good news re QR

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antler22

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I got an email from someone in the know to make what we've all been curious official. The QR this year is going to be the lowest ever in terms of scoring. The DAT people sent information to schools regarding low scores and to expect them generally 1-2 full points lower than previous years due to a change in scoring. THis is good news for all of us, including my 16 in this section! Now, does anyone have any idea when the heck my app will be sent if I submitted 7/16 and my grades were verified on the 17th?????
 
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Sounds good, I cant wait to see the official averages next year, You can call AADSAS theyll tell you when its scheduled to be mailed
 
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...and it goes like this.

Anectodally, based on what i have read here on SDN and applicants i have spoken to, the general opinion of applicants is that QR is deemed to be of inferior importance to adcomms. Thus, those preparing for the DAT tend to focus their time on other sections. I myself spent the least amount of time on QR during my prep. Anybody else feel this way?
 
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first time i took the dat, i got an 18 qr with absolutely no studying whatsoever. This april i took it again and spent a day or two on qr... Ran out of time and pulled a 15'
 
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antler22 said:
I got an email from someone in the know to make what we've all been curious official. The QR this year is going to be the lowest ever in terms of scoring. The DAT people sent information to schools regarding low scores and to expect them generally 1-2 full points lower than previous years due to a change in scoring.
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Who is this "someone in the know"? Name? e-mail address? link? anything?

I don't know if this makes anything "official". Though I did score much much lower on QR than my SAT & ACT might indicate, so I'd love to believe this just like everybody else, but is there any basis for this..?
 
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i don't believe it

P.S. last time i checked a 20.4 doesn't equal 21. you know who you are! 🙂
 
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craigory said:
first time i took the dat, i got an 18 qr with absolutely no studying whatsoever. This april i took it again and spent a day or two on qr... Ran out of time and pulled a 15'
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sir why would you take the dat without preparing. it boggles my mind when people have an attitude of "just getting it over with" towards such an important test.😕
 
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sucks.
QR was the section that i had the highest score on. 🙁
 
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somethinpositiv said:
Who is this "someone in the know"? Name? e-mail address? link? anything?

I don't know if this makes anything "official". Though I did score much much lower on QR than my SAT & ACT might indicate, so I'd love to believe this just like everybody else, but is there any basis for this..?
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I nearly believe him.
I also know someone "who is in the know" of the engineering equivalent of the DAT. I least expected he would be on that committee but sure enough he is and he told me lots of stuff about how they come to prepare these exams. Even said that it costs in the millions of dollars to really prepare an exam. He also described to me the process of how questions are chosen and omitted and all of that good stuff.

So yeah, it is possible that the OP could be telling the truth.
 
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I've asked one school about this..They hadn't heard anything.

Has anyone confirmed that the ADA send out a memo that schools should expect to see lower QR scores?

Thanks!
 
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Dont see why QR shouldnt be important, QR and PAT are the only 2 sections that test brains. The rest of the test a monkey can take if you can just have it memorize facts. Gchem requires a little brains but its mostly plugging formulas. Orgo is alot of memorization, and bio is a waste of time just memorizing a bunch of random crap that you will never need for school. RC, well when the hell will you ever need to know the tone of a passage later in life or school. Another waste of time. To me QR and PAT are the most important sections.
 
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klutzy1987 said:
RC, well when the hell will you ever need to know the tone of a passage later in life or school. Another waste of time.
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To add to this, when is a dentist ever under TIMED PRESSURE to read and understand a scientific article??? Well put klutzy, well put.


kkikkokka said:
sucks.
QR was the section that i had the highest score on. 🙁
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This should be awesome news to you. Doing the best on QR in a year when everyone else is tanking for whatever reason is a cause for celebration. It makes you stand out. Personally, i'm thrilled at the news cause i killed QR.
 
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ok, my shadowed dentist, who is one of admission comittee of Tuff told me that he scored a 14 on QR and he told me that section is "so lame."
 
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Crack the DAT math scuksss.!! i soo regret that i bought the 25questions bundle pack...such a waste of money!!........their explanations sucks......they skip soo many steps and bammmhh..here's the answer...
you have to like read the questions 3 times and see where on earth they got a certain number........ sigh!!....i feel stupid after my 2/25 test.

afterall, i am kinda glad that the schools know that QR is harder this year...!!!....
 
