Studying Kaplan Blue Book and Doing Practice Questions in Destroyer.

[OMFS08]

I have a quick question. I am about to begin my studies but I was wondering if it makes sense to practice the Destroyer simultaneously while studying or wait until after studying to begin practice??

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[userah]

i say wait til you're done with kaplan. Then you'll be able to answer at least a quarter of the questions haha =P

 

[sl2obel2ts]

i say wait til you're done with kaplan. Then you'll be able to answer at least a quarter of the questions haha =P

LOL so glad to hear that. I reviewed kaplan and was devastated after finding out that I was only getting 60% of questions right on destroyer. I was super sad and scared.

So I guess I wasnt the only one getting destroyed by destroyer ochem?

 

[OMFS08]

i say wait til you're done with kaplan. Then you'll be able to answer at least a quarter of the questions haha =P

Thank you. I will do just that.

 

[userah]

haha not at all. i try to think of destroyer as just another study material instead of practice exam type questions (makes me feel better when i only understand about half the questions lol) best bet is to go over kaplan as it really goes over the basics that you need to know but it's important to understand that it's just that. BASIC. once you're done with that don't think you're well prepared lol. that was my mentality the first time i took the DAT's. All i used was kaplan; paid 1600 for that stupid class, what a jip. For some people Kaplan is enough to score 20+. I don't know how they managed that. For most people I've heard from on studentdoctor and speaking from personal experience, after kaplan, go over and i suppose you could attempt the questions in destroyer. I instead just used it as just a resource and went from question to question, first trying to figure out what the answer is by myself. Then I went to the answer choices and tried to understand not only why the answer choice was right but also why the others were wrong (wikipedia proved to be immensely useful in this area). That along with practice exams. Let's hope my score shows significant improvement this time around as I was more than disappointed by my poor scores the first time around =(

 

[doc3232]

i say wait til you're done with kaplan. Then you'll be able to answer at least a quarter of the questions haha =P

hahaha, would you say Destroyer is harder than your college O-chem (just taking about ochem)? This is assuming your ochem class was tough.

 

[Predentknight]

So ironic that you just posted this. I actually just finished going through the Kaplan bio for the nth time and a smidge of schuams. I am now indulging in some Destroyer Bio questions. Some these questions are a bit ridiculous, like the kangaroo rat wtf are you kidding me. Just wondering how do you think Destroyer Bio matches up to the actual DAT? I heard the gchem and Ochem Destroyer sections are a great resource... what about BIO? (same question repeated twice I know lol)

 

[Ghettob1aster]

For ochem, I found kaplan to be almost useless. It does, however, have the nomenclature organized very well. Still, you could probably pick up all of the nomenclature rules in 1 or 2 hours. There is also 1 helpful sidenote telling you which IR signals you must know.

Kaplan's review of the reactions was unhelpful. It doesn't really matter how well your attention span is, it just won't sink in. Working through the problems out of destroyer makes you remember the general trends, which ends up being all you need. After a solid 20 hours of problems you can probably draw out all of the reactions mechanisms you need to know.

Sidenote: Those MCAT kids can get lucky as hell apparently. My friend just took it the other week. The ochem section contained 8 questions, and the only reaction question was an SN2. Amazing.

 

[userah]

hahaha, would you say Destroyer is harder than your college O-chem (just taking about ochem)? This is assuming your ochem class was tough.

haha i say they're pretty much on par. But it has been a while since I looked at orgo material so the first time around a lot of the material looked a lot more foreign than i had hoped for haha. After going through destroyer once over, i've become quite comfortable with the reaction mechanisms. I still seem to struggle with classifying molecules as enantiomers, diastereomers, etc.

as for how good of a resource destroyer is for Bio, I say if you just go over the questions and just look at whether you got the answers right or not, it won't be of much help. Going through all the answer choices does a much better job of preparing but then again I can't vouch until I take my DAT in a week =( Maybe someone else will vouch for how effective a strategy this is on the forum?

 

[Simplystressed]

haha not at all. i try to think of destroyer as just another study material instead of practice exam type questions (makes me feel better when i only understand about half the questions lol) best bet is to go over kaplan as it really goes over the basics that you need to know but it's important to understand that it's just that. BASIC. once you're done with that don't think you're well prepared lol. that was my mentality the first time i took the DAT's. All i used was kaplan; paid 1600 for that stupid class, what a jip. For some people Kaplan is enough to score 20+. I don't know how they managed that. For most people I've heard from on studentdoctor and speaking from personal experience, after kaplan, go over and i suppose you could attempt the questions in destroyer. I instead just used it as just a resource and went from question to question, first trying to figure out what the answer is by myself. Then I went to the answer choices and tried to understand not only why the answer choice was right but also why the others were wrong (wikipedia proved to be immensely useful in this area). That along with practice exams. Let's hope my score shows significant improvement this time around as I was more than disappointed by my poor scores the first time around =(

i totally agree. i only used kaplan last year and was not pleased with my scores. im waitlisted at three schools sooooo i'm about to start studying again! ugh

 

[supraman]

haha not at all. i try to think of destroyer as just another study material instead of practice exam type questions (makes me feel better when i only understand about half the questions lol) best bet is to go over kaplan as it really goes over the basics that you need to know but it's important to understand that it's just that. BASIC. once you're done with that don't think you're well prepared lol. that was my mentality the first time i took the DAT's. All i used was kaplan; paid 1600 for that stupid class, what a jip. For some people Kaplan is enough to score 20+. I don't know how they managed that. For most people I've heard from on studentdoctor and speaking from personal experience, after kaplan, go over and i suppose you could attempt the questions in destroyer. I instead just used it as just a resource and went from question to question, first trying to figure out what the answer is by myself. Then I went to the answer choices and tried to understand not only why the answer choice was right but also why the others were wrong (wikipedia proved to be immensely useful in this area). That along with practice exams. Let's hope my score shows significant improvement this time around as I was more than disappointed by my poor scores the first time around =(

Wikipedia is the greatest invention since the creation of the internets!!!