Desperately need advice- Is pushing my DAT back...pushing it?

[Charles_Darwin]

Hey fam,

I want to push back my DAT from July 21st to August 1st. Is that putting me at a disadvantage for applications?

I feel like I'd score a 19-20AA right now and my GPA is on the low end so i'd feel much much more comfortable with that extra ~10 days to review all the practice tests I've done and do any additional practice. I want to go into this thing knowing I haven't skipped any of my study materials and everything I've studied is in my head.

Here's what i've done:

-All of chad's videos (not most of the quizzes though)
-All of DAT Genius
- All of Kaplan BB
-1/2 of Destroyer (plan to finish in a week)
-None of Math destroyer (plan to finish about 5 days before my exam..hopefully)
- Lots of bootcamp PAT, 3/5 of their practice tests (scoring 19AA, with at least one really low 17 in some science)
Basically I just want more time to review destroyer since I don't think i'd have it all down before my test.

My Scores on average:

Bio 19/ GC 19/ OC 18/ QR 18/ RC 21/ PAT 21

My Stats:

GPA: 3.44, 3.22 sGPA. Dramatic upward trend; went from ~3.2 to ~3.7 after 2 years of getting my life together.
Shadowing: 209 from gen. and specialists
Volunteering: Around 200-300 hours
Research: 180 hours

Work/extracurricular (At least, the stuff I consider important):

* Licensed EMT-B
* Spent 5 years developing and drafting a patent regarding the use of viral therapy on cancer cells. Submitted the patent last month!
* Took a dental assisting course
* Spoke at a medical conference at Johns Hopkins University
* Medical assistant at a summer camp
* Supplemental Instructor for 2 bio classes at my university
* Mentored by the former US Surgeon General; I began that journey when he was in office as the deputy SG.
* Chair of external relations at a environmental nonprofit I co-founded.
* Leadership/development: Part of a selective 18-student roster who receive leadership dev. training in LA and D.C. for 6 months. Also enlisted to form a high-impact nonprofit by 10/16 with guidance. 50 Hours so far.
* Volunteer hands-on CPR instructor at my temple
* Anddd about 2.5k hours of work in a small business!




My application/transcripts/LORs and everything are otherwise ready and verified and everything.

Edit: Also, how do I update my schools with my new DAT date? Does it matter if they already have my DENTPIN?

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[Alpha Centauri]

Sounds like you are pretty much good to go apart from your DAT's my man. Take the extra time if you think you need it. Go hit the books hard, this is the only thing standing between you and dental school. Pushing 10 days won't make a dramatic change in your status to make your application late. Good luck!

 

[moose786]

Hey my original date was July 5th and I moved it up to a month. (August 3). I asked people's advice on here, and the overall consensus is to definitely push it.

Personally, this is my thinking: let's say I had your scores on your practice Bootcamp exams. There have been plenty of posts on these forums where people have been able to get 2-3 points higher for a lot of the sections on their actual. However, the same can be said about people who did a bit worse on their DATs. So let's assume worst case and you do worse on your DAT -- let's say 17/18. You'd probably want to retake it -- which would only be possible in 3 months. And even if you did take it in 3 months, you would then be a lot more late into the application process than you would be if you just pushed it up 10, 20 -- hell, 60 days. I also saw lots of previous posts in which people like you and me asked if they should move their DATs up even if it meant sacrificing "an early application". Lots of people replied who had done the same and landed something along the lines of 7/10 interviews and acceptances. So I used this thinking to push mine up -- but I made a super strict schedule for myself, which is definitely key if you move your exam up. Ari even says he did the same thing when he pushed his own exam up. So if you do end up moving it up, take the time out to give yourself specific tasks every day until exam day. I even specified hours to spend on each task to make sure I don't fall behind a day since that would mess up my whole schedule. For example, "Orgo Notes Review - 2 hours. Bootcamp Exam 1 - 0.5 hours. Math Destroyer Test 1 - 1.5 hours". All this is on an excel sheet set up as a calendar. Took me a bit to make but definitely worth it. I did this because I often find myself assigning tasks for the day on the day that I actually study. I didn't want to do that this time because "what if I don't get time to do all the Bootcamp exams, or go through Destroyer twice, etc.?" Just like you, I also don't want to walk into the exam with the knowledge that I didn't make the best of all my resources. Anyways, it's working for me so far -- because knowing that I need to finish a certain task by a certain time -- it makes me a lot more efficient (I tend to get caught up in lots of details sometimes, which leads me to Google search something for hours sometimes).

