The DAT : Preparation

First off, plan to spend at least a month studying for this bad boy. There is a daunting amount of material that is covered. Its tough for a reason. You are expected to remember around 2 years of material from several classes, as well as learn several new skills like the PAT and navigating Reading Comprehension. Personally, I spent exactly one month, studying an average of 6 hours a day every day.

Biology :
It seems like these days the ADEA has really stepped up their game on this section. The consensus on Student Doctor Network is that is quite random. Although it sticks to the main subjects, it tends to ask (from my experience) off-kilter questions that were never really asked during my time in intro bio. There is even a picture problem for crying out loud. Anyway I'm getting ahead of myself. The first thing I did before even launching into this subject was buy the Kaplan Blue Book. This is a pretty good piece of study material, albeit not the best for some sections, it does decent overall. Go buy it. I highlighted any passage or fact that I was not completely certain of before, such as the Krebs Cycle, etc. Going through this section in the blue book takes about 2 days. I read through my highlights and gave it a chance to soak in. Its a lot of material, so it may be a wise idea to just let it marinate in your melon for a little while. It helps you remember it better and keeps you from going insane. Later, I purchased the CliffsNotes AP Biology (yellow) book off of amazon and all I can say is WOW. That thing was so random and difficult. I thought I knew all about bio until I read that. The readings are not that tough, but the sample questions at the end of each section are a godsend. They have the most random questions, but man did they help prepare me for the real DAT. Buy this book. Embrace it. Highlight the heck out of it.

Inorganic Chemistry
I was never all that good an general chemistry first year of college. It was, of course, boring and a terrible weed-out class. First thing I did was read through the Kaplan BB. It dusted off some of the old stuff from 2 years ago, but I really didn't gain a lot from it. By the time I was done with this, I had purchased TopScore Pro, a software program that mimics DAT testing conditions and gives you pretty good practice tests. More on that later. TopScore informed me that I in fact, sucked at Gen Chem haha. So, I decided enough was enough and procured a copy of MCAT ExamKrackers Complete Study Guide. I was able to use this for bio, GC and OC. It was most helpful in the GC section. Not only is it short and to the point, it gives you very clear and precise instructions on calculations. Note that on the DAT, you will not have a calculator, so you need to be good at estimating values. There are a number of tricks those pre-med kids have for blasting through their stuff that works just as well for the DAT.

Organic Chemistry
First off, you better hope you had excellent orgo professors. There is not a lot of time in the Science section to think deeply about most of these problems. Either you know your structure, nomenclature, rules etc or you don't. The better you know them, the faster you can get out of the Orgo section and reread over your previous answers for Bio and GC. Fortunately for me, I had great teachers and some pretty competitive pre-meds in my class to keep me motivated so this was a bit of a breeze for me. I looked over my old orgo book at all my highlights (thank you younger Bjorn!). I read the whole thing from cover to cover. I also dusted off the handy dandy flashcards I made for each important reaction. There were about 100 total. These were a great study tool and I can't reccommend making them enough. Don't know what else to say here because I didn't go out and buy a lot of study materials for this anyway.

PAT
Whew this is it. This is the section that gets its very own score. Its just you, 90 questions, a computer and a whiteboard. Just to learn the basics, I looked through the Kaplan BB. It gives some pretty good advice as to how you should spend your time. It DOES depend on how good you get at each section. For example, Kaplan says to spend 5 minutes on the angle ranking section. This is what I tried to on the real DAT, whose angles were much tougher than any practice problems Kaplan gave me. More on this later. The sections are : appeture-passing, top-front-end, angle ranking, hole punching, cube counting and pattern folding. A couple of tricks : on angle ranking, find out from the test proctor if you can touch the computer screen. If you can, use your fingers to cover extra length on sides of angles when comparing two very similar ones. This sounds a bit weird, but the ADEA wants to confuse you into picking the wrong answer. For example, two angles can be very similar, but a tester can think the one with longer sides is a smaller angle. Just trust me on this one. Also with hole punching, take a look at the four possible answer choices and make sure they have symmetry about the first fold. If the first fold is vertical down the middle, then all holes on the left side of each answer must be mirrored on the right with corresponding holes. This helps by eliminating 2-3 of the answers 80% of the time. Also, on cube counting, you HAVE to do a table on your whiteboard, putting the number of sides on the left and a blank spot for tally marks on the right as you go. What I have found is helpful to keep track of which cubes you count is to work from the left front of a diagram back, making sure to get every cube in a stack before moving back. Finally as a side note, I would like to take this opportunity to suggest buying Crack the DAT PAT. I did not purchase it and I feel it may have helped me a bunch. I’ve heard nothing but good reviews of it on Student Doctor Network. This thing works apparently. I’ve seen the demos and they certainly have better explainations than Kaplan or TopScore.

Reading Comprehension
Oh so much fun on this. People always ask how to prepare for this. Really, there is no real sure-fire method for acing this. It really does test your ability to remember the basic structure of a passage. My strategy for this was to just do practice tests for this. You can go ahead and read in-depth scientific articles, but you may just be wasting your time. A lot of this depends on the luck of the draw of which passage you get on the DAT. I think TopScore’s practice tests are a good indicator of the level of difficulty in the real thing. However, be ready to answer a few tone questions too.

Quantitative Reasoning
Oh boy, its your old friend, math. This section is so tough. I’ve rarely seen somebody score over a 20 on this section. Why is it so hard, you ask? Time is not on your side here. Sure all the problems are high school math caliber and everyone could do them if they had the time. However, you have 45 minutes to answer 40 questions. Some of them are word problems too. There is a lot of tedious calculations, long division, fractions, you name it. Anything you think would be annoying without a calculator is included here. I made the mistake of thinking I knew all my high school math and that would be enough to ace this baby. Truth is I did remember it, I was just not used to the time stress you’re put under when you do this section. Not only do you have to make many precise calculations, but you have to stay cool under pressure when it’s the last section of the test. Trust me, your brain will be fried by then, having logged 3.5 hours of testing. I’m not the best source of study knowledge here, so I will defer to the SDN boards for advice.

Note : there are a lot of very useful materials out there that I didn’t mention. You have to decide for yourself what kind of money you want to spend. For example, I would not recommend taking the Kaplan course, because if you have the motivation to get into dental school, you don’t need someone telling you the DAT is important, pushing you through the study exercises. Plus, you will definitely need that money when applying to dental schools. So far, I’ve racked up over $1100 in fees for applying to just 9 schools! Check out this link and research if you like anything. Some very popular materials are DAT achiever and DAT destroyer as well. http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=241835

As a final note, in the 3-4 days prior to your exam, I would recommend easing your foot off the gas. By then, if you haven’t learned it, its best to just let it go. There are very few things that will stick in your head in these last few days, such as random bio facts. Seriously, just cut back the study hours a bit, maybe watch a movie, get some extra sleep. On the day of the test, make SURE to eat a really hearty breakfast. Carbs, milk, orange juice, cereal, etc. You will definitely need it. If you know how the software works like using the “back” and “mark” buttons, you can use the tutorial time to calm your nerves and write important equations on your whiteboard and make cube-counting grids. After you are all done, its time to party (hopefully)!