Like all the other sections, the Organic Chemistry section of the DAT is straightforward. Using SRS cards will make the process mostly painless. What I did was go through DAT Destroyer and answer the questions. If I felt my answer was a ‘guess’, in that I felt pretty uneasy or just lacked the knowledge required to answer the question, I would skip it and put the relevant information in the answer section into SRS. If there was any information in the answer section for a question, even if I got it correct, that I felt was below mastery – into the SRS it went.
The first time I went through DAT Destroyer I got most questions wrong. On my sheet that I put answers I didn’t mark the answers as wrong, just put any information below mastery from the answer into SRS. I avoided having the fear of failure put into me and instead was excited about learning the information. About a week before my DAT exam I went back through DAT Destroyer and because of all the SRS cards I made and that I looked at them consistently, I got almost every question right. On the two official ADA practice exams I had one with only one question wrong, and the other with all correct. On the real DAT I scored a 21 in Ochem.
The helpful tools, card models, etc. for Organic Chemistry are found in the Table of Contents of this site.
Table of Contents
Related posts:
Hi Jonathan!
Thank you for these helpful posts on how to study for DAT. I am about to take DAT in 2 weeks.I had a question for you. The SRS that you made for the DAT destroyer- is it a shared deck in Anki? If not will it possible for you to please email me/ send those to me? THey will be REALLY helpful and will GREATLY help me achieve good scores. Thanks a lot, I truly appreciate it!!
Hello,
Are you still around?
I tried to use the contact mail but it is not available.
Thanks anyway for some of your posts which help a lot.
Hello everyone.
Mocha –
All of my cards were in one deck. I found it was useful by forcing me to study the things I wanted to study the least (quantitative reasoning).
JJJ –
I am still around. Try sending another email. If that doesn’t work try leaving another comment and I will get in touch with you. Glad everything is helping!
Hey I read your posts and I was also interested! Can u try sending it to me? Thanks!
Hi Shivam,
I cannot send my DAT deck out to anyone because it contains so much information from DAT Destroyer and other copyrighted sources.
The deck was personalized to me though to fill all the gaps in my knowledge and specific to how I wanted to approach the material. Your own deck, which will take a lot less time to make than you might think because the momentum gains quickly. It will also be specific to you and more powerful than if anyone else made it.
Please feel free to send me an e-mail with any questions about building cards and such.
Hello again,
I cannot get any link at your contact page.
Thanks.
Some of the things I wanted to comment with you are:
I agree dividing complex knowledge into small bits is one of the keys for learning. This is very useful for tst exams. But if you have a subject or theme you are asked to explain with many small concepts, Have you got a suggestion to have this partial picture of a full concept?
When learning lists or enummerations, I create as many items in anki as elements by clozing every one. But I think if you leave track of the others is not totally good because it is helping you to recall, and maybe you think you know it better than in real. Any advice?
Finally, a suggestion. From your huge experience dealing with srs method and anki, why not creating some sort of decalog or best tips from your point of view.
Thanks again, you really helped me with many of your comments.
JJJ,
I have been working on that exact issue over my last 2 semesters at grad school (withdrew dental application). The best answer I have found is to look the material over once, possibly minor annotating, without making Anki cards. This helps create a “big picture.”
After making the Anki cards and studying for a few days, return to the original source of the material and read it over trying to understand the big picture. Add Anki cards with small concepts and situations. I recently learned about Iron levels in normal patients, cancer patients, anemic patients, and sickle cell patients. I made a [Cloze] for each one and then 2 lines below the sentence I put the reason-concept for it. I didn’t test myself on that, though seeing it after giving an answer helped a lot.
Lists have become my enemy this year because I have had to make so many. I often forgot what the list was actually about. Looking back, all of the most successful lists I have used have been extremely short, a sequence of steps, and/or used a mnemonic device like an acronym or something. It would probably be helpful to use a mnemonic device with every list if possible. Writing it out also helps, though takes a lot of energy.
A list of tips would be helpful. I started doing that in the Ideal Card post, though I could certainly update it now that I have another year’s experience.
What are some good tips from your experience? I am interested to learn other methods of doing this.
Thanks a lot for replying.
For the whole picture i have read but not practised with mindmaps. It seems they can be powerful once you are skilled and do them shortly. I tend to use traditional layouts or schemes.
I agree with you mnemonics are useful for lists once you have ankied the items.
Your ideal card points are very useful but maybe with a few examples would be great. For me my master tip is to process the knowledge ready for srs method, so when you are reading anything you automatically try to convert in bits of information suitable for srs. Even rewording the original font to suit your needs of simplification and understanding.
Tagging and structuring of questions is also critical, mainly for a better future control.
Mainly for test exams, putting a clue at some complex items when clozing can be helpful because you do not need to memorise in an exact way, and this way i think gives you more quickness and is effortless. About this tip, i am not totally confident yet, but it could work.