For those of you who have taken both, could you please compare the two verbal sections? My friend gave me a bunch of MCAT material for free, and I'm broke, so I don't have money to buy DAT study material. Just wanted to know if I could ace the verbal DAT if I studied out of the MCAT preparation books. Thanks 👍
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Verbal Section (MCAT vs DAT)
Started by cys19
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There is no verbal section on the DAT.
Here is a breakdown of everything that will be covered on the DAT:
http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/testing/dat/scope.asp
Here is a breakdown of everything that will be covered on the DAT:
http://www.ada.org/prof/ed/testing/dat/scope.asp
Studying the MCAT verbal workbooks should be sufficient for preparing you for the DAT reading section. Most of the questions on the DAT are detailed questions, which you can find all the answers, word-by-word, from the passages and DAT passages are much longer than MCAT passages.
You can also go to Barnes and Noble and check out the DAT passages.
You can also go to Barnes and Noble and check out the DAT passages.
cys19 said:
There's actually a pretty big difference. On the DAT there is no writing sample. Also, the passages are much longer (~15 paragraphs) and there are 3 passages to finish in 60 minutes (total of 50 questions). The content is similar, but MCAT passages focus more on the author's purpose while DAT questions focus more on picking details out of relatively dense scientific paragraphs. The strategies for studying are similar....practice! Get your hands on as many sample DAT passages and question sets as possible. Scholarware will give you three full-length DATs for like $40, but use anything. Good luck!
The questions on the DAT RC section are usually straight-forward and require no critical analysis. The verbal on the MCAT is much more difficult as you have to read 9 different topics and the answers to the questions often require inferences and critical thinking.
Yes they are shorter..but there are still nine different topics to absorb. Some of the MCAT passages are so obscure too and very uninteresting making mental fatigue a large factor.
With this is mind, using MCAT verbal preparation is actually pretty helpful. I took several MCAT verbal sections before even taking a practice DAT. I found the RC to be much easier.
Good Luck!
Yes they are shorter..but there are still nine different topics to absorb. Some of the MCAT passages are so obscure too and very uninteresting making mental fatigue a large factor.
With this is mind, using MCAT verbal preparation is actually pretty helpful. I took several MCAT verbal sections before even taking a practice DAT. I found the RC to be much easier.
Good Luck!
