Quantitative Reasoning

The QR was the lowest score on my DAT... maybe to do with having that section being the last part of the whole test, and most demanding in my opinion.

It's just simply a lot of College Algebra type questions and some trigs, and most of the questions are constructed for you to solve it with simple formulas. The Kaplan book will teach you how to approach those type of questions - nothing scary.

Trust me, if you get the concept of solving such problems, and maintain your stamina towards the end of the DAT... you can easily pull 18+. You will obviously use the paper provided to solve many questions... one way or another you will use that paper, without it I can't see how you can go through that section in the given time.

Good Luck

 

I don't think it is necessary to write down entire question statements on scratch papers. It sounds like a whole lot of work just to simply copy down entire questions.

When questions are in sentence forms, I found it helpful to extract out only necessary informations from question statements and write them down for further calculation. Sometimes, drawing a diagram helped me, too.

For some quesions in a form such as:
1/13 + (1/14*3/5 - sin (pi/4)) =?
I did write down the questions to solve.

Hope it answers your question.

 

One of the reason that QR is so challenging is NOT because of the difficulty of the questions, but the lack of time provided to adequately complete this section. Therefore, try to minimize the amount of time use to solve each question, since the only thing you need are the answers or mathematical expressions.

 

I got a 21 on QR.. the key is not that questions are hard, its just that they a "trick" behind them.. You should look at the question and recognize what the trick is and quickly get an answer.. Dont write the question down, just the very basic numbers...

Basically the best way to increase your score in this section is to PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE...

I was very fortunate to have all the Kaplan books and do this section many times over before I took the real thing... also I'm an engineering major, but that should not make that much of a difference..

Gatorfan.

 

I read the Kaplan book and thought everything was straightforward... but gatorfan99 is right, PRACTICE is the key. No matter if you know the formulas, you have to get use to the pace and the tricks each question carries.

Otherwise I would have had 19+ on the QR - just like I did in the sciences.

 

My advice is not to write down all questions, etc. For a few it is good if you are solving an equation or something, but if you get caught up in writing steps and not getting to the answer you will waste too much time. You can always just write the "given" parts of the problem (what you need to solve it for word problems). Another reason I say not to say...write out and solve some division problem or something....estimating goes a LONG way in the DAT's. You may not know exactly what 792/11 is off the top of your head...but you DO know it's a little less than 792/10...which is easy.

 

I recently noticed, GRE study guides math sections are very similar to DAT's QR section. So... those of you who are interested in practicing more questions on the QR section, should consider using the GRE books' math problems.

 

You can check any GRE book from your local book store. The one I saw was 'Practicing to take the GRE - 10th Edition". Also, you can check the GRE website, www.gre.org, for further information about their study guides.

Good Luck

 

That's right. Quick mental approximation is the most important skill on any quantitative reasoning test. Only with those problems where you can't work completely in your head should you spend the time writing things out.