Hey friend,
Have you thoroughly gone through all of the BC solutions? Those, and a LOT of practice, helped me improve my scores the most.
For Keyholes, I always leave those for last since they are difficult, take up a lot of time, and you still might not get them right in the end. I skip the first 15 questions, do the entire rest of the test, then when I get to the Review page, I hit #1 and do the keyholes. I heard Keyholes can be harder on the real DAT compared to BC (esp. b/c of rocks), so this might be a good strategy for you too if you are weak/slow at keyholes. My best advice for Keyholes is to look through BC solutions, and always remember to check the following:
1) Relative lengths of lines (BC explains this well)
2) Horizontal AND vertical proportions
3) Perimeter of the figure
4) Inside of the figure (size of holes, placement of holes, i.e. is it closer to the edge or more towards the middle).
For TFE, again BC explanations helped me the most. But in general:
1) Look at the 2 views you're given
2) Integrate them in your mind to form a rough mental image of what the 3-D figure could look like
3) Go to answer choices for process of elimination
4) If you're down to two answer choices, look for one feature that is different between the two and use the 2 views given to decide which is true.
For Pattern Folding, sorry to sound like a broken record but BC provides really great explanations. How I got to scoring 15/15:
1) Eliminate the obvious. I'm sure you're aware of this since you're scoring 19 on BC, but for example, if a figure is half-white/half-black, eliminate answer choices that have the white/black on the wrong sides. In pat88, this allows me to eliminate B & D.
2) Think about what clamps onto what. In pat88, the white half of the half-white/half-black rectangle clamps onto the large white figure. Since I know the large white figure is on the bottom, the white half of the rectangle has to be coming up, from the bottom. This allows me to eliminate C since in this answer choice, the gray half is coming up from the bottom.
3) Going off of #2, think about which shape is on the bottom, and what color clamps onto it. In pat90, I knew that the white square was the bottom of the figure. Since the white half of the half-white/half-black rectangle clamps onto this white square, I knew the white half of the rectangle had to be coming up, from the bottom, which leads me to answer C.
4) Finally, for dice/cube problems, if I can't picture it in my head, I quickly draw out on my laminated paper how the 3 squares would look if they were all next to each other (I do this by remembering that each time a square rotates 90 degrees, the dots on it rotate 90 degrees as well. Keep rolling the squares+their dots by 90 degrees until they are next to one another). See pat83. Then go through each of the answer choices, and physically turn your laminated paper to see which answer choice could match up with what you drew. I was able to eliminate A, B, & C this way. I saw that D was possible when I turned my laminated paper 90 degrees to the right.
Sorry I know this is really long and potentially confusing, but I wanted to share in case these are things you haven't tried out yet. Good luck!
