- Joined
- Aug 7, 2013
- Messages
- 56
- Reaction score
- 28
Hi all!
First of all I want to thank a lot of people who posted their DAT breakdown on here. I wasn't a member when I was prepping but I read a lot about study materials and stuff on here which was super helpful. So now I want to share my own thoughts on my experience.
PAT 22
QR 22
RC 19
BIO 24
GCHEM 24
OCHEM 24
TS 24
AA 23
I started prepping in late May and took the test early August. It wasn't intense studying until July though. I wish I had started working on PAT earlier (I started that in July as well). I had a plan of how to study, but that didn't go through. So mine is just kind of spontaneous.
BIO 24 Cliffs/Destroyer/QVault/Kaplan BB for ref
This was honestly a surprise. I was so scared for this section, because I haven't really memorized all the stuff that I wanted to memorize, and people kept telling me how random the questions might be on the test. I think I lucked out.
What I did was, I read&highlighted Cliffs AP Bio in May, which was pretty much a breeze if you're a bio major.
Then I started doing Destoyer, and I had like a 50% accuracy the first time around. As I was going through Destroyer, I do like 20 at a time, and then check my answers and read through the key. I type up all the things I didn't know and had that printed out when I was done with Destroyer. Meanwhile, I also made a couple of notecards (I'm not a big fan of that) for things that I absolutely have to memorize, things like hormones. I found destroyer really difficult the first time, because I haven't taken any physiology/histology/other upper level bio major classes except plants. And I struggled with body systems a lot. I took AP Biology in high school. So a lot of stuff seemed ancient. So I taught myself through Googling.
Near the end of July, even though I had gone through my Destroyer outline, I felt I wasn't completely prepared for this. So I bought QVault Bio and gone through that in 3 days. With this, I also did similar things like an outline. For ref, my scores on there are: 22/20/20/22/22/25/21/22/21/18. I also used their taxonomy chart which was awesome.
GCHEM 24 Destroyer/Chad's
I took gen chem in freshmen year. I watched Chad and took notes in June, finished that up when my subscription ran out in a month. Then I started doing Destroyer and took notes on those that I missed. First time around my accuracy was like 65%. And I went through it another time mid-July. I was going through it for a third time, but I thought I needed more time on other sections so I stopped. Both Chad's and Destroyer were awesome.
OCHEM 24 Destroyer
I watched Chad's too on this, but it wasn't much help, since I knew most of what he was talking about. I just finished ochem II at school. So this is fresh. But first time doing Destroyer was pretty bad as well, as I felt like I hadn't learned a lot of what was on there from school. I am good with reagents/reactions, but bad with stereochem and random lab stuffs. So I watched Chad's videos on lab techniques, IR/NMR, and those that are on ochem 1 materials. I went through Destroyer a second time. And took notes on the type of qs that I always miss.
SCIENCE TEST DAY: Honestly I thought a lot of questions are badly worded for bio. For genchem, there weren't many calculations so that saved a lot of time. For ochem, I suggest everyone KNOW YOUR IR/NMR. I finished 20 min early, so I went through my marked qs first. And then started going through from the beginning just in case if I clicked on the wrong answer (I tend to do that a lot...). I thought I might've gotten a 22 or something so obv I was overjoyed when I saw my TS score.
PAT 22 CDP
I practiced solely CDP. I began with doing some angle ranking and hole punching on my free time when I was getting started with science. Hole punching practice was the most helpful thing ever, because I was slow before I got started, but it soon became my favorite part. In July, I started doing CDP practice tests. For ref, my scores are: 22/22/22/23/22/25/24/23/24/23. I thought I had gotten better near the end (bc the scores, and I started to only miss angles), but I guess not!
TEST DAY:
Aperture/Keyholes: they're slightly trickier than CDP. There really isn't any strategies, just do some elimination when you're confused.
TFE: I thought it was slightly harder than CDP as well. Maybe it's because I got used to CDP...I didn't use line-counting the second half of CDP because I heard you can't use it a lot of times on the real thing. And I think that was true. It's harder to eliminate wrong ones. So I relied on me "seeing" the 3D structure, especially for the really close answers where only a dash/solid line is different between two choices.
