- Joined
- Jul 30, 2012
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Hey everyone! First of all, a huge thanks to SDN for the academic and moral support this past summer. This is a great community, and I'm glad that I was warmly welcomed here. It's a HUGE relief to be done, but I realize these aren't the best scores, especially by SDN standards. Here are my scores:
PAT 17 (42.4) 😡
QR 24 (99.4) 😱
RC 20 (78.5)
BIO 19 (83.5)
GC 19 (79.9)
OC 19 (75.7)
TS 19 (82.8)
AA 20 (93.4)
BACKGROUND:
cGPA: 3.4
sGPA: 3.1
(I'm a senior and I go to a University of California. Guess where.)
I studied for about 2 months, approx. 6 hours a day. I was also doing research at my school 10-15 hours a week. So, I realize I was incredibly lucky and blessed to not have to worry about paying the bills and having family obligations. I could NOT do what some of y'all do and go hardcore for like 12 hours, because my mind would get oversaturated with information and eventually I'd have to stop due to a huge migraine developing. Two weeks before the test, I started doing practice tests every other day, and I'd get pretty wiped out after taking a test. The only thing I could do after that was review the mistakes I make and maybe quickly go over some bio notes and chem equations and whatnot. I followed a modified version of the study schedule posted on the SDN website. That helps a LOT, because you really try to force yourself to finish the "homework" of the day, and you feel bad if you don't. (I blame Game of Thrones for times when I felt guilty for skipping some parts of studying, ha).
ACTUAL TEST VS. PREP
BIO (19): Kaplan course, KBB, DAT Destroyer, Cliff's AP Bio, ExamKrackers MCAT Bio, Google, old textbooks
On the actual test, I realize how broad the questions were. My questions were heavily centered around genetics and embryology. The questions were fairly straightforward, but I did "mark" a lot because I was unsure of the right answer, and when time was running out, I was just like, "aww, hell, I'll just pick one and go with it." So yes, it's definitely a "you know it or you don't." And I know that freaks out a lot of people, the randomness of the biology section, but just realize that everyone is in the same boat. It's best to really understand the basics and then supplement that information with additional resources.
GEN CHEM (19)/OCHEM (19): Kaplan course, Chad's videos, DAT Destroyer
Everyone and their mamas are in love with Chad, and rightfully so. Destroyer is yes, overkill, and it's called Destroyer because uh, yeah, it freaking DESTROYS you that first time you go through it, but it's very useful for really cementing your knowledge. I did Destroyer twice. On general chemistry, I got a lot of conceptual questions so that threw me off a little. Some of them, I had NO idea what the answer was, so I simply chose "C" and skipped. However, the calculation questions were more like simplified versions of Destroyer, so that was good to see. There were some tricky things though, like making sure that you're using N1V1= N2V2 instead of M1V1 = M2V2. Little stuff like that, but by doing practice problems, it prepares you. I probably got questions wrong for not picking up on tricky things like that. For organic chemistry, I had a lot of roadmap-y questions. There were some reagents I've NEVER seen, which really frustrated me because the question would give me a bunch of reagents I did know, and then suddenly the final synthesis would be some unknown reagent. Gah! Also, I recommend memorizing the alternative forms of reagents. For example, the actual structure of MCPA popped up, and I was really glad that I knew what it looked like.
PAT (17): Achiever, CDP
DUUUUUUUUUUDE I hate PAT. It was always my weakest section (I must be blind or something because I hate angles, I hate TFE, I hate it all). When I first used CDP, I was getting 17's. Around test 5, I suddenly jumped up to 19, and after that I was consistently getting 20's and 21's. As for Achiever, all I got were 16's, hahahaha. There's pretty much no way to study for the PAT except to practice.
So yeah, I KNEW I blew it with PAT when I was taking it. First of all, I was really tired from the sciences already, and the first section, Keyholes, baffled me with the first 8 questions. Maaaan when they say the actual PAT is different than the prep material, they're totally right. CDP emphasizes on shapes, and Achiever emphasizes on minor details, but the actual PAT emphasizes on proportions. That caught me off guard really badly, because I couldn't adjust to the way the PAT was designed. I could tell I was sinking into this depression, because as I kept going, I just kept getting sadder and sadder LOL. I didn't even finish the test on time.
Keyholes: Focus on proportions. As I said, it threw me off really badly and I couldn't adjust. Some were pretty easy, some had all these grooves and angles and I was just like whoaaa man that escalated quickly!
TFE: TFE is much easier in real life than on Achiever. I do give credit to Achiever for forcing me to learn how to look for the actual structure of the model as opposed to just counting lines. I think I did fairly okay here.
Angles: Ugh, terrible. Half the questions were very easy, and the other half, the angles looked all the same, made worse by the fact that on the actual, the angles are blown to huge sizes (so that was weird), AND they were positioned upside down and whatnot. I had to crane my neck around a lot.
Holepunch: My best section. And yet, I know I didn't score a perfect in here, because there were about 3 questions that involved 1/3 and 1/4 folds, and I didn't have the time to focus on them.
Cubecounting: I had seven figures this time (Figures A-F). So yeah, I had to count out all the cubes for a figure, and then only answer like two questions for each. I think I did okay on this section, but I know I screwed up on one figure, because it was tricky in that I wasn't sure if there was a cube there or not. I thought there was, but I guess not LOL.
Pattern folding: During practice, this was my most improved section, as in I started to really nail the shading questions and cube questions. But nope! On the actual test, I mostly got very weird shapes to fold into. There's no such thing as "looking for the biggest shape" and matching the answer to it. Very weird inverted triangles and cubes located on top and around larger shapes.
RC (20): Topscore, Achiever
Note: During my break, I freaked out because I knew I screwed up on PAT really badly. I was shaking as I got my stuff out of the locker room with a lot of difficulty, and the staff just looked at me as if I was really stupid. I spent that break in the bathroom pacing around and mentally wigging out. I eventually did some jumping jacks (in the bathroom, lol) and tried to regroup myself and calm down.
For RC, I'm an avid reader, and my research requires me to read scientific papers a lot, so I didn't study this section too much. I'm disappointed that I didn't get a higher score. The passages were incredibly long (16-18 paragraphs each). They were about mental health, cancer, and this genetic disease. My method was reading 3-4 paragraphs at a time, jot down key words and notes, and then go through the entire series of questions and answer whichever ones were applicable to the paragraphs. And then I'd repeat the process for the next 3-4 paragraphs. I saved all the tone/inference questions for last. Achiever is excellent practice for RC, as its passages are long and yes, they do have all those tone/inference questions. Topscore is not so great, as it's purely search and destroy.
QR (24): Math Destroyer, Kaplan course, Khan Academy
LOL I'm really surprised by my score here. I hate math, and Math Destroyer was killing me. But I loooove Math Destroyer. Even though its difficulty level is higher than the actual, all the questions on the actual were straight from Destroyer. I mostly got algebra, rate, and mixture questions, and thankfully, nothing about ellipses and p-values (what I had been worrying about). Ones that I got wrong probably had to do with probability (I suck at that and will probably never understand it fully). That being said, know your conversions WELL (seriously, some questions were simply, please convert x ---> y), and practice a lot. The same types of problems will appear over and over.
PRACTICE TESTS
Here are my scores for the practice tests.
Kaplan course:
Diagnostic: PAT 14, QR 17, RC 17, Bio 14, GC 14, OC 15
Midterm: PAT 16, QR 17, RC 18, Bio 19, GC 15. OC 15
Final PAT 17, QR 18, RC 18, Bio 18, GC 17, OC 17
Topscore (note: for PAT I used CDP 5, 6, 7)
Test 1: PAT 19, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 17, OC 15
Test 2: PAT 20, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 19. OC 19
Test 3: PAT 21, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 20, OC 17
Achiever
Test 1: PAT 16, QR 18, RC 17, Bio 18, GC 17, OC 17
Test 2: PAT 16, QR 17, RC 17, Bio 17, GC 17. OC 17
ADVICE FROM THE SDN VETERANS PLEASE?
Okay, so here is where I am in desperate need of advice. I'm a senior, I'll be applying next cycle, and my GPA is sub-par. Hopefully my grades will be better with this being my last year. Buuut, with these scores, am I solid or should I retake? Even though the thought of having to put myself through this process again is horrifying, I'm mentally prepared to do so if it'll make me a better applicant.
The hard part is, how do I go from a good score to a GREAT score? I really hope I didn't hit my learning curve, because as you can see, my scores stayed pretty consistent during the practice tests and didn't super-improve. The thing is, I feel like I understood the material okay, but I didn't have that extra "oomph." And when I mean "oomph," I mean that little extra critical thinking that gets you that extra mile. I knew things when they were straightforward, but I had a hard time when it came to trickier questions. And yeah, my PAT sucks.
