- Joined
- Jul 24, 2013
- Messages
- 67
- Reaction score
- 7
EDIT: POSTED A MINIBREAKDOWN/ANSWERED SOME COMMON QUESTIONS
my RC section was the hardest densest reading section id ever seen in my life, I practiced with crackdat and qvault and hadnt scored below a 20 since the day I started studying. Id even consider myself a good reader. I cant believe this happened. I have a 3.17gpa at a top public research university with straight A's towards the end. Major in Biochemistry. What should be my next course of action? Life was hell studying for this test and financially I don't even know if I can afford to take the time off to give it an honest go again. Would it be worth it to try and do the impossible and retake it? How severely am I hurting my odds if I don't?
here are my scores
PAT 24
QR 30
RC 16
BIO 24
GC 20
OC 23
TS 22
AA 23
Edit: So i've gotten a few messages about the RC and QR sections, So heres my mini-breakdown. First of all, I feel totally cheated about the questions which I got in the RC. I prepared heavily in every area and think that I just got unlucky. My RC consisted of 2 50+ short paragraph(almost unreadable) random search and destroy sections. The other section was the only one of them that felt possible, and that section was still harder than anything I had practiced, which included mostly passages from crack dat reading, I feel that it is very uncommon to end up with such hard sections but isn't it all about luck anyways?
As for the QR, the main thing is that you've got to be extremely fast at is the regular known question types, being super fast at the known question types will allow you a surplus of time to work on those random questions that no one expected to be on the test. When I mean super-fast I mean that I had a few shortcuts memorized for the main question types. An example would be for finding the hypotenuse of a triangle. Instead of doing the pythagorean theorem then reducing each time, you're better off memorizing the values for a 30/60/90/45(1,2, root2 and root3 for the sides) triangle and then just multiplying to get the angular value. I had finished all but 3 questions with 15 minutes left. I went through math destroyer once and felt it was similar to the test, but slightly misdirected. The questions of the DAT focus more on the basic repetitive calculations rather than the somewhat extensive calculations of math destroyer. I did chads quizzes twice for math, once a few weeks out from my test and once the night before. Some sections I averaged about 25 seconds per calculation, while for the most complicated age problems I was averaging about a minute and 20 seconds per question. Remember that the people writing the test expect you to be able to do each question quickly so every calculation is likely to be very simple. I also did the QVAULT quizzes. my average was around a 27/30 each time. The questions aren't complicated, you just need to be timely.
One thing that I wanted to say about the PAT is that, although CDP is jocked heavily on this forum, I found it to be very far from spot on when compared to the actual test. With crackdat a good amount of time is spent on angles(if you're not guessing) and also on cube counting. My test was much more simple in these areas. The TFE, hole punching, pattern folding, and keyholes all presented new issues that I had not seen in CDP. There had been an abundance of non symmetrical shapes for pattern folding and keyholes, while half folds occurred in about 1/4 of my hole punch questions. CDP may be a good place to start but if you really want to get a feel for the higher distinctions you need to make on the DAT, CDP is probably only good for beginner practice. I am thankful that I was exposed to these obtuse types of questions in Qvault PAT.
As for the science areas; I used chads and destroyer, did chads quizzes once and destroyer 3 times, last time was probably overkill, I think I could've benefitted more from the Qvault quizzes/questions. If I decide to retake I will probably spend more time on the basics for OC/GC. As for Bio, covering a lot of ground is probably your best bet. For those of you who don't already know.. and I hate to emphasize a particular product.. But I am quite sure that clicking on the individual questions types in at the bottom of each section in Qvault will allow you to see more problems than just the ones the present in total within their practice tests; for example eukaryote taxonomy has about 70 questions stored in that section that cover many of the bases of taxonomy, while in the normal test area you only get about 2 of those questions per one of ten tests.
conclusion:
Destroyer: OC/GC; key resource
Chads: videos/quizzes are an amazing value compared to other sources
Achiever: Bought it and did the first test which I got a 21 on. My friend from undergrad, who just enrolled at columbia, told me that it was not a true representation so I switched to Qvault.
Qvault: I think I owe my biology score to these guys, I got to the point where I could go through every biology question in about 4 hours(I basically used them like flashcards), many questions on my test were identical to Qvault.
Kaplan: glanced at it, didn't use. It felt too basic
Cliffs bio: A good starting place. The writing feels dry, but I think it touched on every question I saw on the DAT.