I am in a bit of a worse situation in terms of GPA compared to you and have a decent amount of EC's but yours are straight fire. So you're golden for everything -- even your GPA honestly is not bad -- but the DAT, I suppose. You could take a chance and it's definitely possible for you to get a 20+ if you're getting those scores on Bootcamp. But if you don't feel comfortable, then I don't recommend doing it.

Good luck, man! Let's kill this exam...

P.S. give me your PAT skills, pls

 

[Charles_Darwin]

Hey my original date was July 5th and I moved it up to a month. (August 3). I asked people's advice on here, and the overall consensus is to definitely push it.

Personally, this is my thinking: let's say I had your scores on your practice Bootcamp exams. There have been plenty of posts on these forums where people have been able to get 2-3 points higher for a lot of the sections on their actual. However, the same can be said about people who did a bit worse on their DATs. So let's assume worst case and you do worse on your DAT -- let's say 17/18. You'd probably want to retake it -- which would only be possible in 3 months. And even if you did take it in 3 months, you would then be a lot more late into the application process than you would be if you just pushed it up 10, 20 -- hell, 60 days. I also saw lots of previous posts in which people like you and me asked if they should move their DATs up even if it meant sacrificing "an early application". Lots of people replied who had done the same and landed something along the lines of 7/10 interviews and acceptances. So I used this thinking to push mine up -- but I made a super strict schedule for myself, which is definitely key if you move your exam up. Ari even says he did the same thing when he pushed his own exam up. So if you do end up moving it up, take the time out to give yourself specific tasks every day until exam day. I even specified hours to spend on each task to make sure I don't fall behind a day since that would mess up my whole schedule. For example, "Orgo Notes Review - 2 hours. Bootcamp Exam 1 - 0.5 hours. Math Destroyer Test 1 - 1.5 hours". All this is on an excel sheet set up as a calendar. Took me a bit to make but definitely worth it. I did this because I often find myself assigning tasks for the day on the day that I actually study. I didn't want to do that this time because "what if I don't get time to do all the Bootcamp exams, or go through Destroyer twice, etc.?" Just like you, I also don't want to walk into the exam with the knowledge that I didn't make the best of all my resources. Anyways, it's working for me so far -- because knowing that I need to finish a certain task by a certain time -- it makes me a lot more efficient (I tend to get caught up in lots of details sometimes, which leads me to Google search something for hours sometimes).

I am in a bit of a worse situation in terms of GPA compared to you and have a decent amount of EC's but yours are straight fire. So you're golden for everything -- even your GPA honestly is not bad -- but the DAT, I suppose. You could take a chance and it's definitely possible for you to get a 20+ if you're getting those scores on Bootcamp. But if you don't feel comfortable, then I don't recommend doing it.

Good luck, man! Let's kill this exam...

P.S. give me your PAT skills, pls

Thanks man!! I actually did make an excel sheet complete with a "% done for the day" tab and everything lol, that's how I figured out I wouldn't have enough time. But you're right it's been really helpful so far. I postponed it to August 2nd thanks to the advice of friends and both of you on this thread. Let's both crush this thing!

And for PAT, I mainly focued on reading the explanations for every answer you get wrong. I find it super helpful. I'll see you around at interviews!

 

[Krentist_72]

Personally I think 3 weeks is still a lot of time to solidify things before your originally scheduled test... I definitely did not feel confident and ready to take it until maybe 10-7 days out. And then I felt like I didn't want to wait another day to just take it and be done with it. I think if you grind and finish strong, you'll be ok.
But if you think those extra days are going to give you peace of mind and confidence, then by all means, do it because that's just as important as the actual material

 

[Jueves]

I am in the exact same situation as you, with identical GPA and sGPA, Identical scores. Ended up pushing it back 2 weeks as of today. I made a thread about it that has my Kaplan and DAT Bootcamp breakdowns if you wanted to check it out.