Anyways, thank you kindly for reading this! Good luck to future DAT-ers!
PAT 17 (42.4) 😡
QR 24 (99.4) 😱
RC 20 (78.5)
BIO 19 (83.5)
GC 19 (79.9)
OC 19 (75.7)
TS 19 (82.8)
AA 20 (93.4)
BACKGROUND:
cGPA: 3.4
sGPA: 3.1
(I'm a senior and I go to a University of California. Guess where.)
I studied for about 2 months, approx. 6 hours a day. I was also doing research at my school 10-15 hours a week. So, I realize I was incredibly lucky and blessed to not have to worry about paying the bills and having family obligations. I could NOT do what some of y'all do and go hardcore for like 12 hours, because my mind would get oversaturated with information and eventually I'd have to stop due to a huge migraine developing. Two weeks before the test, I started doing practice tests every other day, and I'd get pretty wiped out after taking a test. The only thing I could do after that was review the mistakes I make and maybe quickly go over some bio notes and chem equations and whatnot. I followed a modified version of the study schedule posted on the SDN website. That helps a LOT, because you really try to force yourself to finish the "homework" of the day, and you feel bad if you don't. (I blame Game of Thrones for times when I felt guilty for skipping some parts of studying, ha).
ACTUAL TEST VS. PREP
BIO (19): Kaplan course, KBB, DAT Destroyer, Cliff's AP Bio, ExamKrackers MCAT Bio, Google, old textbooks
On the actual test, I realize how broad the questions were. My questions were heavily centered around genetics and embryology. The questions were fairly straightforward, but I did "mark" a lot because I was unsure of the right answer, and when time was running out, I was just like, "aww, hell, I'll just pick one and go with it." So yes, it's definitely a "you know it or you don't." And I know that freaks out a lot of people, the randomness of the biology section, but just realize that everyone is in the same boat. It's best to really understand the basics and then supplement that information with additional resources.
GEN CHEM (19)/OCHEM (19): Kaplan course, Chad's videos, DAT Destroyer
Everyone and their mamas are in love with Chad, and rightfully so. Destroyer is yes, overkill, and it's called Destroyer because uh, yeah, it freaking DESTROYS you that first time you go through it, but it's very useful for really cementing your knowledge. I did Destroyer twice. On general chemistry, I got a lot of conceptual questions so that threw me off a little. Some of them, I had NO idea what the answer was, so I simply chose "C" and skipped. However, the calculation questions were more like simplified versions of Destroyer, so that was good to see. There were some tricky things though, like making sure that you're using N1V1= N2V2 instead of M1V1 = M2V2. Little stuff like that, but by doing practice problems, it prepares you. I probably got questions wrong for not picking up on tricky things like that. For organic chemistry, I had a lot of roadmap-y questions. There were some reagents I've NEVER seen, which really frustrated me because the question would give me a bunch of reagents I did know, and then suddenly the final synthesis would be some unknown reagent. Gah! Also, I recommend memorizing the alternative forms of reagents. For example, the actual structure of MCPA popped up, and I was really glad that I knew what it looked like.
PAT (17): Achiever, CDP
DUUUUUUUUUUDE I hate PAT. It was always my weakest section (I must be blind or something because I hate angles, I hate TFE, I hate it all). When I first used CDP, I was getting 17's. Around test 5, I suddenly jumped up to 19, and after that I was consistently getting 20's and 21's. As for Achiever, all I got were 16's, hahahaha. There's pretty much no way to study for the PAT except to practice.
So yeah, I KNEW I blew it with PAT when I was taking it. First of all, I was really tired from the sciences already, and the first section, Keyholes, baffled me with the first 8 questions. Maaaan when they say the actual PAT is different than the prep material, they're totally right. CDP emphasizes on shapes, and Achiever emphasizes on minor details, but the actual PAT emphasizes on proportions. That caught me off guard really badly, because I couldn't adjust to the way the PAT was designed. I could tell I was sinking into this depression, because as I kept going, I just kept getting sadder and sadder LOL. I didn't even finish the test on time.
Keyholes: Focus on proportions. As I said, it threw me off really badly and I couldn't adjust. Some were pretty easy, some had all these grooves and angles and I was just like whoaaa man that escalated quickly!
TFE: TFE is much easier in real life than on Achiever. I do give credit to Achiever for forcing me to learn how to look for the actual structure of the model as opposed to just counting lines. I think I did fairly okay here.
