WAHOOOOO i'm done =)

[userah]

alright guys. Finally done with this **** and hopefully will never have to look at a DAT book again. Here's the breakdown of my grades

PAT - 19
Quant - 16
RC - 19
Bio - 23 97% percentile
Chem - 19
Orgo - 20
TS - 20
AA - 19

I really wanted to see 20 AA so i'm a little dissapointed but i guess i'll get over it with that 23 bio. Man I gotta tell you, Bio was the biggest surprise. I thought it was gonna be my worst section after I was done and I gotta say, when I saw the score on the screen, there was like a wave of depolarization across my entire body lol. I was so ecstatic.

As for the specifics on the exam, Bio didn't really have any unknown material. It was all material I was familiar with but there were a few doozies. Chem was a bit harder than I thought it would be. Only had like 3-4 calculations. Orgo was pretty good; I was actually hoping for a better score but oh well. 20 isn't anything to complain about i guess.
PAT was not bad. It was pretty much like how I expected it to be. Do enough exercise and you should do fine on this section. Reading Comprehension was straight forward. Had one passage about bridges or some ****. Pretty boring crap. The other two were about the spinal cord and uhh diseases. What really helped me on this section was looking at the questions while reading the passage. Whenever I read part of the passage that matched the question I'd answer and then go to the next one. That helped me save a lot of time. Uhh and Quant meth was pretty straight forward. I expected a pretty crappy score cuz I didn't review AT ALL for this section. I probably should have looked at some equations at least. Might have helped me get a 20 =/

Materials I used for studying were Kaplan for the basics, Destroyer, TopScore, Achiever, Wikipedia, and Crack Dat

I studied for about 15 hrs per day for past 2-3 weeks.

Here's my breakdown of Achiever and TopScore scores
Achiever test 1
AA- 18, PAT - 17, QR - 16, RC - 21, BIO - 16, GC - 18, OC - 16, TS - 17

Achiever test 2
BIO - 16, GC - 16, OC - 16, TC - 16
Man I hit such a low after taking this exam. I thought there was no point in taking the exam cuz i was gonna bomb it if I got scores like this. I somehow got through it and pushed forward and kept studying. Btw this was about 2 weeks ago =/

Achiever test 3
BIO - 15, GC - 15, OC - 17, TC - 16
Another low lol

TopScore test 1
Bio - 19, GC - 18, OC - 17, TC - 18
This was about 3 days before the exam

TopScore test 2
BIO - 21, GC - 19, OC - 18, TC - 20
This was 2 days before the exam

All in all, I thought Achiever was much harder than TopScore. It was really good in motivating me to keep studying. Everytime I thought I knew everything, I would take achiever and it would send me back to earth lol. TopScore I found to be much easier than Achiever.

If you want a breakdown of how I did the first time around haha, here are the horrible scores
AA - 16, TS - 15, BIO- 12 (2% percentile lmao) , GC- 17, OC - 18, RC - 19, PAT - 16, QUANT - 15

As you can see BIIIG improvement haha. I'm really happy with my grades. I worked my ass off for past 4 weeks. Now bad news is that I have 3.0 GPA. science GPA is probably lower. I'm not very good with exams lol. If someone can give me some good advice on which schools i'd have better chances of getting in, that would be great. Thanks guys and if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask. I'd like nothing more than to give back to the community who has helped me so much in doing well on this exam.

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[vvvv]

Great score with Biol. anything about plant?

 

[ucla2134]

Congratulations! That is a solid score!!!
omg!!!15 hours per day. I can never pull that off.
I think you still have a chance even though your GPA is on a low side. Thus, apply to private and 15 schools i think. But if you have extra money, apply to 20 schools just to increase your chance.

 

[playa2652]

Good Job Userah! Congrats on your scores and way to pull through and stick with it. Apply to at least 15 schools (especially private schools).

 

[113zami]

congrats!!, how were you scoring on the crack dat pat?

