Would love to give you a "pep talk” but can't do that here! A lot of good advice has been given already, but here are some of my tips, hope they help. With Bio being the first section, you need to come out of it strong, if you get thrown for a loop on the first section of the DAT it can make things worse as you go along. If you are prepared for the Bio and didn't take any short cuts studying it is manageable. Bio is VAST! If you are presented a question you don't have a clue what the answer is, you should be able to use logic and elimination to get to the correct choice, if it comes down to 2 choices, say a prayer and hope you guess correctly.
Always remember to breath, it can be counter intuitive when under stress, but breathing always has a calming effect, if you remember to do it. Running a test prep company, school, and dealing with students is high pressure, especially this time of year, I am doing a lot of deep breathing and it helps.
For GC and Orgo, just take your time, don't make any silly mistakes, the DAT is designed to be tricky. I have talked to students through the years that have been insistent they did not miss any questions, but they did not get a perfect score, so the only conclusion is they made a silly mistake or there is a mistake on the DAT. In the GC section you could have a version with a lot of calculations or not many at all, just depends.
Reading, just make sure you watch out for timing, you don't want to burn off too much time on passage 1 and be left with not enough time for the other 2. Students find the reading very manageable if time was spent preparing. If your reading and comprehension skills are sharp you should be ok. Could be simple search and destroy in a passage and some might require a little more thinking. But it is very doable, just breath.
PAT - Well that should not be too challenging if you prepared, I am not personally good at this subject so I rely on companies that prepare the PAT for advice.
Math - Well this is the last section, at this point students are hanging on for dear life, wishing it was all over, BUT you must go on. You can do it!!!! The most important thing is to NOT spend too much time on one question, if you encounter a problem you cannot answer quickly, or you think it will burn up too much time, take a guess and move on, I assure you there will be easier problems ahead. From talking to thousands of students through the years, a common mistake is to lose time on a few questions and not having to guess as time was running out, only to realize many easier questions were towards the end.
I hope all this makes sense, I often make so many typos and other grammatical errors because I am multi-tasking and not a good proof reader.
If you have any questions feel free to ask, this is just my opinion and others may differ, and that is ok.
Wishing you the best.
Nancy, DAT Destroyer, Orgoman, LLC
Nancy
