I have a little over a month to prepare for my DATs, and I have been studying for four months or so now. I have taken four practice tests that the Kaplan course has given me and I have gotten an 18, 18, 18.5, and an 18.5 on the four. I was wondering if the real test is easier/harder than the ones Kaplan gives or is it about the same. I've usually heard that the former is true but I want to make sure. Also, are these scores for the p.tests are a good start?
Question about DAT difficulty vs. Kaplan p. tests
- Thread starter sbhatt87
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I took the DAT about 6 months ago and I will tell you, as I can remember, its pretty much the same...the bio however, was easier on the Kaplan. Use like AP bio or something to study that. Everything else was pretty much the same. whatever your scoring your pretty much will score the same thing but cuz of the bio is harder juss subtract 1 or 2 for that section. Use DAT destrouer cuz I heard it was a lot harder than the real thing...I wish I could have done that!
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the kaplan classroom course? i was scoring 26's consistently in bio on the practice tests but got lower on the real thing.
but I never surpassed 20's in orgo or chem on the practice tests but did much better on the real thing ( was actually getting like 15-16's sometimes).
Kaplan's PAT practice is way too easy in some subjects, you should be scoring high, I usually got ~21's. All of kaplan's PAT isnt bad, but angle ranking and hole punching are very off. Kaplan's angles are so easy that it inflates your practice test score greatly b/c you usually get 15/15 in this section and that wont happen on the real thing. Also, Kaplans hole punching is very repetitive and you begin to memorize some of the folds. On the real thing, i am pretty sure I didnt get more than 5/15 of the hole punching q's correct. There were some crazy folds that kaplan did not even come close to simulating.
Just my take. good luck
but I never surpassed 20's in orgo or chem on the practice tests but did much better on the real thing ( was actually getting like 15-16's sometimes).
Kaplan's PAT practice is way too easy in some subjects, you should be scoring high, I usually got ~21's. All of kaplan's PAT isnt bad, but angle ranking and hole punching are very off. Kaplan's angles are so easy that it inflates your practice test score greatly b/c you usually get 15/15 in this section and that wont happen on the real thing. Also, Kaplans hole punching is very repetitive and you begin to memorize some of the folds. On the real thing, i am pretty sure I didnt get more than 5/15 of the hole punching q's correct. There were some crazy folds that kaplan did not even come close to simulating.
Just my take. good luck
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I think most everything was slightly easier, especially bio and Gchem. I think the real difference is that the actual DAT questions are slightly more basic than the kaplan and TopScore ones, for example, Kaplan and Topscore had these questions where they gave you a diagram of some large molecule, with a bunch of rings, and you had to answer how many isomers this could possibly have. So to answer this, you'd need to figure out how many chiral carbons there were, etc etc, and that was always the hardest part for me, just figuring out the correct number of chiral carbons - so I was worried that I'd get one of these on the actual test.
The question I got on the actual test simply stated something like:
"A molecule has 4 chiral centers, how many isomers can it have?"
While it covers the same topics as the Kaplan and TopScore question, it's somewhat more simple. Though don't expect every question to be that easy.
The one thing that Kaplan did not prepare me for at ALL was PAT. On Kaplan PAT I thought I was doing amazing, especially in angle ranking, I hardly ever got one wrong, but the actual PAT kicked my ass. Angle ranking went from being the easiest section for me to being one of the hardest parts of the PAT. A few of them I simply thought they were all the same angle. I'd suggest doing CrackPAT, I hear that's the best prep there is for the PAT.
I thought RC was just about the same, on the Kaplan ones don't they actually give you 5 minutes less to better prepare you?
QR I thought was a little more difficult with Kaplan than the actual DAT.
Well, good luck, and I hope that helps!
The question I got on the actual test simply stated something like:
"A molecule has 4 chiral centers, how many isomers can it have?"
While it covers the same topics as the Kaplan and TopScore question, it's somewhat more simple. Though don't expect every question to be that easy.
The one thing that Kaplan did not prepare me for at ALL was PAT. On Kaplan PAT I thought I was doing amazing, especially in angle ranking, I hardly ever got one wrong, but the actual PAT kicked my ass. Angle ranking went from being the easiest section for me to being one of the hardest parts of the PAT. A few of them I simply thought they were all the same angle. I'd suggest doing CrackPAT, I hear that's the best prep there is for the PAT.
I thought RC was just about the same, on the Kaplan ones don't they actually give you 5 minutes less to better prepare you?
QR I thought was a little more difficult with Kaplan than the actual DAT.
Well, good luck, and I hope that helps!
