Took DAT. Did well. Here's how I did it.

[mistermay1]

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Hi friends,

My scores:

PAT: 22
QR: 26
RC: 21
Bio: 22
GC: 22
OC: 26
TS: 23
AA: 23

For the PAT I used Crack DAT Pat. I took all 10 tests timed and did the first 2 once more, for a total of 12 tests. By the end I was scoring 24s and 25s. I found the actual PAT section to be harder, especially keyholes and folding. Angle ranking was probably easy tho.

For QR I used Crack DAT math. VERY HELPFUL. When I started I was scoring 19s. I ended up scoring 24-25s after taking about 20 timed sections, and I got a 26 on the DAT. Section I'm probably most proud of.

My worst section. Hard to study for. For reading comp I just did some full practice tests. I took a full test each saturday morning leading up to the test for 4 weeks. My friend had TOP Score and I just used his. Top score is harder than the real thing, especially the bio section.

For Bio I used DAT destroyer (sort of helpful), read kaplan bio for mcat (friend gave it to me), and this website (very helpful). For Bio 1 and for Bio 2.

For GC I used Dat Destroyer (good, not great), did kaplan practice tests (also from friend), and barrons college chemistry (good but maybe too comprehensive).

For Ochem I used DAT destroyer. worked like a charm. F-yeah 26.

In all, I studied about 2-3 months, easy at first (about 1-2 hours a session three times a week) and harder at the end (about 3-4 hrs per day 4 to 5 days a week). Also, like I said, I took full practice tests. Very important because it will build your stamina and confidence. Let me know if you have any questions.

Good luck All!

-J

 

[OC1314]

WOW. Great Scores. Did you have alot of Gchem calcs? Did you have the frap or piano test. Also, how would you compare CDM to the real QR.

 

[mistermay1]

WOW. Great Scores. Did you have alot of Gchem calcs? Did you have the frap or piano test. Also, how would you compare CDM to the real QR.

Yeah, I did do a lot of gen chem calcs. Was the section I was doing worst on for a while. Just keep doing them and it will come together. I didn't put the pieces together for this section until a week or two ago (would constantly make stupid mistakes, didn't completely get Ksp, etc.). Also, I found the real DAT to have a lot of theory and fairly simple calculation problems. A couple really weird problems I didn't really understand. Sorry, not sure what frap or piano is. CDM is an excellent prep for the real QR and if you have the different sections mastered (probability, word problems, trig, etc), you will ace it.

-J

 

[water88]

nice job. Just curious, what were your percentiles for AA and TS?

I haven't see any sub 21 AA's in a while. This is gonna be a very competitive cycle.

 

[mistermay1]

nice job. Just curious, what were your percentiles for AA and TS?

I haven't see any sub 21 AA's in a while. This is gonna be a very competitive cycle.

From the "unofficial score report" they gave me after I finished the DAT at the prometric center:

Total science percentile: 99.2
Academic average percentile: 99.7

It's worth keeping in mind that the people who self-report their scores on this site are typically the ones that do the best. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If your scores are solid (21s), your GPA is 3.5 and up, and you get a little lucky, you'll be fine.

 

[doc3232]

From the "unofficial score report" they gave me after I finished the DAT at the prometric center:

Total science percentile: 99.2
Academic average percentile: 99.7

It's worth keeping in mind that the people who self-report their scores on this site are typically the ones that do the best. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If your scores are solid (21s), your GPA is 3.5 and up, and you get a little lucky, you'll be fine.

WOW...those percentiles are high for the score you got. great job though.

I think most 23s on AA are about 98% or something...same with TS.

 

[adizzle87]

23/23/22 = smoking! congrats on the killer scores!

 

[water88]

WOW...those percentiles are high for the score you got. great job though.

I think most 23s on AA are about 98% or something...same with TS.

Which means that the DAT is getting harder. Yet, all I see are ridiculously high scores on SDN.

 

[vlct0ria]

Which means that the DAT is getting harder. Yet, all I see are ridiculously high scores on SDN.

I have to agree with the OP about the fact that people who post scores on SDN probably perform much better than average. Just think, you follow a forum for a couple years where people know/recognize you, and then you finally take this huge career-determining exam, and you bomb it...probably wouldn't want to share it in public. Plus, you have people on SDN who create accounts to share their amazing scores...and hey, there's nothing wrong with that as long as they're giving us a good breakdown like the OP is! So I'd say a combination of people neglecting to share their poor performances plus the new people sharing their amazing performances gives us all the impression that if we don't score 21+, we're screwed.

PS- Fantastic job, OP! I am impressed that you didn't need to kill yourself studying like so many do...I hear tons of people on here saying they studied for 10 hours a day everyday for 2 months, which is CRAZY if you ask me!

