, no physics on dat, etc.)

I'd use your kaplan mcat materials to fill in any holes that the dat blue book grazes over (esp in bio). if you have the kaplan mcat notecards, definitely hang on to those, that info will be very similar to what you'll find in the blue book.

i also have the mcat audio osmosis. ive only listened to the bio sections (since, like i said, kaplan is somewhat weak on bio and seems to be sufficient in g and o chem) and i got a decent amount of info from there that may pop up on the test. they do, however, go into more detail than you'll probably need with some endocrine stuff etc.

last and probably most importantly, you'll need practice tests. there are tons of posts with opinions on all of the options (topscore, dat achiever, kaplan, etc) so i'll let you rummage through those, good luck!
 
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