Hole punching: I liked the grid paper! So I just drew out all of them and I was pretty quick with that thanks to CDP. Often times when I'm confused with a fold (bc I've sitting there stressed out for too long!), I draw a dash line on my grid noting where the fold is, and try to just go with symmetry. Oh! And on my test, some hole punching qs had weird formats? Like the answer choices had really small holes and stuff...
Angles: This is on par with CDP (so I guess they made it harder than a couple of years ago!). I felt like I sucked at it as usual and there really isn't many strategies you can use when two angles are super close...sorry for not being helpful!
Cubes: OK I had 6 instead of 5 "groups" of cubes! And most of the time, they were placed sideways (comparing to CDP).
Pattern Folding: Like others have said, there were more complex shapes than patterns! So it was harder than CDP I thought.
Overall: I'm not too happy with my score, since I had 10 min or so left at the end and went back to check my unsure ones, but it's not bad either! (OK I should suck it up...)
RC 19 CDP
This was WAYYYY harder than CDP. First of all, I am a slow reader because 1. I don't read for fun 2. I'm not acquainted with English until high school (so...excuse all the typos that I've made!!!). I had 3 really hardcore science research-oriented articles. AND THE ARTICLE KEPT SCROLLING BACK TO THE TOP EACH TIME I CLICK TO THE NEXT Q. That was annoying. Plus at this point, I couldn't focus at all, so I had to do search and destroy which I wasn't used to.
QR 22 Math Destroyer
I'm good at math so I don't know what happened. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but usually I get above a 25 for this. That's why I am somewhat disappointed. Destroyer was good for reviewing all the formulas that I've forgotten aka trig/geometry. The trig questions were especially similar! I had 10 min at the end to check my answers...I thought they were all correct so...whatever haha!
That's it! I am SO glad I don't deal with it any more. While I wasn't studying hardcore everyday until like the last two weeks, I went shopping, I shadowed my dentist, and I am an Internet addict so that's that. For all who're prepping, make sure you take breaks while studying because I was about to go crazy in that last two cram weeks! Good luck to all of you and I hope to see some of you at dental school!
I want to add that, I tried Barron's, but there were WAY TOO MANY MISTAKES. It was kind of unbearable. Math Destroyer had some mistakes in its answer keys too. And for bio, Cliffs or Kaplan alone wouldn't work if you're shooting for an above average score.
First of all I want to thank a lot of people who posted their DAT breakdown on here. I wasn't a member when I was prepping but I read a lot about study materials and stuff on here which was super helpful. So now I want to share my own thoughts on my experience.
PAT 22
QR 22
RC 19
BIO 24
GCHEM 24
OCHEM 24
TS 24
AA 23
I started prepping in late May and took the test early August. It wasn't intense studying until July though. I wish I had started working on PAT earlier (I started that in July as well). I had a plan of how to study, but that didn't go through. So mine is just kind of spontaneous.
BIO 24 Cliffs/Destroyer/QVault/Kaplan BB for ref
This was honestly a surprise. I was so scared for this section, because I haven't really memorized all the stuff that I wanted to memorize, and people kept telling me how random the questions might be on the test. I think I lucked out.
What I did was, I read&highlighted Cliffs AP Bio in May, which was pretty much a breeze if you're a bio major.
Then I started doing Destoyer, and I had like a 50% accuracy the first time around. As I was going through Destroyer, I do like 20 at a time, and then check my answers and read through the key. I type up all the things I didn't know and had that printed out when I was done with Destroyer. Meanwhile, I also made a couple of notecards (I'm not a big fan of that) for things that I absolutely have to memorize, things like hormones. I found destroyer really difficult the first time, because I haven't taken any physiology/histology/other upper level bio major classes except plants. And I struggled with body systems a lot. I took AP Biology in high school. So a lot of stuff seemed ancient. So I taught myself through Googling.
Near the end of July, even though I had gone through my Destroyer outline, I felt I wasn't completely prepared for this. So I bought QVault Bio and gone through that in 3 days. With this, I also did similar things like an outline. For ref, my scores on there are: 22/20/20/22/22/25/21/22/21/18. I also used their taxonomy chart which was awesome.
GCHEM 24 Destroyer/Chad's
I took gen chem in freshmen year. I watched Chad and took notes in June, finished that up when my subscription ran out in a month. Then I started doing Destroyer and took notes on those that I missed. First time around my accuracy was like 65%. And I went through it another time mid-July. I was going through it for a third time, but I thought I needed more time on other sections so I stopped. Both Chad's and Destroyer were awesome.