 

[Predentknight]

Congratulations I think you will generate some intervies with your stats and your apparent passion through helping everyone on here will show on interviews. appreciate all your info over the past weeks. When you say gchem was more difficult than excpected in what respect? Thanks for all of your help.

 

[userah]

Congratulations I think you will generate some intervies with your stats and your apparent passion through helping everyone on here will show on interviews. appreciate all your info over the past weeks. When you say gchem was more difficult than excpected in what respect? Thanks for all of your help.

i think it was cuz with all the practice, i was just in the mindset of doing equations and that kinda screwed me up because that's the mindset i was in, plug and chug format. I mean I did much better than the first time I took it, and I think that is mostly due to destroyer. Know that **** cold but learn from my mistakes and don't just know which formula to use. That's not gonna get you a really good score on the exam haha. 15 schools eh? i'm a jersey in state. What do you guys think are my chances of gettin into UMDNJ.

'vvvv' there were i believe about 2-3 questions on plants. not too many.
'zami' i never actually took full exams on crack dat. I took maybe at most one. What I did was do section at a time. First without the timer and tried to really understand what the best way to tackle each type of question. and then after that I'd set a time for myself and try to answer in that time limit to prepare for test day. Folding was my worst section going in but it really wasn't bad at all on the real exam. crack dat is so much harder i think for folding than the real one. cube counting, if you do enough practice, you learn shortcuts to see where you'll find 2/3/4 sided blocks to save you time on the real exam. I didn't use the technique of figuring out how many cubes per drawing. I just went in a linear fashion from block to block. I suppose that could also be why I only got a 19 and not higher haha =P

any other questions fellas? feel free to ask. i'd be mooooooore than happy to answer.

 

[sl2obel2ts]

Did u really study for ONLY 3 weeks?

 

[baedero1]

Do you remember what kind of plants question did you have? photosynthesis? structures?

 

[userah]

Did u really study for ONLY 3 weeks?

haha i took it once before in September of last year so I had a pretty good base understanding of the material. And throughout the year, I've been studying on and off but really, the heavy studying was only after I finished with finals. For 3 weeks, I ate, breathed and slept DAT's, with only my buddy SD forums to keep me company lol. I had one question on angiosperms for plants. that's the only one i can recall off the top of my head. Also had a biome question about rain shadows.

 

[jigabodo]

Solid score.

 

[osimsDDS]

what did you use to study for biology, i am using schaum's actually just finished it and it has helped me alot just wondering what has helped you?

 

[userah]

kaplan is **** for bio lol. I read over it like once. That's about it. For Bio this is how I went about studying for it. After kaplan I went to destroyer and instead of actually using it as a means to see how well i know the material, I just went from question to question first trying to answer myself; then going back looking at the answer and all the reasoning. If it was something I didn't understand, I'd wiki it and took notes on the topic. I think the key was that regardless of whether the answer choices were right or wrong, I still went back to each answer choice and understood what it was and why it was wrong. I think that made a big difference. After going through all 300 some odd questions I then went to schaum's and did a once over of the book. It really is one of the dryest books I've ever read lol. I was having so much trouble not falling asleep reading it. After Schaum's I did practice exams from Achiever and TopScore and after taking the exam, I used the same method I used for destroyer and went through each answer choices and understood why it was wrong and why the correct one was right. Everytime I was unfamiliar with a topic, I would take notes and put them aside and before going to bed, I'd go over the material I was having difficulty with. Did that the night before the exam as well.

 

[bruin432]

hey there!!! good job, feel great huh??? CONGRATS

 

[userah]

you have nooooo idea haha. I needed this score badly with that crap GPA haha =/ Now if i can apply early, hopefully i have a decent shot of getting in. I'm heading to france and india for vacation; leaving on thursday. Gonna be a pain in the ass to deal with applications while i'm out of the country haha but hopefully i can get everything done by mid july latest =/

 

[supraman]

Nice job! LOL ===> I studied for about 15 hrs per day for past 2-3 weeks.

How did you stay motivated?

