- Joined
- Jun 9, 2015
- Messages
- 97
- Reaction score
- 178
Hello, all!
I'm so humbled by the e-mails I'm getting from you! Thank you so much for reaching out, and please continue to do so! Please remember that DAT is pretty isolating because there's really not THAT many pre-dents out there (which is a good and bad thing, if you really think about it)! I think there was maybe 1 pre-dent in my college class, and after 4 years of being out of undergrad, well, couldn't really loop in with him at all. I think it's always important to have someone in your corner!
Anyway, I think the 2 most frequently asked questions I've been getting are concerning QR and RC, and I wanted to pass these along to you since I did not specifically mention them in my original breakdown. The truth is, I didn't really HAVE a specific strategy hashed out for RC except to read the passage entirely, and pray I'd get easily searchable questions, haha. But, reflecting on my passages in trying to help others out, I came up with this explanation that I wish I could have given myself during my preparations:
1.) Bootcamp RC is CRAZY difficult! Did any of you also get repulsed by that passage about ... water droplett size and pneumonia virality? I seriously could not follow it. While I think that all things are valuable on Bootcamp, my advice would be not to get worked up over QR or RC.
2.) I AM a slow reader! I mean, I'm a little embarrassed by how slowly I read! I never really read for leisure as much as I'd love to say I did. The only books I've completed in my entire life were Harry Potter and Hunger Games, to clue you in on what level of reading I usually take on.
RC Strategy:
The most important thing is to just keep yourself timed on passages, and be mentally prepared to move on if you cannot finish. It's better to leave a passage half unread than to leave an entire passage not read at all. DAT is all about maximizing correct answers, just remember that. You can't go in expecting to answer 100% of these questions correctly, so there's no need to work yourself up if you can only answer 80% in one passage, you know what I mean?
Anyway, as far as technique goes, this is my advice:
I would ONLY give myself 18 minutes for each passage. Even if I wasn't finished, I moved on. On the actual DAT, the paragraphs are very short (2-4 lines each) and I think there were 17-23 paragraphs for each passage. I would spend 8 minutes ONLY reading. Then, spend 10 minutes answering questions. This will leave you some "flex" time at the end (6 minutes) to look for questions you skipped.
When I got to the 5-minute mark, if I wasn't half-way through, I started to skim more. You should be about half way through each passage by 5 minutes. Don't get caught up trying to catch every word, because here's the thing: when you answer the questions, you will need to go looking for it again.
Here's the thing about DAT passages: there IS rhyme and reason to them. They're not completely random or all over the place. All 3 of my passages had very clear "sections." For example, here's the general "order" for each of my passages that helped me when I was "searching and destroying:"
Passage1:
First 3 paragraphs: Introductory statements that aren't that important. Don't ever spend much time on something that feels "introductory." If they're important, you'll find them fast when you're answering questions.
Next 5 paragraphs: Defining vocabulary words. Don't read too much into the definitions, just know enough to recognize that this is a "topic block" and you can easily locate it when answering questions.
Next 5 paragraphs: 5 different authors of theory, and what they introduced to the field.
Last 3 paragraphs: closing/the future of the topic. Again, don't worry about reading these "word-for-word."
And just like that, boom; 18 paragraphs. Read them first, get a feel for blocking information.
2nd passage:
Oh, man. I felt lost reading this at first. I felt freaked out for a second. But again, I looked for information blocks:
First 3 paragraphs: Comparing and contrasting 2 objects
Next 4 paragraphs: Mechanisms. This was the MOST DENSE and most difficult to follow, and here's the thing: I let it slow me up a LOT. I ended up having 1 question on this information that I honestly think I skipped and never came back to. I still got a 23!
Next 8 paragraphs: A sequential list of steps. These are in sequence and they will refer to them by name in the questions. You'll just have to quickly scan.
Next 5 paragraphs: The future of using this information. Again, not many questions came from here. A VAST majority of my questions came from The list above. They're easily searcheable.
Same thing with the last passage, there were "blocks" of information describing the different TYPES of a topic, then the next few paragraphs talked about 4-5 specific examples. It was easy to search for answers without needing to read every detail in the paragraph.
I would say to search for these chunks of information, be able to recognize them, and you won't spend so much time reading the entire passage. I don't think I was even aware I was doing it until I started giving people advice for this section. It does take practice though! I think I did 10-12 practice tests for RC, but it CAN be done!
c/v from a PM conversation. Thank you!
Math Destroyer/DAT Calculator
1.) In my experience, the calculator on DAT was not laggy at all. It worked very similarly to the calculator in Windows, and it DOES have a sqrt function! (read more on this later).