 

[jay47]

From the "unofficial score report" they gave me after I finished the DAT at the prometric center:

Total science percentile: 99.2
Academic average percentile: 99.7

It's worth keeping in mind that the people who self-report their scores on this site are typically the ones that do the best. I wouldn't worry too much about it. If your scores are solid (21s), your GPA is 3.5 and up, and you get a little lucky, you'll be fine.

You don't have to score 21+ and have a 3.5 and get lucky to get in. National averages show DAT scores AROUND 19 and GPA around 3.5. Hit the average, and don't blow the interview, and you probably have a great shot.

Great scores btw.

 

[yqjcyxx]

Wow, CONGRATS! Your scores are brilliant, esp. OR and QR! A lot of people have problems with this section (including me) so that's really impressive. With all your scores above the 20s, I'm sure you'll do awesome!

Just a quick question, I'm doing CDM right now but I keep running out of time when I practice. Some people have posted that there were long 2-3 sentenced word problems on math and I'm so afraid I'll get something like that on the real thing. Did you run into problems with time management? And were there any out of the blue question not covered by CDM?

And darn, keyhole and pattern folding are harder than CDP?! Those were the sections that I had the most confidence in. What did you think of TFE and hole punch on the real test as compared to CDP? I heard you can't rely on counting lines with TFE. Is that true?

Just FYI, OC1314's question about frap and piano refers to versions of the exam. The "frap" one is a question on bio. When people see that they know they're going to get a super long ethics passage for RC. The piano one refers to a passage on RC also. All in all, they are not fun and just indicates really hard versions of the test. We're all hoping and praying we won't end up with those versions.

 

[roxana]

congrats 🙂 nice job

 

[MrJeff]

Great scores! Have you heard if AP bio cliffs is good to study from?

 

[yankees27th]

Are percentiles based on the exact version of the DAT you have? Because my AA (24) is a lower percentile than the OP's. Mine was 99.2%ile.

And congrats on the score!

 

[mistermay1]

Just a quick question, I'm doing CDM right now but I keep running out of time when I practice. Some people have posted that there were long 2-3 sentenced word problems on math and I'm so afraid I'll get something like that on the real thing. Did you run into problems with time management? And were there any out of the blue question not covered by CDM?

And darn, keyhole and pattern folding are harder than CDP?! Those were the sections that I had the most confidence in. What did you think of TFE and hole punch on the real test as compared to CDP? I heard you can't rely on counting lines with TFE. Is that true?

So the trick with CDM and the QR section in general is to realize that you don't need to get them all right. In fact, unlike the bio and chem sections, you can miss 5 questions and still get a really dope score, like 23 or so. So the way I went about it is that I would just skip any problem that I knew was going to be a pain. This includes word problems (they slow me down), difficult looking trig problems, etc. I would crush out the algebra and geometry (because these sections seem to be easier for me), and then have about 8-10 problems to finish at the end. I would usually have about 12-15 minutes at the end, and I would do the problems I skipped with this time. Also, if the problem still looked really tough on second look, I would skip it again and do it absolutely last. It is however important to put some answer down, so if you never do get to it, at least you'll have a chance of getting it right as a guess.
Another good strategy for problems that say something like "the sum of the first two numbers is one half of twice the third number minus 3. What is the Third number?" is that these problems can be solved using simultaneous eqns, but I found it saves time to just pick one of the answer solutions it see if it works with the info given. I found that this is easier.

Finally, with regards to the PAT section, I found that the keyhole section was just really weird on the actual DAT. While Crack Dat PAT def offered many challenging problems, all the answers were clearly correct once you figured them out. With the actual DAT, it seemed to me that you have to pick the most correct answer, even if its not "perfect." In other words, even with the correct solution, the proportions can be off a little.

Pattern folding was difficult in CDP also, but after you take a lot of them, you sort of figure it out and make improvements. On the actual dat, I got shapes that were pretty crazy looking that had multiple pieces that didn't have radial or bilateral symmetry. I wasn't used to this and it threw me off a little. Using logic can help though. Such as, "well the black piece can't be touching the white piece, so A and B are not possible..." etc. But you probably know this strategy already.

 

[mistermay1]

Are percentiles based on the exact version of the DAT you have? Because my AA (24) is a lower percentile than the OP's. Mine was 99.2%ile.

And congrats on the score!

Good question. I'm not sure. That is definitely possible. My percentiles were given on my "unofficial score report." This was the form the printed out and gave to me as I left. If/when I get my official score report (maybe in the mail??) I'll let you know if the percentiles are still the same.