Question regarding achiever

[Willem]

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I have been studying for 2 months now. I quickly cycle being feeling totally psyched and ready for this test, to freaking out and wanting to push it back. My date is the 15th. I started taking the DAT achiever practice tests and on the first one my results were

AA 21, PA 17, QR 24, RC 22, Bio 21, GC 19, OC 18, TS 20

I literally did not reach the final 20 questions on the PAT. I learned a lot about pacing myself through the tests as a result.

Now I have a question to those who have taken the first DAT achiever test and have taken the real thing. How in line with the real test is the achiever? Ive read that it is harder. The half hole punch for instance, that is not on the real test correct? I spent so much time on that section and the apeture section...and missing the last 20 questions was the result. The science section started off so easy in biology but somewhere halfway through gen chem I waded into questions I had no idea where to begin with. I notice I made a lot of educated guesses that were right but this does not inspire much confidence in me for the real deal. Organic was so rough on me, I do not see how on earth I got an 18. The reading and math sections I finished with 7 and 9 minutes to spare respectively and honestly thought I would do better than I did on those(I didnt think I had missed any).

So, is reading and math about on par(or easier?) with the real DAT while PAT and sciences are more difficult? Are half holes present on the real pat? Are the apetures really as bad the achiever leads me to believe?

My gpa from my undergrad is total garbage(only recently brought up past 3.0 to 3.1 with 4 semisters of straight A's at a smaller university), so the results of this test will be of great consequence for me. Any advice is appreciated. Thanks

Also while I am at it, I should mention that I think this dat achiever test is a great investment and I wish I had purchased it earlier. I like how it broke questions down and has really highlighted sections of study that I need to quickly hammer out before the 15th (if I dont reschedule).

 

[caloriefree]

I thought the real PAT was a little bit easier than the achiever.. but at the same time, in hindsight I thought that things looked a little smaller/out of proportion for hole problems on the real thing than what I was used to seeing on topscore and achiever. Maybe it was due to the old monitor which was more convex causing distortions at the testing center or something.. I couldn't tell. I was consistently getting 20's on the achiever PATs, and I thought I would do 2-3 pts better than that on the real test, but ended up getting 20.

As for RC, I thought the real test was definitely harder than any of the practice tests out there because they don't use the exact same wording all the time.

Math, I think it shouldn't be a problem. There might be a few problems that are tricky and you might get stuck with, but it seems like you're a fast problem solver, so there should be enough time to go back and make sure you solved them correctly.

And I think your science scores are fantastic for achiever test, which is considered real hard. I used to get 16-18 on each science section and I did fine on the real test.
Good luck!!