Finally, I am not lazy enough to write a new post. Sorry for not making any updates for a while. Anyway, I am going to go over the bio section of the DAT. Alot of people think this is the most important section and thus spend the most time preparing for it. My best advice for this section is NOT TO OVERSTUDY. This section requires a really broad knowledge that you can study all summer just for this section and not get a perfect score. If you want a really high score on this section, you really should already have a solid biology background. That being said, I am gonna go over what and how I studied and talk about a few questions/trends I remember from the real DAT.

Like other people, I spent studying for bio as much as the other sections combined. I first started reading the blue kaplan DAT review book. After reading it, I didn’t remember much. So I read it again one more time. But this time, I wrote out the whole bio section word for word almost. Writing it out helped me to retain alot of the stuff I read. Even after reading the blue kaplan book twice, I didn’t feel it prepared me sufficient enough. Then I moved on to the Princeton Review MCAT hyper learning book. This book explain difficult concepts really well; even the ones I didn’t grasp completely during my bio classes. Like how I did for the kaplan blue book, I wrote princeton review book out.  I was literally a manual printing machine. Anyway, this book gave me a clear understanding of all the major concepts. After this, I think I took the topscore test to see where I was. I think I was getting 20-23 on bio section for topscore.  From topscore, I felt I didn’t go over a few sections as well as I wanted to. So I got the Barron’s AP bio book and my undergrad intro bio textbook study guide. The study guide has tons of practice multiple choice questions and I did all of those. 

When I felt that I was ready for the DAT, I went to take it. Questions were really basic and straightforward. It was either you know it or you don’t.  One question was “what is (a blood disease, I wont mention the specific name)?” or ”what transports water in the plants?”. Pretty easy if you know your stuff. No tricks or anything. I am also pretty sure that 99% of the questions that were on the test were covered in the Barron’s AP Bio book. So I highly recommend it.

One last thing I forgot to mention is that, if you don’t understand a cycle or concept, look at the figures or find and watch video clips of it. It helps alot.

Recommended books:
The Princeton Review Hyperlearning MCAT Biological Sciences Review 2007 Edition

Barron’s AP Biology 2008 (Barron’s How to Prepare for the Ap Biology Advanced Placement Examination)

Kaplan DAT 2008-2009 Edition (with CD-ROM) (Kaplan Dat (Dental Admission Test))

Biology According to many people, this is the best bio textbook for the DAT. Easy read.
 
Dental Admission Test (DAT) Computerized Sample Tests and Guide, TopScore Pro for the DAT

That’s all folks. Hope this post was helpful.

Based on my test, it seems like they like to know if you have a good understanding of the funamental mechanisms such as SN1, SN2, E1, E2, etc.. ALOT of problems dealt with those mechanisms. Additionally, there were several problems on individual reactions. You should cover the major ones that were covered in your ochem lectures. Don’t need to know any difficult ones as well as the obscure reactions. The key in this section is fundamental. Now, I was horrible with ochem; I was barely pulling Bs in them. However, on the real test, I was able to get a 22. 

How I studied for ochem

1. Read both Kaplan DAT Blue Book  and Kaplan DAT White Book a couple of times.  Wrote out the funamental mechanisms and important/major reactions.

2. If I didn’t understand something I went to The Princeton Review Hyperlearning MCAT Biological Sciences Review . This book is awesome because it explains things really well.

I did not use any other review books besdies the ones I mentioned above. I think these books are all you really need along with the practice test softwares.  If you do as what I say, you should be fine with this section. Good luck.

For this section, it seems like some people get alot of concept questions whereas other people got alot of calculation problems. In my case, I had many basic calculation problems on the general concepts. I saw problems dealing with empirical formula, Hess Law, and molarity questions to name a few.  Alot of questions were similiar to the ones I saw on topscore and DAT achiever. I would say the level of difficulty is comparable to that of chemistry AP in high school and it is definately easily than the undergraduate chemistry. 

The Ideal Way to Prepare for this Section

1. Print out the test specification for the General Chemistry Section.

2. Gather all the resources.

My Recommendations:

a. Kaplan DAT 2008-2009 Edition (with CD-ROM) (Kaplan Dat (Dental Admission Test))
b. Hyperlearning MCAT Physical Sciences Review. From princeton review. Explains the concepts that I had trouble with REALLY WELL. I am planning on keeping this book for future use.
c. Your Chemistry Textbook (or supplementary study guide) for practice problems. If you don’t have one, you should borrow someone’s or buy one. If you wanna buy one, I suggest you buy the one by Zumdahl.

3. Go over each topics listed in the specification. First, use the princeton review mcat book since it explains the best. It has most of the topics, if not all, that are coverd by the DAT. If you don’t understand a topic, try the kaplan book. If you still don’t understand it, get your textbook out and figure them out somehow. But I doubt you will have to use the textbook besdies for practice problems.

4. When you think you have finished going over a topic, do some relevant practice problems on kaplan and your textbook to make sure you know the topic cold.

5. Repeat for all topics.

6. Now you are ready for this section.

7. Once you have finished the other sections, start taking full length practice tests. Topscore is good, so is DAT achiever. Also the ones in the kaplan book.

For the hole punching section, I really didn’t come up with any innovative method. The only thing I did was to go over the ones I missed during the practice tests. The most difficult part of hole punching is probably the half hole punching. If you don’t get how these holes would turn out when they are unfolded, just get some paper and try them on your own. Other than that, you should not have too much problem with this section. One thing to note is, though, you must speed through this section without losing accuracy to leave more time for the other sections.