OCHEM 24 Destroyer
I watched Chad's too on this, but it wasn't much help, since I knew most of what he was talking about. I just finished ochem II at school. So this is fresh. But first time doing Destroyer was pretty bad as well, as I felt like I hadn't learned a lot of what was on there from school. I am good with reagents/reactions, but bad with stereochem and random lab stuffs. So I watched Chad's videos on lab techniques, IR/NMR, and those that are on ochem 1 materials. I went through Destroyer a second time. And took notes on the type of qs that I always miss.
SCIENCE TEST DAY: Honestly I thought a lot of questions are badly worded for bio. For genchem, there weren't many calculations so that saved a lot of time. For ochem, I suggest everyone KNOW YOUR IR/NMR. I finished 20 min early, so I went through my marked qs first. And then started going through from the beginning just in case if I clicked on the wrong answer (I tend to do that a lot...). I thought I might've gotten a 22 or something so obv I was overjoyed when I saw my TS score.
PAT 22 CDP
I practiced solely CDP. I began with doing some angle ranking and hole punching on my free time when I was getting started with science. Hole punching practice was the most helpful thing ever, because I was slow before I got started, but it soon became my favorite part. In July, I started doing CDP practice tests. For ref, my scores are: 22/22/22/23/22/25/24/23/24/23. I thought I had gotten better near the end (bc the scores, and I started to only miss angles), but I guess not!
TEST DAY:
Aperture/Keyholes: they're slightly trickier than CDP. There really isn't any strategies, just do some elimination when you're confused.
TFE: I thought it was slightly harder than CDP as well. Maybe it's because I got used to CDP...I didn't use line-counting the second half of CDP because I heard you can't use it a lot of times on the real thing. And I think that was true. It's harder to eliminate wrong ones. So I relied on me "seeing" the 3D structure, especially for the really close answers where only a dash/solid line is different between two choices.
Hole punching: I liked the grid paper! So I just drew out all of them and I was pretty quick with that thanks to CDP. Often times when I'm confused with a fold (bc I've sitting there stressed out for too long!), I draw a dash line on my grid noting where the fold is, and try to just go with symmetry. Oh! And on my test, some hole punching qs had weird formats? Like the answer choices had really small holes and stuff...
Angles: This is on par with CDP (so I guess they made it harder than a couple of years ago!). I felt like I sucked at it as usual and there really isn't many strategies you can use when two angles are super close...sorry for not being helpful!
Cubes: OK I had 6 instead of 5 "groups" of cubes! And most of the time, they were placed sideways (comparing to CDP).
Pattern Folding: Like others have said, there were more complex shapes than patterns! So it was harder than CDP I thought.
Overall: I'm not too happy with my score, since I had 10 min or so left at the end and went back to check my unsure ones, but it's not bad either! (OK I should suck it up...)
RC 19 CDP
This was WAYYYY harder than CDP. First of all, I am a slow reader because 1. I don't read for fun 2. I'm not acquainted with English until high school (so...excuse all the typos that I've made!!!). I had 3 really hardcore science research-oriented articles. AND THE ARTICLE KEPT SCROLLING BACK TO THE TOP EACH TIME I CLICK TO THE NEXT Q. That was annoying. Plus at this point, I couldn't focus at all, so I had to do search and destroy which I wasn't used to.
QR 22 Math Destroyer
I'm good at math so I don't know what happened. I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but usually I get above a 25 for this. That's why I am somewhat disappointed. Destroyer was good for reviewing all the formulas that I've forgotten aka trig/geometry. The trig questions were especially similar! I had 10 min at the end to check my answers...I thought they were all correct so...whatever haha!
That's it! I am SO glad I don't deal with it any more. While I wasn't studying hardcore everyday until like the last two weeks, I went shopping, I shadowed my dentist, and I am an Internet addict so that's that. For all who're prepping, make sure you take breaks while studying because I was about to go crazy in that last two cram weeks! Good luck to all of you and I hope to see some of you at dental school!
I want to add that, I tried Barron's, but there were WAY TOO MANY MISTAKES. It was kind of unbearable. Math Destroyer had some mistakes in its answer keys too. And for bio, Cliffs or Kaplan alone wouldn't work if you're shooting for an above average score.
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