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DAT Prep: Gold Standard Comprehensive Review

DAT-CompletePackage2013DAT Prep: Gold Standard is a newcomer in DAT preparation material. While shopping around for resources to buy, I came across DAT Prep: Gold Standard, but could not see myself investing so much money in an untested system. With the first edition prep books released in the early summer of 2013, there were no reviews before taking my DAT. After my exam, I was presented with an opportunity to review the DAT Prep: Gold Standard system to see what makes it tick. Is there still room for this newcomer in the world of DAT prep material. I hope you find the following comprehensive review helpful in figuring out if DAT Gold Standard is right for you!

With my DAT experience covering a vast amount of resources, I have learned what books or programs effectively teach the material to mastery and in an efficient way. You can read about my breakdown on Dental Admissions Test (DAT) Part 2 – Planning, Strategies, and Resources. In addition to thoroughly reviewing the material personally, I have shared the material with a colleague of mine, Kristine Angeles, who is currently using this series to prepare for her upcoming DAT.

Even though DAT Prep: Gold Standard is new to pre-dents, the company The Gold Standard (RuveneCo.) has been a big name in MCAT preparation since 2001. Gold Standard Multimedia has developed new resources focused specifically on DAT material in addition to revised versions of the MCAT material for the  natural sciences sections.

 

The DAT Prep: Gold Standard comes in several different flavors:

Complete DAT Prep Home Study Course – $499

 

Complete package without items in RED (TopScore/bonus items) – $399

 

Complete 4-Book Set – $199

  • All 4 books covering the topics
  • 2 Practice tests (one physical, one online)
  • Online Access Code (2000+ additional questions, 10 hours of video explanations)

 

Individual Books (include access codes for online questions)- $49.95

 

DAT-CompletePackage2013Physical Resources

Quality of Books (Material):

The books are of the highest quality I have ever seen in prep material. The cover is made of a stiff and raised cross-hatch design. Very elegant. The inside of the book  is in full color and large font allows these books to be placed on a book stand and far enough away to reduce eye-strain from long study sessions. Paper quality is thick and glossed making diagrams more vibrant and pages more durable if something minor spills on it. On the other hand, erasing pencil is almost impossible on this paper so try not to mark up the book too much!

 

Bio5bQuality of Explanations:

All explanations were very straightforward and did not divulge into areas outside of the scope of the DAT. Getting through multiple chapters in a day should not be overly difficult thanks to the format of the books. In some sections like the PAT, difficulty ramps up as you get further into the guided examples. This makes the PAT section of Gold Standard my favorite resource for PAT preparation. Most other prep materials show a really simple question and then immediately ramp up to a problem set. The Gold Standard goes through a number of training questions, with each increasing in difficulty while including an additional component to the technique. When reading through the material, I was surprised  by the accuracy of the “training” using the same techniques I had acquired only after completing hundreds of sample problems.

 

Quality of Practice Questions:

For BIO, CHEM, RC, QR, and PAT, material is broken down into a number of chapters with “warm-up exercises” immediately after each chapter. These warm-up exercises range from 5-15 questions depending on the depth of the chapter. The difficulty of the material in these warm-up sections is just right for the DAT, but would not recommend using these warm-up questions as your only practice questions prior to taking full length practice exams. I still strongly believe it is essential to use a resource like DAT Destroyer to build speed by challenging you with more difficult questions you will ever see on the DAT. The book has thorough solutions explaining each answer in a paragraph or so. The explanations are very concise and easy to understand and recommends pages to review for more information.

 

ch6bOrganic Chemistry Section:

I was extremely dissatisfied with the organic chemistry section of this DAT prep material. While it does explain the information, it does not ask a single checkpoint/warm-up question immediately after a chapter. This is crucial to keeping up with the information and seeing how well you understand the concepts. I would strongly recommend supplementing the resources provided by Gold Standard or using another resource for Organic Chemistry. DAT Prep: Gold Standard tried to correct this mistake by including additional online practice questions that complement the chapters. Please read the online resources section below for more information.

 

Quick Review Notes:

Each section has a number of review pages that are a great resource when you have a few minutes to spare. I found any sort of condensed notes extremely useful the days before my DAT. I recommend using these pages as well. It would be nice if the pages were perforated so they can be easily removed from the book for more convenient use.

 

pat7bPractice Exams:

The only (physical) full length practice exam is included in the end of the PAT book (referred to as GS1 and also available as an independent online exam for $30 dollars). The other practice test (GS2) can be accessed by purchasing the 4-book set or creating an account on their website www.dat-prep.com and purchasing it for $30 dollars.  Gold standard could benefit from the addition of a practice test to each of their books. Every student preparing for the DAT wants practice tests and a lot of these prep materials do not include more than 1 or 2. A new company like Gold Standard should be including more practice tests with their material. Another newcomer of summer 2013 took advantage of the lack of full practice tests (DAT Bootcamp) and is now one of the resources that many people consider a necessity.