As always, your experience will likely be slightly different when compared to mine, but hopefully this helps a few of you when deciding where to focus your time. Cheers.
my RC section was the hardest densest reading section id ever seen in my life, I practiced with crackdat and qvault and hadnt scored below a 20 since the day I started studying. Id even consider myself a good reader. I cant believe this happened. I have a 3.17gpa at a top public research university with straight A's towards the end. Major in Biochemistry. What should be my next course of action? Life was hell studying for this test and financially I don't even know if I can afford to take the time off to give it an honest go again. Would it be worth it to try and do the impossible and retake it? How severely am I hurting my odds if I don't?
here are my scores
PAT 24
QR 30
RC 16
BIO 24
GC 20
OC 23
TS 22
AA 23
Edit: So i've gotten a few messages about the RC and QR sections, So heres my mini-breakdown. First of all, I feel totally cheated about the questions which I got in the RC. I prepared heavily in every area and think that I just got unlucky. My RC consisted of 2 50+ short paragraph(almost unreadable) random search and destroy sections. The other section was the only one of them that felt possible, and that section was still harder than anything I had practiced, which included mostly passages from crack dat reading, I feel that it is very uncommon to end up with such hard sections but isn't it all about luck anyways?
As for the QR, the main thing is that you've got to be extremely fast at is the regular known question types, being super fast at the known question types will allow you a surplus of time to work on those random questions that no one expected to be on the test. When I mean super-fast I mean that I had a few shortcuts memorized for the main question types. An example would be for finding the hypotenuse of a triangle. Instead of doing the pythagorean theorem then reducing each time, you're better off memorizing the values for a 30/60/90/45(1,2, root2 and root3 for the sides) triangle and then just multiplying to get the angular value. I had finished all but 3 questions with 15 minutes left. I went through math destroyer once and felt it was similar to the test, but slightly misdirected. The questions of the DAT focus more on the basic repetitive calculations rather than the somewhat extensive calculations of math destroyer. I did chads quizzes twice for math, once a few weeks out from my test and once the night before. Some sections I averaged about 25 seconds per calculation, while for the most complicated age problems I was averaging about a minute and 20 seconds per question. Remember that the people writing the test expect you to be able to do each question quickly so every calculation is likely to be very simple. I also did the QVAULT quizzes. my average was around a 27/30 each time. The questions aren't complicated, you just need to be timely.
One thing that I wanted to say about the PAT is that, although CDP is jocked heavily on this forum, I found it to be very far from spot on when compared to the actual test. With crackdat a good amount of time is spent on angles(if you're not guessing) and also on cube counting. My test was much more simple in these areas. The TFE, hole punching, pattern folding, and keyholes all presented new issues that I had not seen in CDP. There had been an abundance of non symmetrical shapes for pattern folding and keyholes, while half folds occurred in about 1/4 of my hole punch questions. CDP may be a good place to start but if you really want to get a feel for the higher distinctions you need to make on the DAT, CDP is probably only good for beginner practice. I am thankful that I was exposed to these obtuse types of questions in Qvault PAT.
As for the science areas; I used chads and destroyer, did chads quizzes once and destroyer 3 times, last time was probably overkill, I think I could've benefitted more from the Qvault quizzes/questions. If I decide to retake I will probably spend more time on the basics for OC/GC. As for Bio, covering a lot of ground is probably your best bet. For those of you who don't already know.. and I hate to emphasize a particular product.. But I am quite sure that clicking on the individual questions types in at the bottom of each section in Qvault will allow you to see more problems than just the ones the present in total within their practice tests; for example eukaryote taxonomy has about 70 questions stored in that section that cover many of the bases of taxonomy, while in the normal test area you only get about 2 of those questions per one of ten tests.
conclusion:
Destroyer: OC/GC; key resource
Chads: videos/quizzes are an amazing value compared to other sources
Achiever: Bought it and did the first test which I got a 21 on. My friend from undergrad, who just enrolled at columbia, told me that it was not a true representation so I switched to Qvault.
Qvault: I think I owe my biology score to these guys, I got to the point where I could go through every biology question in about 4 hours(I basically used them like flashcards), many questions on my test were identical to Qvault.
Kaplan: glanced at it, didn't use. It felt too basic
Cliffs bio: A good starting place. The writing feels dry, but I think it touched on every question I saw on the DAT.
As always, your experience will likely be slightly different when compared to mine, but hopefully this helps a few of you when deciding where to focus your time. Cheers.
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