Your DAT Destroyer Approach

[adent23]

I've been following Ari's schedule for the past month and a half, and I'm about to start doing destroyer problems. Contrary to the layout of the schedule, I would like to go through all of the problems in each section (OC: 360, GC: 402, Bio: 685) at least twice in the month and a half that I have left before I take my exam.

Over the last few months I have read many different ways in which others have approached the destroyer, but I thought it would be beneficial to hear how more recent test takers went about tackling it. In other words, how many questions did you do per day, what was your review strategy for the questions you answered wrong, how long did you spend on each section per day, etc.. In asking these questions, I do recognize that everyone's approach depends on their initial review as well as how strong their background is in each subject. That said, I feel like it's important to get as much feedback from others as possible, despite those differences.

Thank in advance for sharing your approach!

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[smiledoc1]

Would love to hear someones feedback on this as well! I am just starting looking at my destroyer stuff but I'm not really sure of the best way to approach it.

 

[artist2022]

I didn't use Destroyer much for GC or OC (did only 100 GC problems and didn't do any/few of the OC problems), but I did do it twice for Bio!
I did ~60 problems at a time, so I finished the Bio section in roughly 10-12 days.
I did the problems in the morning/early afternoon, and in the evening I'd see how many I got wrong. If you check out my breakdown (DAT Breakdown! 8/9/2017 - 25AA/24TS/22PAT), go down to the very bottom where the files attached are. The spreadsheet there is how I did my review. Pink were the ones I got wrong, while yellow were the ones I guessed on but had gotten right.
I kind of focused on one subject at a time, like first couple of weeks were Bio, then the next few were Mike's GC Videos, then finally Mike's OC videos. I took notes first, then went to Destroyer, and then finally went to BC.
Hope this helps!

 

[adent23]

I didn't use Destroyer much for GC or OC (did only 100 GC problems and didn't do any/few of the OC problems), but I did do it twice for Bio!
I did ~60 problems at a time, so I finished the Bio section in roughly 10-12 days.
I did the problems in the morning/early afternoon, and in the evening I'd see how many I got wrong. If you check out my breakdown (DAT Breakdown! 8/9/2017 - 25AA/24TS/22PAT), go down to the very bottom where the files attached are. The spreadsheet there is how I did my review. Pink were the ones I got wrong, while yellow were the ones I guessed on but had gotten right.
I kind of focused on one subject at a time, like first couple of weeks were Bio, then the next few were Mike's GC Videos, then finally Mike's OC videos. I took notes first, then went to Destroyer, and then finally went to BC.
Hope this helps!

Thanks for your response!

I have seen others use excel to record their answers, but I think it’s a great idea to include more details like you did. I will definitely incorporate that when I start going through destroyer.

By the way, you took your DAT on the best day of the year, my birthday.

Would anyone else like to share their destroyer method?

 

[LittleKay]

I first went through Cliffs (2009?) AP bio. Then I went straight into the Destroyer for all sections.

Did about 100 questions from 1 of the sections daily until I finally did all questions of all topics.

I went through each question and tried to answer it myself. If I couldn’t do it, I’d look at the answer. Dr. Romano and Nancy do a great job of explaining and breaking down what’s what.

Using their information I would break down what each answer choice was talking about, and I would write down what it was actually related to.

For instance, on a question involving evolution, perhaps one of the answer choices was Dominance Hierarchy (not really pertinent to this kind of question). But still, it’s “something” that might be useful.

I would learn what EVERY answer choice was talking about.

I then repeated this for every question in the book, legitimately (no lie) cleared the book front to back a minimum of 15-20x.