Can't read the Interviewer's mind

[VoodoToothDoc]

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I got interviewed by BU couple days ago. Was a smooth interview untill the interviewer told me to redo my DAT again cause my Reading score is 16, and he want it to be 19.
Can he really do that? After all the hard work, preparation, and long wait..., I got kick in the right nut at the final stage...
So what is he trying to say? Is this a conditional acceptance? if i got 19, i will be accepted?
OR... He just doesnt like me and tell to redo it. And even i get 19, he will tell me its too late, the seats are full... ?? A kick to the left nut..
Any body got similar situation or been though this situation?
or any psychic that can read the interviewer's mind?

 

[EyeAmCommi]

I got interviewed by BU couple days ago. Was a smooth interview untill the interviewer told me to redo my DAT again cause my Reading score is 16, and he want it to be 19.
Can he really do that? After all the hard work, preparation, and long wait..., I got kick in the right nut at the final stage...
So what is he trying to say? Is this a conditional acceptance? if i got 19, i will be accepted?
OR... He just doesnt like me and tell to redo it. And even i get 19, he will tell me its too late, the seats are full... ?? A kick to the left nut..
Any body got similar situation or been though this situation?
or any psychic that can read the interviewer's mind?

Did you ask him during the interview what he meant? I would have asked him to clarify what I needed to do.

 

[VoodoToothDoc]

Did you ask him during the interview what he meant? I would have asked him to clarify what I needed to do.

Nope, didn't ask. But I do want to ask. Just scared that by asking will change the out-come....

 

[berryfremont]

it means if you haven't been accepted anywhere else and if this is your last chance: sign up for the dat and have a crack at it. I don't think it is a conditional acceptance it's just something they want to see in order accept people, i guess. I would call and clarify with someone.

 

[tiny2533]

I got interviewed by BU couple days ago. Was a smooth interview untill the interviewer told me to redo my DAT again cause my Reading score is 16, and he want it to be 19.
Can he really do that? After all the hard work, preparation, and long wait..., I got kick in the right nut at the final stage...
So what is he trying to say? Is this a conditional acceptance? if i got 19, i will be accepted?
OR... He just doesnt like me and tell to redo it. And even i get 19, he will tell me its too late, the seats are full... ?? A kick to the left nut..
Any body got similar situation or been though this situation?
or any psychic that can read the interviewer's mind?

I would be kind of upset if I were you. Why did they even grant you an interview if your scores arent up to par with what there looking for. Waste of time and money. This is just my opinion.

 

[VoodoToothDoc]

I would be kind of upset if I were you. Why did they even grant you an interview if your scores arent up to par with what there looking for. Waste of time and money. This is just my opinion.

Yes, I was very upset. They could have inform me earlier to redo my DAT.
What is the best way to improve the Reading score? A 16 to 19 isn't a walk in the park, plus that I am racing against time.

 

[polarnut]

you cant really study for RC. you just gotta hope you dont panic and waste minutes when you are actually taking the test.

 

[OrinScrivello]

Yes, I was very upset. They could have inform me earlier to redo my DAT.
What is the best way to improve the Reading score? A 16 to 19 isn't a walk in the park, plus that I am racing against time.

Judging from your grammar, my guess is that you are not a native speaker of English. If this is the case, then you are at a disadvantage compared to native English speakers on the RC portion of the DAT. Your dental school will expect you to keep up with the lectures and readings, and one way of estimating your ability to do that is by looking at the RC score. You can complain all you want, but it is just a fact you are going to have to deal with. I think you can study for the RC section by trying to improve your reading speed (if I had to pick only one way that foreign students suffer on RC, it would have to be the slower overall speed, based on my own experience at foreign universities). Also, look for English sentence structures that tend to "point" the reader to critical statements of comparison, contradiction, and conclusion-drawing.