Don't pay TOO MUCH attention to Test #12 in Math Destroyer! That's the one that starts off with the crazy statistics questions, I believe. I think the 3 times I went through Math Destroyer, I kept MEANING to go through it in depth, but I was always just too exhausted to meaningfully go through it (Actually, I did work through those ridiculous probability problems with an old friend I used to teach with (who's a math genius), and even she was like, "What the hell is this?"). Looking back, I feel bad that I wasted both of our time that day going over those questions. I think a good rule of thumb is if the problem feels completely ridiculous, it probably is. My version of Math Destroyer did not have test #16, so that's uncharted territory. I think my advice would be the more you're at least EXPOSED to, the better.
The rest of those tests are worth their weight in gold, however! And keep in mind, this was MY version of the DAT. Still go through as much as you can, but I would say the takeaway from here is to not let any ONE test discourage you.
As far as question types that reflected the changes for QR, I think they just added some VERY simple stats problems. I think my advice would be to look out for and anticipate these type of questions:
1.) The bell curve distributions. It's the problem on Test 1 of Math Destroyer with the 68%-95%-99.7% distributions corresponding to 1, 2, or 3 standard deviations from the mean (remember to halve these values if they're asking for an extreme on 1 end (1 standard deviation reflects 32% 1 standard deviation from the mean going in BOTH directions. But if you're looking for a value 1 standard deviation in the POSITIVE direction, it is 16%, for example).
2.) DEFINITELY know how to find the variance, or standard deviation. This is the one where you find the average, find the difference between each value from the mean, square them, add them up, and find the square root (there's even a sqrt button the calculator they provide you with--this should be a 30-second "gimme" problem.
3.) Basic knowledge of how mode,mean, and median works. This is going to seem stupid because they're going to try to trick you over a really simple concept. For example, in Destroyer there was a question with a value set, and said they increased ALL values by 5.They asked how this would affect the mean and variance.
I honestly think this is reflective of the changes to QR. I psyched myself out and got really nervous the night before that I never really taught myself data sufficiency problems or anything, but that was me being freaking paranoid. Nothing like that will show up.
If something crazy DOES show up, don't let it psyche you out. I'm positive that i guessed on 4-5 questions completely. I still scored a 20.
Final Note:
This post is not a "STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS!" by any means! These are just REALLY good questions that I've run into frequently! Please reach out to me if you need any more clarity.
I'm so humbled by the e-mails I'm getting from you! Thank you so much for reaching out, and please continue to do so! Please remember that DAT is pretty isolating because there's really not THAT many pre-dents out there (which is a good and bad thing, if you really think about it)! I think there was maybe 1 pre-dent in my college class, and after 4 years of being out of undergrad, well, couldn't really loop in with him at all. I think it's always important to have someone in your corner!
Anyway, I think the 2 most frequently asked questions I've been getting are concerning QR and RC, and I wanted to pass these along to you since I did not specifically mention them in my original breakdown. The truth is, I didn't really HAVE a specific strategy hashed out for RC except to read the passage entirely, and pray I'd get easily searchable questions, haha. But, reflecting on my passages in trying to help others out, I came up with this explanation that I wish I could have given myself during my preparations:
1.) Bootcamp RC is CRAZY difficult! Did any of you also get repulsed by that passage about ... water droplett size and pneumonia virality? I seriously could not follow it. While I think that all things are valuable on Bootcamp, my advice would be not to get worked up over QR or RC.
2.) I AM a slow reader! I mean, I'm a little embarrassed by how slowly I read! I never really read for leisure as much as I'd love to say I did. The only books I've completed in my entire life were Harry Potter and Hunger Games, to clue you in on what level of reading I usually take on.
RC Strategy:
The most important thing is to just keep yourself timed on passages, and be mentally prepared to move on if you cannot finish. It's better to leave a passage half unread than to leave an entire passage not read at all. DAT is all about maximizing correct answers, just remember that. You can't go in expecting to answer 100% of these questions correctly, so there's no need to work yourself up if you can only answer 80% in one passage, you know what I mean?
Anyway, as far as technique goes, this is my advice:
I would ONLY give myself 18 minutes for each passage. Even if I wasn't finished, I moved on. On the actual DAT, the paragraphs are very short (2-4 lines each) and I think there were 17-23 paragraphs for each passage. I would spend 8 minutes ONLY reading. Then, spend 10 minutes answering questions. This will leave you some "flex" time at the end (6 minutes) to look for questions you skipped.
When I got to the 5-minute mark, if I wasn't half-way through, I started to skim more. You should be about half way through each passage by 5 minutes. Don't get caught up trying to catch every word, because here's the thing: when you answer the questions, you will need to go looking for it again.