Angles: Ugh, terrible. Half the questions were very easy, and the other half, the angles looked all the same, made worse by the fact that on the actual, the angles are blown to huge sizes (so that was weird), AND they were positioned upside down and whatnot. I had to crane my neck around a lot.
Holepunch: My best section. And yet, I know I didn't score a perfect in here, because there were about 3 questions that involved 1/3 and 1/4 folds, and I didn't have the time to focus on them.
Cubecounting: I had seven figures this time (Figures A-F). So yeah, I had to count out all the cubes for a figure, and then only answer like two questions for each. I think I did okay on this section, but I know I screwed up on one figure, because it was tricky in that I wasn't sure if there was a cube there or not. I thought there was, but I guess not LOL.
Pattern folding: During practice, this was my most improved section, as in I started to really nail the shading questions and cube questions. But nope! On the actual test, I mostly got very weird shapes to fold into. There's no such thing as "looking for the biggest shape" and matching the answer to it. Very weird inverted triangles and cubes located on top and around larger shapes.
RC (20): Topscore, Achiever
Note: During my break, I freaked out because I knew I screwed up on PAT really badly. I was shaking as I got my stuff out of the locker room with a lot of difficulty, and the staff just looked at me as if I was really stupid. I spent that break in the bathroom pacing around and mentally wigging out. I eventually did some jumping jacks (in the bathroom, lol) and tried to regroup myself and calm down.
For RC, I'm an avid reader, and my research requires me to read scientific papers a lot, so I didn't study this section too much. I'm disappointed that I didn't get a higher score. The passages were incredibly long (16-18 paragraphs each). They were about mental health, cancer, and this genetic disease. My method was reading 3-4 paragraphs at a time, jot down key words and notes, and then go through the entire series of questions and answer whichever ones were applicable to the paragraphs. And then I'd repeat the process for the next 3-4 paragraphs. I saved all the tone/inference questions for last. Achiever is excellent practice for RC, as its passages are long and yes, they do have all those tone/inference questions. Topscore is not so great, as it's purely search and destroy.
QR (24): Math Destroyer, Kaplan course, Khan Academy
LOL I'm really surprised by my score here. I hate math, and Math Destroyer was killing me. But I loooove Math Destroyer. Even though its difficulty level is higher than the actual, all the questions on the actual were straight from Destroyer. I mostly got algebra, rate, and mixture questions, and thankfully, nothing about ellipses and p-values (what I had been worrying about). Ones that I got wrong probably had to do with probability (I suck at that and will probably never understand it fully). That being said, know your conversions WELL (seriously, some questions were simply, please convert x ---> y), and practice a lot. The same types of problems will appear over and over.
PRACTICE TESTS
Here are my scores for the practice tests.
Kaplan course:
Diagnostic: PAT 14, QR 17, RC 17, Bio 14, GC 14, OC 15
Midterm: PAT 16, QR 17, RC 18, Bio 19, GC 15. OC 15
Final PAT 17, QR 18, RC 18, Bio 18, GC 17, OC 17
Topscore (note: for PAT I used CDP 5, 6, 7)
Test 1: PAT 19, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 17, OC 15
Test 2: PAT 20, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 19. OC 19
Test 3: PAT 21, QR 19, RC 22, Bio 19, GC 20, OC 17
Achiever
Test 1: PAT 16, QR 18, RC 17, Bio 18, GC 17, OC 17
Test 2: PAT 16, QR 17, RC 17, Bio 17, GC 17. OC 17
ADVICE FROM THE SDN VETERANS PLEASE?
Okay, so here is where I am in desperate need of advice. I'm a senior, I'll be applying next cycle, and my GPA is sub-par. Hopefully my grades will be better with this being my last year. Buuut, with these scores, am I solid or should I retake? Even though the thought of having to put myself through this process again is horrifying, I'm mentally prepared to do so if it'll make me a better applicant.
The hard part is, how do I go from a good score to a GREAT score? I really hope I didn't hit my learning curve, because as you can see, my scores stayed pretty consistent during the practice tests and didn't super-improve. The thing is, I feel like I understood the material okay, but I didn't have that extra "oomph." And when I mean "oomph," I mean that little extra critical thinking that gets you that extra mile. I knew things when they were straightforward, but I had a hard time when it came to trickier questions. And yeah, my PAT sucks.
Anyways, thank you kindly for reading this! Good luck to future DAT-ers!
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