Dental schools are under no obligation to tell you how to make yourself more competitive, especially given this year's flood of applicants. They could simply send you a boilerplate rejection letter with no helpful information. I think that guy was very nice to suggest retaking the DAT. The sooner you act, the better your chances will be, as the admissions board may take three or four weeks before they make a final decision on your file. Take the DAT and call them immediately once you know your score. If it is significantly improved, they will take it into account even though the official DAT report won't arrive for some time.

Personally, if I had gotten any score lower than a 17 or 18, I would have immediately reregistered for the next possible DAT session.

If you are a native English speaker, then I sure hope your verbal communication skills are much better than your written posts here; otherwise I don't think you have a chance after that interview.

 

[EyeAmCommi]

Judging from your grammar, my guess is that you are not a native speaker of English. If this is the case, then you are at a disadvantage compared to native English speakers on the RC portion of the DAT. Your dental school will expect you to keep up with the lectures and readings, and one way of estimating your ability to do that is by looking at the RC score. You can complain all you want, but it is just a fact you are going to have to deal with. I think you can study for the RC section by trying to improve your reading speed (if I had to pick only one way that foreign students suffer on RC, it would have to be the slower overall speed, based on my own experience at foreign universities). Also, look for English sentence structures that tend to "point" the reader to critical statements of comparison, contradiction, and conclusion-drawing.

Dental schools are under no obligation to tell you how to make yourself more competitive, especially given this year's flood of applicants. They could simply send you a boilerplate rejection letter with no helpful information. I think that guy was very nice to suggest retaking the DAT. The sooner you act, the better your chances will be, as the admissions board may take three or four weeks before they make a final decision on your file. Take the DAT and call them immediately once you know your score. If it is significantly improved, they will take it into account even though the official DAT report won't arrive for some time.

Personally, if I had gotten any score lower than a 17 or 18, I would have immediately reregistered for the next possible DAT session.

If you are a native English speaker, then I sure hope your verbal communication skills are much better than your written posts here; otherwise I don't think you have a chance after that interview.

Dreadfully honest opinion here but I somewhat agree. You're not in a very good position OP. I'd call and ask about my status and ask further about what is holding you back. You might end up not having to retake the DAT after all.

 

[polarnut]

i speak l33t h4x0rz language and i got 23 in RC. so keeped your head ups!

 

[Gargamel]

I don’t know if you have taken a prep course for the DAT or not. If not consider a quick tutoring session with someone (Kaplin or alike). It’s not necessarily about improving your reading skills but rather having a technique you can fall back on.

 

[VoodoToothDoc]

Judging from your grammar, my guess is that you are not a native speaker of English. If this is the case, then you are at a disadvantage compared to native English speakers on the RC portion of the DAT. Your dental school will expect you to keep up with the lectures and readings, and one way of estimating your ability to do that is by looking at the RC score. You can complain all you want, but it is just a fact you are going to have to deal with. I think you can study for the RC section by trying to improve your reading speed (if I had to pick only one way that foreign students suffer on RC, it would have to be the slower overall speed, based on my own experience at foreign universities). Also, look for English sentence structures that tend to "point" the reader to critical statements of comparison, contradiction, and conclusion-drawing.

Dental schools are under no obligation to tell you how to make yourself more competitive, especially given this year's flood of applicants. They could simply send you a boilerplate rejection letter with no helpful information. I think that guy was very nice to suggest retaking the DAT. The sooner you act, the better your chances will be, as the admissions board may take three or four weeks before they make a final decision on your file. Take the DAT and call them immediately once you know your score. If it is significantly improved, they will take it into account even though the official DAT report won't arrive for some time.

Personally, if I had gotten any score lower than a 17 or 18, I would have immediately reregistered for the next possible DAT session.

If you are a native English speaker, then I sure hope your verbal communication skills are much better than your written posts here; otherwise I don't think you have a chance after that interview.