 

Additional Media:

DAT Gold Standard has a barge of resources available in different forms. This includes 15 hours of natural science videos, 3 hours of audio review to play on the go (digital), flash cards, and an interview guide video.

 

Additional Digital Resources

Free resources available to everyone:

Registering to create an account on their website allows you to access the following content completely free of charge. Overall I think this is a generous gesture from DAT Gold-Standard and I recommend everybody to take advantage of it.

  • Free Question of the Day
  • DAT Mini-Practice Test (GS-Free)
  • Video of the Week
  • Picture (diagram) of the Week
  • 1 Hour Limit of Recorded (video) Lectures (any topic you want)

 

Online Questions:

DAT Gold Standard has a barrage of additional resources that are available as part of the individual books or bundled with one of the larger packages above. Individual books (or the box set) can be registered on their website to access hundreds of additional questions for individual sections. A full breakdown of each subsection can be reviewed here, but a summary of the total number of question can be found below.

Book Online Total
Bio 319 57 376
Chem 130 151 281
Ochem 0 373 373
PAT 90 1340 1430
RC 100 400 500
QR 78 80 158

 

As you can see in the table above, the lack of Ochem questions available directly in the book has been corrected with 373 available online questions. PAT comes with 1,340 questions available online (approximately 13+ practice test worth of questions) , and reading comprehension (RC) comes with an additional 400 questions online (approximately 8 tests).  These extra questions easily push DAT Gold Standard into the top tier providers for PAT and RC questions. QR and general chemistry on the other hand could improve with an expansion of their online question question library.

 

Online Videos:

Purchasing the 4-book set increases your video limit from 1 hour to 10 hours allowing you to view 2/3’s of the available content online. This is more than enough to review videos for sections you need help with. The $399 and $499 come with DVD copies that you can re-watch as much as you would like.

 

High Quality PAT Explanations:

The video embedded below is an example of the quality of the material provided by DAT Prep: Gold Standard. This is one of the best videos that explains keyholes in under 10 minutes.

 

Conclusion

While I am not convinced the Natural Sciences section is the ultimate resource for the DAT, I still believe it is an excellent resource to utilize. The curriculum is well thought out and the quality of the material remains strong throughout the book in addition to the online resources. For the past 6 months I have been recommending the PAT book for those who need help with strategies and  the RC book to everybody who has been looking for more passages to practice with. DAT Gold Standard will get you 10 tests worth (100 questions in book, 400 online) of practice. The QR bundled with the RC book is a welcomed bonus and still recommended as a review resource for most students. You can purchase copies of the book directly from dat-prep.com, ebay, amazon, walmart, among other etailers. You can find the 4-book set for as low as $115 shipped on walmart.com!

4.5-stars

 

 

 

A dental student just posted a short video review of the series which includes a giveaway for the 4-book set which runs until May 15th.

 

http://www.dat-prep.com/

Categories
AADSAS Application Advice Dental School Review Tips

2014 ADEA Official Guide to Dental Schools REVIEW

inspectorA week ago we announced that the new 2014 ADEA Official Guide to Dental Schools has been published. I received my copy yesterday and have spent a  bit of time reviewing the contents. Overall the 2014 guide is a welcomed update to the 2013 edition however I will breifly discuss the issues with the 2014 edition below.

The 2013 edition is 208 pages while the  2014 is 226. This is likely due to more information from the recently opened dental schools. Other than statistics, most of the content is  identical as expected since much of this information (such as descriptions) does not change from year to year. What I did find disappointing is the number of errors in the book that were immediately noticeable.

As with every edition of the ADEA Official Guide there are misreported statistics or incomplete stats. With a book that has thousands of numbers it is understandable to have a few of these errors. In this edition of the book, I am noticing FAR MORE errors than that in the 2013 guide. Some of these errors are completely obvious to a layperson and should have been caught by anybody reviewing the material before publishing. For example, Western University of Health Sciences College of Dental Medicine notes that 62 out of their 67 students from the class entering fall 2013  are over the age of 30; however, their average age is 25 years old. Things like this should have been noticed with a single read through. There is a lot more information lacking in this book relative to the 2013 guide. For example, University of the Pacific did not report origin for out-of-state students other than those accepted internationally. Many schools failed to properly report the numbers between Accepted and Enrolled students. This leads to many schools showing a near perfect yield (students matriculated divided by those offered a spot) which in many cases is realistically 50% or less. These mistakes did occur in the 2013 guide, but they are much more common in the 2014 guide.

I am not sure who is responsible for these inconsistencies. Was the book rushed so that students can have it in time to research potential schools? We won’t ever know; however, 95% of the book is pure gold and outweighs the cons. Please utilize this resource when applying to dental school. I once again recommend purchasing the digital version through the ADEA (Available April 7th, 2014) which is sold at a fraction of the price ($10) compared to the price of the printed book and associated shipping ($45+). Hopefully those with the digital version will also receive updates if schools choose to fix their profiles and stats. Contacting the dental school directly may help in getting more accurate information if something seems off.

 

Overall rating:

4.5-stars