Here's the thing about DAT passages: there IS rhyme and reason to them. They're not completely random or all over the place. All 3 of my passages had very clear "sections." For example, here's the general "order" for each of my passages that helped me when I was "searching and destroying:"
Passage1:
First 3 paragraphs: Introductory statements that aren't that important. Don't ever spend much time on something that feels "introductory." If they're important, you'll find them fast when you're answering questions.
Next 5 paragraphs: Defining vocabulary words. Don't read too much into the definitions, just know enough to recognize that this is a "topic block" and you can easily locate it when answering questions.
Next 5 paragraphs: 5 different authors of theory, and what they introduced to the field.
Last 3 paragraphs: closing/the future of the topic. Again, don't worry about reading these "word-for-word."
And just like that, boom; 18 paragraphs. Read them first, get a feel for blocking information.
2nd passage:
Oh, man. I felt lost reading this at first. I felt freaked out for a second. But again, I looked for information blocks:
First 3 paragraphs: Comparing and contrasting 2 objects
Next 4 paragraphs: Mechanisms. This was the MOST DENSE and most difficult to follow, and here's the thing: I let it slow me up a LOT. I ended up having 1 question on this information that I honestly think I skipped and never came back to. I still got a 23!
Next 8 paragraphs: A sequential list of steps. These are in sequence and they will refer to them by name in the questions. You'll just have to quickly scan.
Next 5 paragraphs: The future of using this information. Again, not many questions came from here. A VAST majority of my questions came from The list above. They're easily searcheable.
Same thing with the last passage, there were "blocks" of information describing the different TYPES of a topic, then the next few paragraphs talked about 4-5 specific examples. It was easy to search for answers without needing to read every detail in the paragraph.
I would say to search for these chunks of information, be able to recognize them, and you won't spend so much time reading the entire passage. I don't think I was even aware I was doing it until I started giving people advice for this section. It does take practice though! I think I did 10-12 practice tests for RC, but it CAN be done!
c/v from a PM conversation. Thank you!
Math Destroyer/DAT Calculator
1.) In my experience, the calculator on DAT was not laggy at all. It worked very similarly to the calculator in Windows, and it DOES have a sqrt function! (read more on this later).
Don't pay TOO MUCH attention to Test #12 in Math Destroyer! That's the one that starts off with the crazy statistics questions, I believe. I think the 3 times I went through Math Destroyer, I kept MEANING to go through it in depth, but I was always just too exhausted to meaningfully go through it (Actually, I did work through those ridiculous probability problems with an old friend I used to teach with (who's a math genius), and even she was like, "What the hell is this?"). Looking back, I feel bad that I wasted both of our time that day going over those questions. I think a good rule of thumb is if the problem feels completely ridiculous, it probably is. My version of Math Destroyer did not have test #16, so that's uncharted territory. I think my advice would be the more you're at least EXPOSED to, the better.
The rest of those tests are worth their weight in gold, however! And keep in mind, this was MY version of the DAT. Still go through as much as you can, but I would say the takeaway from here is to not let any ONE test discourage you.
As far as question types that reflected the changes for QR, I think they just added some VERY simple stats problems. I think my advice would be to look out for and anticipate these type of questions:
1.) The bell curve distributions. It's the problem on Test 1 of Math Destroyer with the 68%-95%-99.7% distributions corresponding to 1, 2, or 3 standard deviations from the mean (remember to halve these values if they're asking for an extreme on 1 end (1 standard deviation reflects 32% 1 standard deviation from the mean going in BOTH directions. But if you're looking for a value 1 standard deviation in the POSITIVE direction, it is 16%, for example).
2.) DEFINITELY know how to find the variance, or standard deviation. This is the one where you find the average, find the difference between each value from the mean, square them, add them up, and find the square root (there's even a sqrt button the calculator they provide you with--this should be a 30-second "gimme" problem.
3.) Basic knowledge of how mode,mean, and median works. This is going to seem stupid because they're going to try to trick you over a really simple concept. For example, in Destroyer there was a question with a value set, and said they increased ALL values by 5.They asked how this would affect the mean and variance.
I honestly think this is reflective of the changes to QR. I psyched myself out and got really nervous the night before that I never really taught myself data sufficiency problems or anything, but that was me being freaking paranoid. Nothing like that will show up.
If something crazy DOES show up, don't let it psyche you out. I'm positive that i guessed on 4-5 questions completely. I still scored a 20.
Final Note:
This post is not a "STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS!" by any means! These are just REALLY good questions that I've run into frequently! Please reach out to me if you need any more clarity.
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