Advice for the DAT!

Hello fellow pre-dents,

My name is Spencer Coronado and I’m going to use every writing skill in my power (yes, that’s right, all three) to hopefully organize your DAT preparation and ease your testing experience into something a little less terrifying. I am a junior biology major and psychology minor completing the new Bachelor of Science and Arts option here at UT. I took the DAT on August 19^th, 2014 and my standard scores were as follows: PAT: 21, QR: 24, RC: 27, BIO: 22, GC: 26, OC: 25, TS: 24, and AA: 25. I prepared for about 6 weeks over the summer. In this post I will explain how I studied and how the test actually was. If you have any questions I have not examined, feel free to message me through the Facebook page for TPS.

Firstly, it’s important that you have finished BIO311C/D, BIO325, CH301/302, CH320M/N, and CH220C before signing up for your DAT. These are the courses covered in the science portion of the DAT – general biology, genetics, general chemistry and organic chemistry. I included organic chemistry lab because the section on the DAT consistently has a question or two about lab techniques.

Once you have finished (and hopefully aced) these courses, you will have a strong science background that will make studying for the DAT easier. As well, you will have great sets of notes to study. The DAT also tests you on perceptual ability, which is essentially a bunch of mental puzzle problems where you have to rotate or form objects, passing them through keyholes or counting their sides. The DAT also tests your math skills from conversions and simple algebra through basic trigonometry, and reading skills (the easiest section in all honesty).

For DAT prep, you have a few options. You can pay about 1.5 K to 2K for a prep course by Kaplan or the Princeton Review, or if you want to be economical you can pay around a few hundred dollars to prepare. I chose the cheaper option and do not regret it. If you can set your own schedule and follow through, there is no need to be in a DAT prep class.

These are the materials I used to prepare for the DAT:

1. Chad's videos for general chemistry, organic chemistry, and math. Chad is a very clear, explanatory lecturer on Coursesaver.com who lets you pay to watch his DAT prep lectures. The chemistry videos are vital if you take notes and review the notes for a few weeks. You should get access to his videos and focus on understanding chemical principles as well as problem solving techniques.

2. DAT Bootcamp - I highly recommend it. The practice exams are perfect for chem/bio. I memorized every bio question on that site because I was scared how many I actually didn’t know (Did you know cartilage doesn’t have a blood supply, so it heals slower? Me neither. That’s why we all need DAT Bootcamp.)

3. Cliff's AP Biology 3rd Edition - I read the first half thoroughly, skimmed the second half. It's available online as a PDF for free, just google it and you’ve got a wealth of information that could give you a 20+ on the bio section.

4. Kaplan's Blue Book DAT 7th Edition - I took notes and studied all 15 biology chapters. It was a lot of material, but it really helped me organize my knowledge of various systems. I still have this, and if anyone wants it just message me and I’ll sell it super cheap.

5. DAT Destroyer/Math Destroyer – The destroyers are practice manuals for the sciences and math. I did all 516 biology problems in DAT destroyer on one day, about two before my DAT. It was insane and I recommend spacing it out a little more. I tried to remember all my wrong answers, which helped because the same topics were on the DAT’s bio section. I did about 100 ochem problems out of the ~200ish while inwardly crying that I was going to fail the orgo section of the DAT – it has never been my strongest subject, but what you must know is the destroyers are more difficult than the actual test. I did the first 4 exams in the Math Destroyer and got around 10-16 wrong out of a batch of 40 each time; these were highly representative of the real exam.

6. Crack DAT PAT: I got the edition with 10 PAT exams. The first time I took a PAT exam on CDP, I got a 16 and freaked that I was going to fail the DAT and have no future. It gets easier every time though. I had taken 6 PATs by the time I tested, mostly getting 21-23 range.

My personal experience taking the DAT:

1. Biology was random. Can't escape it. Just study all the main areas and go for true understanding mixed with fact memorization.

2. Gchem is basic, but tricky if you don't know all the nuances of why certain things are the way they are (concepts are important to avoid wrong answers – for example, in a galvanic cell, the redox reactions are spontaneous, while in an electrolytic cell they are non-spontaneous and must be supplied with electrical energy to occur).

3. Ochem wasn’t that bad, DAT bootcamp exams help a lot.

4. PAT was not bad, but it’s important that you are fast, as you have 1 hour for 90 questions.

*The 15 minute break after the science section is clutch; go to the bathroom so you don’t have to rush the next half of the exam; also drink some water or something with caffeine to keep your mind from growing sluggish as it is a 5 hour exam*

5. Reading was conquerable with search and destroy as your sole technique. The answers were verbatim in the passages, and if you work diligently, you can have time at the end to review answers or write a few math formulas down before the quantitative reasoning section begins.

6. Math was mostly algebra II and fractions, conversions. Speed is crucial here, perhaps even more so than the PAT; the calculator is your friend.

In closing, I hope this entry has helped you organize your DAT prep and lessened any anxiety. I was very worried for the exam myself, but once you are done, it is glorious.

Thanks for reading,

Spencer