What is your DAT study schedule?

[IcemanDDS]

Hey I just finished up with the Kaplan class. I still have a lot of material to cover, and just couldnt keep up with the class schedule (and retain anything). What did you guys do as a study schedule? I find myself getting burned out and experience some A.D.D. if I sit and study for 3+ hours at once. Just wanna get some ideas as to what is an effective study routine.

Thanks!

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[PERFECT3435]

just going to the class will not do it for you my friend.

what will get you there is when you decide how fast you wanna learn it all.
i set my goal to learn it all in 2 months (my second time in kaplan.). that menat that i had to study 8 hrs/day and everyday.

bottomline, you just have to get serious about it and do it.

 

[DrTacoElf]

I had a full time job when i was studying. Basically every day i studied at any free moment. This usually added up to about 2 hours of this type of studying per day. Add in 1 hour of studying at lunch. Thats 3 hours. Then typically 1-2.5 hours at night. That was for weekdays.

Weekends -- pretty much all i did all day (although not constantly) was study. I woudl say i put in 6 good hours per day on weekends. I took all my practice tests On saturday mornings from 9am to about 1pm.
(2 barrons, 2 kaplan, 2 topscore, 2 acethedat (just problem sessions here). I also had kaplan problems to work through for G.chem and o.chem. For math i used gre material mostly.
I did this for about 2.5 months. only thing i would have changed is to have gotten more pat practice.

 

[Sprgrover]

I would break up my study schedule with ten minute breaks every hour or so. After a while I would find myself climbing the nearest wall and would need to come down and get grounded. I was working in the evenings and on the weekends so I would get up everymorning around 7:30 and go to the library for several hours before heading to work. It was just something I had to force myself to do if I wanted to get a decent score on the DAT.

 

[IcemanDDS]

Well the class was useless to me anyway. Didnt get much out of it. The best thing was all the review notes, flashcards, practice tests, etc. I just gotta get in a routine thats all!

 

[HBomb]

just going to the class will not do it for you my friend.

what will get you there is when you decide how fast you wanna learn it all.
i set my goal to learn it all in 2 months (my second time in kaplan.). that menat that i had to study 8 hrs/day and everyday.

bottomline, you just have to get serious about it and do it.

Perfect's advice is very solid.

It's going to take you awhile if you're spending only 3 hours a day (and couldn't keep up with the Kaplan schedule).

It took me exactly the same amount of time as Perfect...I studied for 2 months solid for about 8-10 hours a day. I was solid in my Chem classes before that point and just ok in bio knowledge, but I still needed 2 months to get ready (and I could've use more, but it's one of those tests that you can study for forever).

In terms of studying, I read the Kaplan Blue Book once, about 3 chapters a day. That took me about 3 weeks to complete. I did all the practice problems in the back of the book. I worked about 2 or 3 subject test a day in the beginning because they take a long time the first few go arounds. Then I uped the subject tests to as many as I could. I would go through the Kaplan flashcards. I made a few more flashcards and went through those all the time. In the last month, I went through the Kaplan diagnostic, midterm, and final test (again), and I did TopScore one per week. I mixed it up at the end to keep the monotony down.

 

[IcemanDDS]

Yea sounds good. I think now that the class is over, I'm gonna set up a schedule for myself at a pace I can manage. I could stay at the Kaplan pace but I dont absorb info well when moving that quickly. I'm planning on taking the test in a month, but may wait longer....

 

[wimmcs]

Besides the study pace and how long per day...
For those of you who finished the DAT, how did you manage your day in terms of how long your spent on each subject? I'm finding myself very "dedicated" to one subject and wanting to learn it ALL at once and maybe missing the boat on another one. I would appreciate feedback in terms on how you broke your days down and what worked and didn't..
Thanks!!

 

[DrTacoElf]

Besides the study pace and how long per day...
For those of you who finished the DAT, how did you manage your day in terms of how long your spent on each subject? I'm finding myself very "dedicated" to one subject and wanting to learn it ALL at once and maybe missing the boat on another one. I would appreciate feedback in terms on how you broke your days down and what worked and didn't..
Thanks!!

I would say for me it depended on teh day. Each day in my mind (after having gone through the kaplan book once) i had some things i wanted to brush up on. For instance one day i did 1/2 of the biology. Another day i did some math studying and gen chem. Also nearly every day i read JDR articles for RC section, the only thing i would have changed is to study PAT every day for at least 30 min.

 

[rocknightmare]

what kind of pat studying?

 

[PERFECT3435]

wimmcs,
thats a very good point that you brought up. in fact i was going through the same thing. i'd study for bio for three days and all of a suddent i wouldn't know my PAT.

what you could do is study one subject for 2 days and do another for another 2 days except that you take one hr of that study time to kinda quickly review what you learned three days ago. you see i am a kind of person that has to write things inorder to learn it so what i did was write the things that i always forgot and every night before i went to bed i reviewed those notes. after a while it'll stick to your head and will become like your alphabets.

just make flash cards of the things that you don't understand well or can't remember and just keep reviewing them.


good luck on your exam.

 

[IcemanDDS]

wimmcs,
thats a very good point that you brought up. in fact i was going through the same thing. i'd study for bio for three days and all of a suddent i wouldn't know my PAT.

what you could do is study one subject for 2 days and do another for another 2 days except that you take one hr of that study time to kinda quickly review what you learned three days ago. you see i am a kind of person that has to write things inorder to learn it so what i did was write the things that i always forgot and every night before i went to bed i reviewed those notes. after a while it'll stick to your head and will become like your alphabets.

just make flash cards of the things that you don't understand well or can't remember and just keep reviewing them.


good luck on your exam.

Hey great advice. I find myself telling others how helpful it is to review over something that you have studied for just a few minutes the day after you study it, and how it helps you to retain that information. Funny thing is, I rarely practice what I preach! I need to make a concious effort to do that from now on. Study for a while one day, then quickly review the same material for half an hour the next day. Because it does you no good to read something once, then move on to another subject without looking at the first material again. It just gets forgotten! So thanks for all the advice guys. Keep it comin!