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Thoughts On The November 2016 Dat Exam


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Use this thread to tell us what you thought of the November 5th DAT exam. 

 

For the MDT, I literally carved an exact pattern that I found off of the CDA website and practised a bunch yesterday, so I'm sure I did well. 

 

Survey of natural sciences: a bit more acid-base questions than I thought but overall not bad if you understood the material in school. Bio is meh

 

PAT: Easiest section was cube counting, there were some figures with 7 or 8 cubes....never seen that on practise tests. 

        Keyhole, Pattern folding and Angle ranking are what you would expect. Angle ranking was a *****

        TFE was easier in the actual exam than what bootcamp makes it out to be...their visualiser helped a lot though. 

 

Your thoughts? 

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chem was easy

 

bio was challenging (loads of memory specific plant questions)

 

RC was difficult relative to last feb's .. quite a few inferring qns + 5 author's tone qns (none of which were in last febs meaning you couldn't search-destroy and do well)

 

PAT was easy (except pattern folding, but it was the last one I probably fatigued), finished with 10 min to spare 

 

i fcked up carving again 

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First DAT attempt.

 

Biology - lots of ecology questions/ random questions

Chemistry - a bit random but not difficult to answer

PAT (I used Crack the DAT so I felt confident going in) - There were one or two tricky ones for TFE and pattern folding. 

Reading comprehension - Search and Destroy did not do me justice lol. A lot harder than I expected. Don't even talk about it :'<

 

Overall, it was harder than I expected. 

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Biology: I thought this section was great!! Unsure about maybe 1 or 2; finished this part in 20 mins

Chemistry: Was alright, could have studied more; finished it in 30 min -overall had about 10 minutes to review 

 

PAT: Angles were terrible, keyholes/ hole punching/ cubes were fairly easy, TFE and pattern folding were definitely okay but I think my brain had had enough by that point - finished about 10 minutes early and attempted to review angles to no avail 

 

RC: Not as bad as had expected - many questions you could answer with pervious knowledge but there were more tone/ inference questions than I expected - finished with 5 minutes to spare 

 

Overall I think it was about as hard as I thought it was going to be with the exception of bio, also timing wasn't as much of an issue as I had expected it would be. 

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1st time taking it 

 

MDT: Design seemed easier than expected. Could've flattened out my surfaces more and I might have overcut one of the ends. I managed to cut myself and got some blood on the uncut portion of the soap...hopefully it doesn't leave a bad impression on the markers.

 

Sciences: Didn't study for it since the uni I'm applying at doesn't look at it but I still made an effort to see how much I could remember. Ended up doodling in the booklet for half of the exam period. 

 

PAT: Felt a bit more pressed for time perhaps because I was feeling a bit stressed. Questions were easier than Bootcamp I'd say. The invigilator gave us a 5 minute warning and I was expecting another warning after that but the next time they spoke the test finished and I missed 2 questions I was going to check over ;_; Hopefully those get removed as part of the 15 questions. 

 

RC: Search and destroy didn't really help me out here. Bit more inference and application than what I expected. Guess I should've actually read the articles through. 

 

Otherwise, the test overall wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It was a good experience and I have a better idea of what to expect for retakes. 

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I thought bio was Ok. There were a lot more ecology questions than I expected

 

Chem was easy, no hardcore calculations. There were a few "trippy" questions, I would say. I finished SNS with 5 minutes to spare

 

PAT: Angle ranking was a guessing game. The rest was Ok. I thought keyhole was really easy. Overall PAT was fine

 

RCT: :(:(:( I completly lost my cool in the first two minutes, I was too nervous to answer any question. I am debating if I should apply or not with a very low mark in RC. I am sure I failed this section :( I am thinking of re-writing the DAT in Feb

 

Side note/question: Does anyone know a good resource for RC practice. English is not my first language, but my English is decent. I finished a Master's degree in Medical Physics, and I am now a full time researcher at a reputable hospital in Toronto... I have read tons and tons of scientific articles.. All are harder than RCT... Point is I don't think I lack the ability to read and comprehend scientific topics. I am just lacking the strategy.

Resources I used for RCT practice included DAT bootcamp, Kaplan blue book, and DATready...I read all of these articles and re-reading them is not a good practice... Please help :(

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I thought bio was Ok. There were a lot more ecology questions than I expected

 

Chem was easy, no hardcore calculations. There were a few "trippy" questions, I would say. I finished SNS with 5 minutes to spare

 

PAT: Angle ranking was a guessing game. The rest was Ok. I thought keyhole was really easy. Overall PAT was fine

 

RCT: :(:(:( I completly lost my cool in the first two minutes, I was too nervous to answer any question. I am debating if I should apply or not with a very low mark in RC. I am sure I failed this section :( I am thinking of re-writing the DAT in Feb

 

Side note/question: Does anyone know a good resource for RC practice. English is not my first language, but my English is decent. I finished a Master's degree in Medical Physics, and I am now a full time researcher at a reputable hospital in Toronto... I have read tons and tons of scientific articles.. All are harder than RCT... Point is I don't think I lack the ability to read and comprehend scientific topics. I am just lacking the strategy.

Resources I used for RCT practice included DAT bootcamp, Kaplan blue book, and DATready...I read all of these articles and re-reading them is not a good practice... Please help :(

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1st time

 

Bio: Some weird ecology questions. Pretty good overall

Chem: Decent, was pressed for time though

PAT: Only did 2 PAT tests and I thought this went well surprisingly (except angles lol)

RC: BRUHHHHHHHHH. Used search and destroy. First passage went fine, second and third passages I ate shit. I was scoring 20-21 on bootcamp...

 

Probably going to rewrite in February because of RC.

 

Anyone know if they remove any bio/chem questions?

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I thought bio was Ok. There were a lot more ecology questions than I expected

 

Chem was easy, no hardcore calculations. There were a few "trippy" questions, I would say. I finished SNS with 5 minutes to spare

 

PAT: Angle ranking was a guessing game. The rest was Ok. I thought keyhole was really easy. Overall PAT was fine

 

RCT: :(:( :( I completly lost my cool in the first two minutes, I was too nervous to answer any question. I am debating if I should apply or not with a very low mark in RC. I am sure I failed this section :( I am thinking of re-writing the DAT in Feb

 

Side note/question: Does anyone know a good resource for RC practice. English is not my first language, but my English is decent. I finished a Master's degree in Medical Physics, and I am now a full time researcher at a reputable hospital in Toronto... I have read tons and tons of scientific articles.. All are harder than RCT... Point is I don't think I lack the ability to read and comprehend scientific topics. I am just lacking the strategy.

Resources I used for RCT practice included DAT bootcamp, Kaplan blue book, and DATready...I read all of these articles and re-reading them is not a good practice... Please help :(

 

So I used IQ publication for RC and I actually found them quite representative. I also liked how they were printed out in booklet form. This is all I used for RC along with the CDA manual and I thought it was sufficient preparation but of course its hard to predict what score I actually got. I know they don't print out IQ publications for print anymore but depending on what my score will be and whether I have to retake it or not, I would be happy to sell you mine if you decide you want paper copies instead of the online version. Just direct message me :) 

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PAT: Felt a bit more pressed for time perhaps because I was feeling a bit stressed. Questions were easier than Bootcamp I'd say. The invigilator gave us a 5 minute warning and I was expecting another warning after that but the next time they spoke the test finished and I missed 2 questions I was going to check over ;_; Hopefully those get removed as part of the 15 questions. 

 

Invigilators are only allowed to give warnings at 30 mins and 5 mins. I highly recommend wearing a watch next time! (I always give myself 10 mins max per section) I didn't know they remove questions! What's the purpose behind it?

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Invigilators are only allowed to give warnings at 30 mins and 5 mins. I highly recommend wearing a watch next time! (I always give myself 10 mins max per section) I didn't know they remove questions! What's the purpose behind it?

 

 

Invigilators can give time warnings whenever they want actually. I've invigilated the DAT twice already and in my room me and my fellow invigilators stuck to 30mins, 15mins, and 5mins.

 

They have a total of 15 "test questions" (for lack of a better term). If enough people get these right, then they'll appear on the DAT some other year but that time, they will actually count towards your score.

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Bio: found it to be comparable to practice tests I had taken. Some very detailed questions that I had no idea about and some very basic questions that were very easy. Overall tough like the bio section typically is for me.

 

Chem: Once again found it very similar to practice tests. One or two tricky questions but nothing too hard in my opinion. 

 

PAT: Waaaaaaay easier then practice tests I had taken (Bootcamp). Was shocked with how easy pattern folding was especially. There were many more cube counting structures then I expected (sometimes just one question for a whole cube structure), but overall much easier then I was expecting.

 

RC: I found this section to be good! I don't do search and destroy, I read the article first and then answer all of the questions. I was a little pressed for time at the end but overall was happy with how it went.

 

 

Anyone know when around we will get scores back?

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