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Continuing on from the last post, I will go over the cube counting section. Going straight to the point, I will show you exactly what I did for this section.

1. Make a table like the below.

2. Go through each cube and determine how many sides are visible.

3. Once you have finished going through all the cubes, do the questions.

The most important thing is NOT to make mistakes when you are transcribing on the table and counting how many cubes have x number of visible sides.

Before I go over cube counting and hole punching, I would like to go over one important aspect of PAT section: time management. Although you are given 60 minutes for the whole section, you should not (or must not) spend an equal amount of time for each problem. Regardless of difficulty of the each subsection, there are a few subsections that you need to spend much less time than others. These are angle ranking, cube counting, and hole punching. You must speed through the angle ranking section because although it is difficult, spending more time on this section won’t give you a better answer. Like I said in the previous post, look at the angles closely and carefully and pick your best answer and move on. Also, you need not spend much time on cube counting and hole punching because they are the easiest part of PAT.  Using this guideline and your assessment/aptitude of each subsection of PAT, you need to distribute your 60 minutes appropriately.   

Going back to cube counting and hole punching, they are perhaps the two easiest section on the real PAT section. They are right on par with topscore in terms of difficulty. Perhaps, there were 1 or 2 half-hole punching on the real one (if I remember correctly) like the ones on DAT Achiever but the rest were really simple to do. If you are already good with these sections, don’t bother reading this post. It probably won’t help you much.

Cube Counting:

I used this simple method that I made to do all the cube counting problems.

I will continue next time.

I just found a really cool website that I would like to share with you guys. The website is called BookRenter.com. Like the name suggests, the website lets student rent textbooks for a period of time. I know most of you buy textbooks and end up just keeping it because you are too lazy to sell it. I know I was like that. Therefore, I think it is a great idea to rent textbooks to save alot of money.  They have very fast delivery and free return shipping.  Give it a try and spread the word!

              

 

This section of PAT may be the easiest section on the practice tests. On the real test, however, it is the hardest. Why? Because on the real test, the angles differ by very few degrees. So don’t be fooled by the practice tests that this section is easy.  For this section, basically, there is really only one thing you could do to do well.  It is really simple, yet overlooked. It is to look really closely. I have read some people suggesting to look from far. To me, this makes no sense. Two really similiar angles should look more similiar and similiar as you view it farther and farther. So when you are having trouble deciding which angle is bigger/smaller, look at one angle really closely and then look at the other one. Then based on your best judgement, decide which angle is bigger and smaller. I think this is the only legitimate thing to do for this section.

Recommended Books

1. DAT Achiever. Their angle ranking problems are harder than the other practice tests.

2. Barron’s How to Prepare for the Dental Admissions Test (Dat) Another decent DAT book that has good angle ranking problems although not as good as DAT Achiever’s

3. *** STRONGLY RECOMMENDED*** Crack DAT PAT for the Dental Admission Test . Never tried it myself because I never knew this product existed at the time I was preparing for my DAT. But I have heard alot of good things about this product. So give it a try!

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4. Kaplan DAT 2008-2009 Edition (with CD-ROM) (Kaplan Dat (Dental Admission Test)). Their angle ranking problems are way easier than the real ones. You should be getting perfect on these. At least 14/15.

If you still need extra problems, you can make some of your own. Have someone make you some angle ranking problems using a protractor.

Time spent: 40 Minutes

By no means, I am a good or fast reader. I never liked to read books my entire life and stil do not read much unless it’s required. However, I was able to do well on the DAT RC section because I used this simple method to answer all the questions. I am sure if you have tried to find a good strategy for RC on the SDN, you probably have heard of this method. The method is to NOT read the passage beforehand, but go to the questions first and start answering them right away.

My Strategy in Detail

1. Read the first question.

2. If it is a fact/detail question, skim through the passage and find the paragraph that has relevant information. If you did not find it, skip it.

3. Once you found it, read the paragraph with full attention. (Go to step 6)

4. Answer the question.

5. If it is a tone/inference question, skip it for now.

6. Move on to the next question.

7. Repeat the steps 2-6 for the rest of the questions.

8. By now, you will have read most of the passage. Go back to the skipped fact/detail question first.

9. You should be able to locate them more easily now since you have read most of it.

10. Now, go to the skipped tone/inference questions.  If you have skipped any paragraph, read them now.

11. Answer the tone/inference questions as best as you can.

12. Don’t leave any blanks and move on to the next passage.

 

Things to note

This method is efficient because although you end up reading the entire passage, you won’t have to read any paragraph more than once if you follow it correctly. I finished the entire RC section with 10 minutes to go and as I said before, I am not a fast reader.

Also, while looking for the answer to a question and you find the answer to a previously skipped question, go back to the question and answer it right away.

The most difficult thing about this method is to stay calm and relaxed. Sometimes, you may not find the right paragraph so easily. But do not panic. Stay calm and move on to the next question. Sometimes, you might have a few questions skipped consecutively. But stay calm still. In order to stay calm, you just gotta practice alot and build alot of experience doing this method.

This method is NOT for someone who wants to reall get like 25 on RC. If you really want that high score, you will already have to be a very fast and active reader. If you are not, just stick to my method. My method is for someone who is not a good reader like me but wants to get over 20 on RC section.

Recommended books: None, just follow my method although you can buy DAT Achiever and TopScore for practice.

 That is all for RC section for now. If I remember anything relevant, I will come back and add more.

Time spent writing this post: 1 hour and 20 minutes. Yes, I am a slow writer too (hate english).