dren2003
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Hello All,
This is my April 2024 DAT Breakdown:
Perceptual Ability: 23
Quantitative Reasoning: 23
Reading Comprehension: 30
General Chemistry: 25
Organic Chemistry: 22
Biology: 27
Total Science: 24 / Academic Average: 25
Background:
. Currently a junior with 3.9 GPA, attending a state college on national merit scholarship. Predental (obviously), and TAing for Biology II, A&P II, and Ochem I & Ochem II. Have done research.
Materials Used:
. DAT Booster: The most helpful resource I used, especially for PAT, General Chem and Organic Chem. The new notes for the science sections are particularly helpful and streamlined for reading and memorization. The AI generators and question banks for PAT are especially helpful—they are the only ones that I completed 100%. Everyday I would do at least 20 questions in each section (keyholes, top front end, angle ranking, hole punching, cube counting, and folding) and keep on doing them until I had a 80%+ success rate. I completed every daily warmup because they give you a diverse array of questions which you cannot predict—doing enough daily warmups helps with overall content memorization, efficiency, and stops you from being caught off guard when you get a random question on a random section.
The 10 practice exams are the absolute most important resources to use and to complete, but only after you have read and memorized all of (if not most of) the DAT Booster notes (because these are limited resources—you don’t want to waste any of it). I recommend taking all the practice exams as the “full-length exam” (4+ hours in one sitting) to simulate the testing center environment.
. DAT Bootcamp: I did all of the daily warmups and read the free biology summary notes as a supplement.
. School Notes: I used these as additional supplements—anything that I had learned in my classes (Bio I & II, Gen Chem I & II [with labs], Ochem I & II [with labs], Biochem [with lab], and A&P I & II [with lab] being the most relevant) that was not covered by either DAT Booster or Bootcamp I made sure to put in the back of my head.
. PHYS.org: To practice for the reading comprehension section, I would read random science articles that I found online within a set amount of time and recall information covered in the article. The articles that you want to read should lean more towards “popular science magazine” than “science journal”. PHYS.org provides the most articles that fit this classification.
Study Timeline:
I began casually reviewing biology material in Summer 2023, because the biology section needs an incredibly wide scope of knowledge. I began to “actually” study for biology and the other sections over Christmas Break 2023, and took the DAT late April—about 4 months of studying. I did not follow any recommended study guide timelines because I personally did not like being restrained during this process. I instead would devote my time to mastering a specific section/topic, and then moving on to another one while doing an occasional review of already-learned material.
It’s also very important to not burnout, and to have realistic expectations—I would never expect to spend 8+ hours studying every day, because past a certain point there’s only so much you can improve each day.
I would also never mix studying with doing practice exams; I would use all the time that I had left at the end of the day reviewing the questions that I had in general and in particular, reviewing the questions that I got wrong and mastering the material.
If there is one piece of advice that I could give, it would be to take the DAT over the summer when you have no other significant academic obligations. Fortunately for me, the classes I were taking this spring semester and the classes that I TAed for served as a very effective way for me to review testable material.
Day of Exam/Individual Sections:
Depending on what time of the day your exam is on, prepare for it. Whether it is having to sleep early to wake up early, or eating a smaller breakfast so you don’t have to take a bathroom break hallway through a section, or being used to having no access to water/food during certain hours of the day. Most testing centers are kept at a very specific temperature—I don’t think it is too dramatic to set your home’s thermostat to that temperature and to take practice tests in full clothing (jacket, pants, socks and shoes etc.) to acclimate yourself to the testing environment.
Confidence is also key—walking into the testing center with high hopes and no stress will do miracles.
Efficiency is key, and something which you will attain by taking all the practice exams. All sections that I took I had extra time to review questions (the most, around 15 minutes for the sciences section). Every section is very straightforward to me, except for PAT, which required a different test-taking strategy.
For me, hole punching>cube counting>folding>keyholes>top-front-end>angle ranking in terms of difficulty. Out of all of them, angle ranking is probably the most intuitive, but I particularly had difficulty in ranking obtuse angles. So, I would skip to the hole punching section of the PAT and complete that first, and work my way around to cube counting, then folding, then keyholes, etc. A good way to finish PAT on time is to do process of elimination—ruling out all wrong options by comparing answer choice to one another is a MUCH faster way to get correct answers than comparing each answer choice to the given item one by one.
Afterthought:
DAT scores are scaled, meaning that getting one question wrong in, for example, quantitative reasoning, can possibly yield a 26 instead of a 30. This is in stark contrast to the SAT, which is not scaled the same way—getting 2 questions wrong is a 1560 out of 1600. So do not be discouraged by a “low” section score, especially if you have a good record with standardized tests.
It is also far better to take the DAT once and be done with it forever. So definitely take this exam seriously, because it is not ideal (financially, because each test comes to about $540, nor professionally, because dental schools generally advise you not to take the DAT too many times) to take it twice, especially if on the second exam, your scores do not reflect a significant improvement.
This is a definitely an academic hurdle that any aspiring dentist will have to overcome, so you are not alone in this journey. Looking at the DAT more as a challenge that you WILL overcome more than as a chore that you very reluctantly have to do will help you score high and go far.
Good luck to you all.
P.S.
I averaged a 25-26 on DAT Booster practice exams and on the one free test DAT Bootcamp offers I scored a 27. So I thought the practice exams were very accurate and worthwhile. The only noteworthy difference between the practice exams and the actual exam were question delays (some questions on the actual exam took almost 4 seconds to load compared to the simulated 2 or 3 seconds), and the periodic table pop-up (which covered the entire screen on the actual exam).