Yes, you are right. I'm not native speaker of English. I should have written the DAT as soon as I got my score, but even if I retake it, I don't know how much I can improve. Also, my other scores were considerably high. I got 21 in BIO, 22 in Chem, 27 in PAT, 25 in carving (Canadian DAT). Maybe I got over confident?

 

[yes_sir]

Yea I don't understand why they would do that. I heard BU is very particular about the DAT, and they set the bar at 19 I believe. Anyways its better to be granted an interview and told that at the interview than not hear a word from them at all.
What happend to me at Tufts was worse. They invited me for the interview only to tell me at the end of the interview that I had to retake physics- since I took it at a CC. That's even bigger BS because it would take me another year to complete that requirement which I am not planning on doing. So at least all you have to do is retake a test, whereas I didn't even have a chance of entering for this class and they made me fly out there knowing I had taken physics at CC. So look at your situation with a grain of salt.

 

[Shoota39]

I used the kaplan method of mapping the passages and it worked for me, practice practice practice... you can easily score 19+ of you work for a little while at it

 

[Utes]

I don't think it's out of the question to improve your RC score by 3 points in a relatively short period of time. I think RC is one of the most overlooked (or least studied for) sections of the DAT. If you go into it with the mindset that you're going to read every word of all of the passages and then answer the questions... then I don't think you'll do very well. There simply isn't enough time to read and retain everything and then accurately answer all of the questions.

The best thing to do is practice. Practice with a timer and practice different techniques. Find out what works best for you. I'm a native english speaker and the first practice test I took, I got an 18 on the RC section because I didn't realize the pace at which you need to read/answer questions. I ended up with a 24 on the real DAT RC section after reading different strategies here on SDN. I chose the strategy to read the first sentence of each paragraph and make an outline on a piece of paper with what the paragraph was about. Then I skipped immediately to the questions and I could deduce which paragraph the answer would be found in based on my outline. I then skimmed the paragraph and found the answer. However something I realized was that it is better to read the sentence before, and the sentence after the sentence that has the "answer" in it. I found that sometimes the next sentence will contradict the sentence right before it.
Example) What is the best brand of toothbrush?
In the reading you may find a sentence that says "In 1992 Oral-B was found to be the best brand of toothbrush. The next sentence might say "However, in 2005 scientific studies found that the 1992 study was flawed and Reach is actually the best toothbrush."

Good luck on whatever you choose to do. It may seem pretty sucky that they granted you an interview and then told you that they'd like a higher RC score. However, if that was your only interview, and you really want to be a dentist, I'm sure you can find a way to improve your score.

Utes

 

[maryanne213]

I'd get in touch with the school and get some clarification. I did well on the dat but got a 15 in the QR since i didnt pace my time very well in the section. None of my schools seemed concerned about it. They actually told me that my gpa held more weight since it is representive of years of work rather than just one test day. but it really all depends on the school.

 

[1992Corolla]

Why don't you go to 'just in case' western?

 

[Far Cry]

don't know if it's a BU trend, but they told a friend of mine to raise his DAT scores, which he did by 3pts overall, and it didn't result in anything. i don't think it is something to bank on - even if you raise it, then there's no guarentee they'll send you an acceptance letter. but if you do indeed raise your reading score, you'll be that much better off if you have to re-apply next cycle.

 

[Legacy]

I don’t know if you have taken a prep course for the DAT or not. If not consider a quick tutoring session with someone (Kaplin or alike). It’s not necessarily about improving your reading skills but rather having a technique you can fall back on.

For instance, you find out rather quickly during the actual test that they put all the hardest problems in the middle passage and so you decide to tackle them in the order

1
3
2

I never really got the hang of Kaplan's mapping the passages, but after taking the DAT I realized that the people who designed the RC section are crafty devils. If they can break you, they'll do it in the middle of the section right when you think you've got it going on after the first passage.

The difference between a fifteen and a nineteen can be a matter of prioritizing when the RC section can be set up with the middle passage pitfall in mind.

Of course I doubt everyone on these boards has had a similar experience.