TIMED PAT portion - terrible! Advice?

[spraypainter]

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Hi guys,

so after going through practice problems for each sub-section of the PAT, I finally did a timed exam from Bootcamp (the first one) and it was terrible. I was only able to finish 60/90 of the questions. I haven't been doing the questions timed - and from here on, will be (I write November 7). I skipped keyhold and TFE and went straight to angles. I got nervous and spent a lot of time on angle ranking, and this spilled over to hole punching and cube counting. I finished 4 sections (angles/hole punch/cube/3D form -- which are the sections I am confident in) and was just working on apertures when time ran out.

What tips/advice would you suggest for speed issues going forward? Does it get better... did you guys also experience this and got better with timing? What were your guys experience like with PAT and timing - both while studying and during the actual exam? Did you find that anxiety and the test conditions of the actual day impeded timing even more?

Please let me know. Also, I'm not sure how accurate this is but Bootcamp said my estimated PAT score would be 17 based on the questions (49/60) I finished.

Please help,

spraypainter

 

[RxStudentatUB]

spraypainter,

It gets better, don't worry. Read the explanations but most of all significant improvement does not improve overnight. Do one hour a day with the generators for a few weeks and I can assure you it will start to click. Come back to this thread in a few weeks after doing this and I'll be waiting for your gratitude. 🙂 Au contraire to other subjects like physics and calculus, this section is actually fun to practice once mastered.

Best,

RxStudentatUBaltimore

 

[Graffix]

We all had some sort of timing issue with the PAT! you're not alone. There was another thread on this to: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/timing-issues-on-the-pat.1158144/#post-16853769 I said in that thread my strategy. I set a time limit for each kind of question and if time starts to run out I do my best educated guess (more on that in the other thread). With this strategy it isnt possible to run out of time and it got my brain to work through the problems faster. Here is the time table I used, I think its the one used for DBC generators.

15 keyhole 60s each
---45 min left
15 tfe 30s each
---38 min left
15 angle 30s each
---31 min left
15 holepunch 30s each
--- 24 min left
15 cube 30s each
---12 min left
15 folding 60s each
-- 2 min left

 

[Ari Rezaei]

Don't worry about the estimated score, I've rarely seen anyone take a PAT practice test and knock it out of the park on their first try. This is a practice test, so what's important now is what RxStudentatBU said - to practice with the PAT generators and thoroughly review each solution to understand your mistakes. You improve your score by reviewing and studying after the practice test, not during the practice test. If you continue to work hard and study, read and understand the solutions, practice with the PAT generators daily, and give it your best effort, I promise your score will improve. Practice and learn for now, and the scores will come.

 

[DAT Destroyer]

We all had some sort of timing issue with the PAT! you're not alone. There was another thread on this to: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/timing-issues-on-the-pat.1158144/#post-16853769 I said in that thread my strategy. I set a time limit for each kind of question and if time starts to run out I do my best educated guess (more on that in the other thread). With this strategy it isnt possible to run out of time and it got my brain to work through the problems faster. Here is the time table I used, I think its the one used for DBC generators.

15 keyhole 60s each
---45 min left
15 tfe 30s each
---38 min left
15 angle 30s each
---31 min left
15 holepunch 30s each
--- 24 min left
15 cube 30s each
---12 min left
15 folding 60s each
-- 2 min left

Great advice, thanks for sharing!