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keliao said:
Crack the DAT math scuksss.!! i soo regret that i bought the 25questions bundle pack...such a waste of money!!........their explanations sucks......they skip soo many steps and bammmhh..here's the answer...
you have to like read the questions 3 times and see where on earth they got a certain number........ sigh!!....i feel stupid after my 2/25 test.

afterall, i am kinda glad that the schools know that QR is harder this year...!!!....
Click to expand...


If you got a 2/25 and you are taking the DAT soon, well....you may be in a boatload of trouble. It may be the least important section, but a 2/25 extrapolates intoabout 3/40. That is a 4 on the DAT. If you get a 4 (or under 13) on any section on the DAT, you are done.
 
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hoss19 said:
...and it goes like this.

Anectodally, based on what i have read here on SDN and applicants i have spoken to, the general opinion of applicants is that QR is deemed to be of inferior importance to adcomms. Thus, those preparing for the DAT tend to focus their time on other sections. I myself spent the least amount of time on QR during my prep. Anybody else feel this way?
Click to expand...


yup and my 17 on QR lets it be shown lol....I really wish I spent more time studying QR but its too little to late now.
klutzy1987 said:
If you got a 2/25 and you are taking the DAT soon, well....you may be in a boatload of trouble. It may be the least important section, but a 2/25 extrapolates intoabout 3/40. That is a 4 on the DAT. If you get a 4 (or under 13) on any section on the DAT, you are done.
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I fully agree you can't have an ultra ultra low score like that even a 17 is getting into the danger zone. I feel an 18 is an acceptable low score, people have been doing much better recently it seems. Beloiw a 17 your looking now below the 50th %ile esp with reading comp. You don't want to be below the 50th%ile in anything if possible. According to my test a 17 on the PAT was slightly below 50% and it has me worried I hope my other areas can help mitigate that impact.

a 17 on QR is around 65th%ile, not sure what a 16 translates into.

IMO you don't want to throw in the towel and hope for the best on any part of the DAT you can't always bank on a strong area to cover your rear since you could get docked with "harder" questions in that section. I mistimed my QR review badly and it hurt me. Don't neglect any area, make your weak points your strengths you don't want to go in ahead of time expecting to bomb a section and hope to make up for it in another.

Below a 15 on any section I think your in real real trouble....


Kluz you hear anything from SB yet???
 
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During my interview earlier this week at Baylor, I talked to the associate dean of admissions and she told me that the 14 in QR won't effect me at all. She said it is nothing to be concerned with. So don't think that your bad score in QR will change things dramatically.
 
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klutzy1987 said:
If you got a 2/25 and you are taking the DAT soon, well....you may be in a boatload of trouble. It may be the least important section, but a 2/25 extrapolates intoabout 3/40. That is a 4 on the DAT. If you get a 4 (or under 13) on any section on the DAT, you are done.
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lol...i meant test #2 out of the total 25 test. i been getting 18,17,19.... =(
 
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my advisor who used to be on admissions at an ivy school just told me they dont care about qr, much more about rc
 
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klpennin said:
During my interview earlier this week at Baylor, I talked to the associate dean of admissions and she told me that the 14 in QR won't effect me at all. She said it is nothing to be concerned with. So don't think that your bad score in QR will change things dramatically.
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That's good news, the only problem was it killed my AA
 
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klutzy1987 said:
Dont see why QR shouldnt be important, QR and PAT are the only 2 sections that test brains. The rest of the test a monkey can take if you can just have it memorize facts.
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I disagree, at least on the QR part.

The only thing I did to prepare for the QR was to take one QR practice test, and I made a 30 on it and also on the real thing. Now that I'm in my second year of dental school, I can honestly tell you that my math skills have not contributed one bit to helping me get through school.

On the other hand, the entire 1st year and a big part of the 2nd year is all about memorizing a bunch of random facts. They throw a bunch of information at you, you have to memorize it, then they test you on it and you forget half of it. That's what the non-clinical part of dental school is.

That's why, in my opinion, the QR tells them the least about a student's ability to survive dental school. The Bio and Ochem tests are probably closer to what dental school is like because it's all about memorizing stuff.

