Kaplan DAT (Kaplan Dat (Dental Admission Test))

I just took the DAT today, scoring a 23 on the PAT and an average of 26 on the academic portion, and thought out I'd review this DAT prep book by Kaplan while the experience was fresh in my mind. My DAT-specific prep was conducted entirely with this book.

First things first, this book is not a substitute for a prior well-rounded education in the sciences. You can memorize all 500 or so pages of science and math review, and there will still be a lot of things you will miss on the DAT. That said, it is a great review tool to assist you in dusting off some of those old concepts you may have learned a year or two ago. It covers the broad, "big idea" concepts very well and it also goes into reasonable detail on some of the more commonly tested areas such as cellular respiration and the endocrine system (a section I found especially helpful). However, if it's been more than a couple years since your last biology or chemistry class or you performed poorly in them, you...Read more

I just took the DAT and got a 24 average. I am a former Kaplan employee and I was astounded at how chock full of errors this review book is. I found no less 19 errors and 10 questions on the two practice tests (one online) that had answers that are plain wrong. This is the 7th Edition, but that doesn't mean anyone has ever proofread this thing. You do still want this book because despite being filled errors, it still has value because of how little it costs compared to anything else and because so many other resources are also error filled. Believe it or not, even the practice tests put out by the makers of the DAT the ADA have errors in it. DAT resources are expensive, and this book is worth its cost just because of the PAT section. warning: the online PAT test lists the correct answer as "E" several times despite the answer choices only being A-D The online test is a good representation of the actual DAT.

For studying I liked:

1. Coursesaver.com...Read more

This book was a very BRIEF review of a great deal of very complex topics. That being said, this book was loaded with editorial errors and confusing typos. Even the formulas had errors, which for an exam of this caliber, is unacceptable.