This is my April 2024 DAT Breakdown:
Perceptual Ability: 23
Quantitative Reasoning: 23
Reading Comprehension: 30
General Chemistry: 25
Organic Chemistry: 22
Biology: 27
Total Science: 24 / Academic Average: 25
Background:
. Currently a junior with 3.9 GPA, attending a state college on national merit scholarship. Predental (obviously), and TAing for Biology II, A&P II, and Ochem I & Ochem II. Have done research.
Materials Used:
. DAT Booster: The most helpful resource I used, especially for PAT, General Chem and Organic Chem. The new notes for the science sections are particularly helpful and streamlined for reading and memorization. The AI generators and question banks for PAT are especially helpful—they are the only ones that I completed 100%. Everyday I would do at least 20 questions in each section (keyholes, top front end, angle ranking, hole punching, cube counting, and folding) and keep on doing them until I had a 80%+ success rate. I completed every daily warmup because they give you a diverse array of questions which you cannot predict—doing enough daily warmups helps with overall content memorization, efficiency, and stops you from being caught off guard when you get a random question on a random section.
The 10 practice exams are the absolute most important resources to use and to complete, but only after you have read and memorized all of (if not most of) the DAT Booster notes (because these are limited resources—you don’t want to waste any of it). I recommend taking all the practice exams as the “full-length exam” (4+ hours in one sitting) to simulate the testing center environment.
. DAT Bootcamp: I did all of the daily warmups and read the free biology summary notes as a supplement.
. School Notes: I used these as additional supplements—anything that I had learned in my classes (Bio I & II, Gen Chem I & II [with labs], Ochem I & II [with labs], Biochem [with lab], and A&P I & II [with lab] being the most relevant) that was not covered by either DAT Booster or Bootcamp I made sure to put in the back of my head.
. PHYS.org: To practice for the reading comprehension section, I would read random science articles that I found online within a set amount of time and recall information covered in the article. The articles that you want to read should lean more towards “popular science magazine” than “science journal”. PHYS.org provides the most articles that fit this classification.
Study Timeline:
I began casually reviewing biology material in Summer 2023, because the biology section needs an incredibly wide scope of knowledge. I began to “actually” study for biology and the other sections over Christmas Break 2023, and took the DAT late April—about 4 months of studying. I did not follow any recommended study guide timelines because I personally did not like being restrained during this process. I instead would devote my time to mastering a specific section/topic, and then moving on to another one while doing an occasional review of already-learned material.
It’s also very important to not burnout, and to have realistic expectations—I would never expect to spend 8+ hours studying every day, because past a certain point there’s only so much you can improve each day.
I would also never mix studying with doing practice exams; I would use all the time that I had left at the end of the day reviewing the questions that I had in general and in particular, reviewing the questions that I got wrong and mastering the material.
If there is one piece of advice that I could give, it would be to take the DAT over the summer when you have no other significant academic obligations. Fortunately for me, the classes I were taking this spring semester and the classes that I TAed for served as a very effective way for me to review testable material.
Day of Exam/Individual Sections:
Depending on what time of the day your exam is on, prepare for it. Whether it is having to sleep early to wake up early, or eating a smaller breakfast so you don’t have to take a bathroom break hallway through a section, or being used to having no access to water/food during certain hours of the day. Most testing centers are kept at a very specific temperature—I don’t think it is too dramatic to set your home’s thermostat to that temperature and to take practice tests in full clothing (jacket, pants, socks and shoes etc.) to acclimate yourself to the testing environment.
Confidence is also key—walking into the testing center with high hopes and no stress will do miracles.
Efficiency is key, and something which you will attain by taking all the practice exams. All sections that I took I had extra time to review questions (the most, around 15 minutes for the sciences section). Every section is very straightforward to me, except for PAT, which required a different test-taking strategy.
For me, hole punching>cube counting>folding>keyholes>top-front-end>angle ranking in terms of difficulty. Out of all of them, angle ranking is probably the most intuitive, but I particularly had difficulty in ranking obtuse angles. So, I would skip to the hole punching section of the PAT and complete that first, and work my way around to cube counting, then folding, then keyholes, etc. A good way to finish PAT on time is to do process of elimination—ruling out all wrong options by comparing answer choice to one another is a MUCH faster way to get correct answers than comparing each answer choice to the given item one by one.
Afterthought:
DAT scores are scaled, meaning that getting one question wrong in, for example, quantitative reasoning, can possibly yield a 26 instead of a 30. This is in stark contrast to the SAT, which is not scaled the same way—getting 2 questions wrong is a 1560 out of 1600. So do not be discouraged by a “low” section score, especially if you have a good record with standardized tests.
It is also far better to take the DAT once and be done with it forever. So definitely take this exam seriously, because it is not ideal (financially, because each test comes to about $540, nor professionally, because dental schools generally advise you not to take the DAT too many times) to take it twice, especially if on the second exam, your scores do not reflect a significant improvement.
This is a definitely an academic hurdle that any aspiring dentist will have to overcome, so you are not alone in this journey. Looking at the DAT more as a challenge that you WILL overcome more than as a chore that you very reluctantly have to do will help you score high and go far.
Good luck to you all.
P.S.
I averaged a 25-26 on DAT Booster practice exams and on the one free test DAT Bootcamp offers I scored a 27. So I thought the practice exams were very accurate and worthwhile. The only noteworthy difference between the practice exams and the actual exam were question delays (some questions on the actual exam took almost 4 seconds to load compared to the simulated 2 or 3 seconds), and the periodic table pop-up (which covered the entire screen on the actual exam).