Also, while reading and comprehending something fast can seem like a goofy thing to do on a test, sometimes in 2nd year it feels like you have so little time to study for some of the minor classes and this is exactly what you end up doing.
 
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klutzy1987 said:
Dont see why QR shouldnt be important, QR and PAT are the only 2 sections that test brains. The rest of the test a monkey can take if you can just have it memorize facts. Gchem requires a little brains but its mostly plugging formulas. Orgo is alot of memorization, and bio is a waste of time just memorizing a bunch of random crap that you will never need for school. RC, well when the hell will you ever need to know the tone of a passage later in life or school. Another waste of time. To me QR and PAT are the most important sections.
Click to expand...


According to this article, RC is the most predictive of Part I scores of the NBDE.

Basically...PAT and Gchem are not significant predictors of performance on any of the subtests of Part I.

Bio, orgo, and quantitative analysis are all predictive of student performance on one subtest of Part I.

The most consistent predictor relationship exists between student scores in RC and student performance on Part I of the NBDE. It was found that the RC score of the DAT was significantly related to ALL subtests of Part I.

"...it is necessary for a student to have good reading comprehension to enhance his or her ability to test well in the basic sciences. The ability to read well and to understand what has been read is essential to understanding the complex details of the basic sciences."


And this article, using data from Harvard dental students....also concluded that the RC score on the DAT is a good predictor of Part I board scores.
 
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I got a 27 on QR in June... I thought it was the easiest section of the test, people just never take the time to master the material. I always told me students to master QR because it has such an impact on the AA, and its not that hard! People just always put all of there energy into the sciences, when one extra point there could be gained while almost 3-4 points in QR
 
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lhtran07 said:
According to this article, RC is the most predictive of Part I scores of the NBDE.

Basically...PAT and Gchem are not significant predictors of performance on any of the subtests of Part I.

Bio, orgo, and quantitative analysis are all predictive of student performance on one subtest of Part I.

The most consistent predictor relationship exists between student scores in RC and student performance on Part I of the NBDE. It was found that the RC score of the DAT was significantly related to ALL subtests of Part I.

"...it is necessary for a student to have good reading comprehension to enhance his or her ability to test well in the basic sciences. The ability to read well and to understand what has been read is essential to understanding the complex details of the basic sciences."


And this article, using data from Harvard dental students....also concluded that the RC score on the DAT is a good predictor of Part I board scores.
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It should be noted that the study was from 1992 - 1995. The NDBE has changed quite a bit since that time (new format) and the DAT RC has changed and added tone questions among other changes. The study was also done using students from the University of Mississippi exclusively.

Edit:
In addition, different studies have come up with different conclusions, depending on the author and year. The most recent study (as per the article) states that in 1999 Kramer found the AA and TS most predictive, even over total and science GPA. In any case, I don't think anyone should, or does, take this as the bible for DAT-NDBE correlations. The second study is more recent and does shine some more light on the subject but only uses Harvard students from 1995-2002 and suffers from many of the same pitfalls.
 
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lhtran07 said:
According to this article, RC is the most predictive of Part I scores of the NBDE.

Basically...PAT and Gchem are not significant predictors of performance on any of the subtests of Part I.

Bio, orgo, and quantitative analysis are all predictive of student performance on one subtest of Part I.

The most consistent predictor relationship exists between student scores in RC and student performance on Part I of the NBDE. It was found that the RC score of the DAT was significantly related to ALL subtests of Part I.

"...it is necessary for a student to have good reading comprehension to enhance his or her ability to test well in the basic sciences. The ability to read well and to understand what has been read is essential to understanding the complex details of the basic sciences."


And this article, using data from Harvard dental students....also concluded that the RC score on the DAT is a good predictor of Part I board scores.
Click to expand...

This study is so stupid. To answer the any question on the DAT you need basic Readding Comprehension skills. Every question has a sentence or two. Furthermore, I highly doubt that I will mess up a board because I got frustrated trying to understand a rediculous piano.
 
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How about we all get zero on DAT so dental school will have all the applicants with DAT score = 0 😀
 
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joonkimdds said:
How about we all get zero on DAT so dental school will have all the applicants with DAT score = 0 😀
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Getting a zero is as difficult as getting a 30. If you get a zero on every section you are accepted to every dental school.
 
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