 

[userah]

by taking achiever exams lol. those low scores sure helped in keeping me motivated lol

"You only lack in action when you lack in belief and you only lack in belief through what you think about it"

I found this really nice quote that I just kept reading every time I wanted to quit.I think it made a huge difference in how I approached the exam. Just keep thinking positive and give it your very best. That's all you can really do right?

 

[AFF2009]

congratz... nice job

 

[supraman]

oh wow very nice! Congrats and good luck in the cycle

 

[Orgodox]

Great job you creamed the BIO!!

 

[userah]

haha i gotta say that bio score was half luck because there were many questions where i was 50-50 between questions and i just went with my gut instinct. i guess that paid off haha.

 

[Holopeachy1]

Congratulations once again! did u freak out at all during the exam? thats my problem, i get anxiety attacks during exams

 

[userah]

haha i freak out before exams. once it starts though, it's game time.no point wasting time freaking out after exam starts. nothing you can do besides hope that you studied enough and it will pay off. freaking out will only hinder that process. just breathe and tell yourself you're gonna make this DAT your bitch haha. a little crude but it did the trick for me... =P

 

[aquafreshlovin]

Wow, excellent job!

I am currently studying for OCHEM...and all these reactions are killing me. Were there a lot of questions like...."what is this reaction called?" and "is this Nucelophilic/Electrophilic addition/substuition" ???

I just don't know how to study for Ochem anymore...any tips?

 

[Mstoothlady2012]

Congrats! nice scores yea i agree when i took DAT last year, chemwas very conceptual as well and very basic compared to achiever and destroyer. I did the same mistake like you...i went crazy doing all kinds of calculations and memorizing different equations, but that don't really help you. And it is not even fair to ask taking log of something or calculating a big equation like Ecell of something w/o calculator...that takes up most of the time. So actually that's a good thing that DAT doesnt have big calculations. Did you have any long calculations with like 6 digits division? I am skipping those type of questions in kaplan, because i don't see how they could ask something like that on DAT. I just understand what the question is asking for and set up the equation but I am not learning how to solve it w/o calculator, since I didnt face those kind of questions the last time I took DAT. What do you think?

 

[smile101]

Nice scores..especially for second time around...this is def a booster.
That trip to India and France will be much more fun now...enjoy!!!

 

[userah]

for ochem they didn't have 'what kind of reaction is this' per say but they did have reactions where you had to know how to make the product. for example hydroboration, you had to be familiar with what hydroboration is and what things are involved in the reaction. i had a few problems like that.

as for chem, like i said only a few calculations. I did have the hasselbach equation problem which was a pain cuz i think i actually messed it up after practicing it so much haha. there weren't too many long equations that i can remember. just a lot of conceptual. had a B-decay problem, ideal gas, some easy stuff that wanted to test whether you knew the trends of the periodic table, etc. mostly it was conceptual with a few calculations thrown here and there.

 

[OMFS08]

Good Job!! Buddy!!! You are my inspiration.!!!

 

[drtoothy]

Great job, my June 2 buddy! Feels awesome to be done, huh?

 

[Sea of ASH]

Congrates Man

 

[userah]

Great job, my June 2 buddy! Feels awesome to be done, huh?

haha you have no idea. i was sleep deprived for so long it feels like i finally am coming out of my cave. i'm so thankful i'm done. for now at least haha. still got applications and all that crap but one step at a time huh? how are your applications coming along? i wanna get mine in by june ending latest. just gonna be a pain when i have to do this while i'm vacationing haha. oh well.

as for being an inspiration haha please you're making me blush =P just know that if i can do it, you can do it as well. my scores from first time to second time as well as my GPA i think show that i'm not nearly as smart as half the people on these forums lol. but i def worked my ass off for this exam and i hope that comes across when colleges review my file =/

 

[drtoothy]

Yes, I feel the same exact way. I walked out of my exam and remembered in the 80 degree weather that the last time I had been outside, I was wearing a winter coat...haha. Working on apps right now and that damn PS is taking longer than expected. I hate this part of the process, but in a few weeks, we'll be one step closer to DENTAL SCHOOL (hopefully)!