Quick personal opinion on Achiever

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Get help with your application

Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.

Arti Mistry

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
I just had a quick opinion for those of you who have used achiever and taken the actual DAT. I've been using achiever and they seem really really hard I haven't been scoring any higher than 17/18 on my AA and my exams in a week i'm starting to get worried. Should I consider pushing it back? I've heard achiever was a lot more difficult than the actual DAT but I wanted to get a second opinion. Thanks so much
 
Nope you're completely fine. If you score above 15 on each section for Achiever, you're likely to be scoring 20+ on the real thing. Achiever is literally 50 times more difficult than the real thing and if you can score above a 20 on any given section that translates roughly to 25+ on the real thing. At least for me it did.

Although you should probably try another practice test to confirm, I believe Bootcamp has been said to be comparable to the real thing.
 
Yes, achiever was much harder than the real DAT. I did 3-4 points better on most sections. I got to a point though where it was almost too frustrating though, and stopped using it as much. Mostly I used an old Kaplan book and Crack the DAT.
 
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
I scored 20+ in all sections on the DAT, but got 15s and 16s across the boards on achiever so you might be in good shape. I used topscore as well and that was much more reflective of the scores I got.
 
Achiever killed my confidence when I was preparing for the DAT.... I never score above 18 on the Achiever but I did well on the real thing. Achiever is ten times harder and you will be fine
 
Yes, achiever was much harder than the real DAT. I did 3-4 points better on most sections. I got to a point though where it was almost too frustrating though, and stopped using it as much. Mostly I used an old Kaplan book and Crack the DAT.

Yeah i'm beginning to get very frustrated also, I keep reviewing the topics that I don't do so well on in achiever and I take another practice exam and my score ends up being very similar as opposed to increasing like I would hope =\
 
Yeah i'm beginning to get very frustrated also, I keep reviewing the topics that I don't do so well on in achiever and I take another practice exam and my score ends up being very similar as opposed to increasing like I would hope =\


You'll be fine!! I just took my DAT last Friday and got a 19 AA and a 20TS. My scores on Achiever were a 17 and a 15 AA. You will probably do very well on the actual DAT!
 
I felt DAT Achiever was a complete waste of $140! I only took 3 out of the 7 tests because it killed all of the confidence I had. At one point I got a 13 on the Bio. On the actual DAT I got a 22 on Bio. I never scored above a 16 and got a 21 on the real thing.
 
I felt pretty miserable after the DAT achiever tests, still remember sitting in my car at the testing center parking lot considering driving off (and becoming a trucker?), ended up with a 22AA. My advice, please take it with a grain of salt since everyone is different, is sit through each practice test to it's entirety (definitely take the built in 15 min, 5 min breaks), as if you are taking the actual DAT and try to improve. I want to say I took five full practice tests the week before my DAT, this really helped me with endurance. I used achiever, topscore (which a lot of people say gives you a more accurate score yet mine was still somewhat low), started off with kaplan (I don't think this goes in-depth enough) and listened to a lot of MCAT audio osmosis (I think their advice on the reading section got me a 25RC).
 
Last edited: