skulleader Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 hey, Just wanted to ask all those people out there who did well on their DAT's to share some tips on the section(s) that you did well in. Stuff like how you prepared and tricks to the section(s) that you did well in. thanks alot SL Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sloken Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 RC: ( I got 30) Do a lot of practice passages...i know youve heard this before, but after seeing 3 practice ones about amalgam, and then seeing another one on the actual DAT, I was pretty happy to have somewhat of a background in the topic. Same thing could happen in the future. Also, I hilighted important names, dates, terms, or numbers (ie. anything thats short) as i read, while at the same time underlining in normal pen any concepts or sentences that I thought would make good questions. Sometimes I'd write the names/terms/dates in the margins to make it easier to flip back to. When i did the RC, I'd ALWAYS read the entire passage, without skipping anything. You have to read, but not necessarily understand... at least at first. I found that at least making mental notes of where a topic was found made it easy to flip back to IF a q about it came up. If it didnt come up, then i didnt waste any effort/time trying to comprehend it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
shimmer2006 Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 Sloken, some awesome advice here!!! 30 on RC is outta this world!!!! Which practice passages helped you? Just reading journals or did you buy any prep material packages? Do you recommend anything they use for verbal reasoning like examcrackers? Its not the same but I cant find practice passages anywhere. Please recommend something.. thanks!!!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
skulleader Posted January 21, 2008 Author Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 RC: ( I got 30) Do a lot of practice passages...i know youve heard this before, but after seeing 3 practice ones about amalgam, and then seeing another one on the actual DAT, I was pretty happy to have somewhat of a background in the topic. Same thing could happen in the future. Also, I hilighted important names, dates, terms, or numbers (ie. anything thats short) as i read, while at the same time underlining in normal pen any concepts or sentences that I thought would make good questions. Sometimes I'd write the names/terms/dates in the margins to make it easier to flip back to. When i did the RC, I'd ALWAYS read the entire passage, without skipping anything. You have to read, but not necessarily understand... at least at first. I found that at least making mental notes of where a topic was found made it easy to flip back to IF a q about it came up. If it didnt come up, then i didnt waste any effort/time trying to comprehend it. 30! thats wicked. How did you find the difficulty of the reading? where the passages lengthy or short enough that you had time left over towards the end to look over your answers. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayjaejai Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 Wow,, 30. I think there is only one person who got 30 on Nov07 DAT. I guess I did quite well on my carving (28) and PAT (27). For both, I think practice makes perfect. I carved about 40 soaps and once in a while, I had a Kaplan instructor to give me a feedback. For PAT, I got lucky because I only practiced with Kaplan and I found out that the real DAT had harder questions, especially the angle ranking. There are few tricky ones for hole punching as well. I got 26 on my chem and 22 on bio. To prepare for science section, I think it is best to use Kaplan+Examkracker(bio)+DAT destroyer. To prepare for my Nov07 DAT, I started carving from July and took a Kaplan course that started in August. My hardcore studying started from October. I studied about 6 hours a day!! And a week before the DAT, I missed all my classes and studied more than 10 hours a day. And since I wrote my exam at UBC, I went to the Hebb theatre few times before to get used to the desk and the lighting ( because we all know the desks are slanted and the lighting is dim!!!) Good luck everyone.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pbure66 Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 excellent job but i would like to point out to anybody that hasnt taken the DAT yet that it is not necessary to study 10 hours a day in order to succeed. i studied for about 3 weeks before the exam (nov 04). I dont know if the exam changed since then but i found 3 1/2 weeks was plenty of time to study the bio and gen chem. i ended up with bio 21 chem 22 pat 18 and rc 21. i used kaplan blue book, topscore, kaplan subject tests and relied on being a bio major as well. i would also recommend destroyer (but avoid heavy calculations as the real exam is mostly theory) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AllSmiles Posted January 21, 2008 Report Share Posted January 21, 2008 You were allowed to use a highlighter?? We only had the option of using pencils.... RC: ( I got 30) Do a lot of practice passages...i know youve heard this before, but after seeing 3 practice ones about amalgam, and then seeing another one on the actual DAT, I was pretty happy to have somewhat of a background in the topic. Same thing could happen in the future. Also, I hilighted important names, dates, terms, or numbers (ie. anything thats short) as i read, while at the same time underlining in normal pen any concepts or sentences that I thought would make good questions. Sometimes I'd write the names/terms/dates in the margins to make it easier to flip back to. When i did the RC, I'd ALWAYS read the entire passage, without skipping anything. You have to read, but not necessarily understand... at least at first. I found that at least making mental notes of where a topic was found made it easy to flip back to IF a q about it came up. If it didnt come up, then i didnt waste any effort/time trying to comprehend it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnie Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Congrats to the above posters who molested their respective sections. The only one I'll share for is Chem (score: 26). Kaplan and other prep courses tell you "if you don't get every question right, don't worry! you can get a great score with even a handful wrong!". I threw this philosophy out the window. I prepped for Chem with the stance that there was no excuse to not get a perfect score. Unlike Bio, there's very little memorization, so if you've practiced, addressed your mistakes and weaknesses, and been consistent, you should be able to get an excellent score. Maybe not a 30, but very respectable nonetheless. To be more specific, here's what I did: Kaplan makes subject tests for Chem and Bio. After reading the big fat Kaplan book in 2 days flat, I devoted the remainder of my 2 week (3? can't remember) study period to just practicing problems. I reviewed the ones I got right, and the ones I got wrong. If there was a hard question, like Ksp or Ka with lots of math, I would work it out until I had it cold. I never made excuses like "this is one of the harder questions so I can feel relaxed about not knowing it very well." Why should we not aim for perfect scores? Oh, a quick tip for Scientific notation: "LARS"= Left Add, Right Subtract. If you move your decimal to the Left, Add to your exponent. Move the decimal to the Right, and Subtract from your exponent. As for the other sections, others are more qualified than I am to give you advice. The thing I put it bold up there ^^^. Yup, thats my motto. Only way to get to DAT enlightenment. Best wishes to everybody. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Arnie Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Wow,, 30.I think there is only one person who got 30 on Nov07 DAT. I guess I did quite well on my carving (28) and PAT (27). For both, I think practice makes perfect. I carved about 40 soaps and once in a while, I had a Kaplan instructor to give me a feedback. Whoah. Congrats all around bigJ, but the carving and PAT are out of my league! Good for you to carve 40 soaps. I only applied to uofT and UWO, so carving was not a priority. I carved a total of 3 soaps. 2 for practice, 1 on the actual test. A "15" Carving was my just reward. PS: "quite well" would qualify as quite modest, wouldn't you agree? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jayjaejai Posted January 22, 2008 Report Share Posted January 22, 2008 Thanks Arnie.. And congrats on your Chem! I agree with Arnie with this. I think if you put some efforts and study chem, it would not be so hard to get perfect. I mentioned above that I studied about 6 hours a day for about 3 weeks and 10 hours a day for the last week. I am a Chem major and believe that I have a strong knowledge in Chemistry, so I barely touched Chemistry and still ended up getting a good mark. For biology, however, I tried to memorize every little details and this is where my crazy hours came from. I basically knew the blue Kaplan book inside out. I also knew stuff from Examkracker biology well. But what did I get? 22!! (they have odd ones here and there...) I think it is hard getting a really high mark in biology is hard but at the same time it is also hard getting a low mark. But if you prepare your chem section right, I think you might see a 30 in it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.