DAT percentages

[jacksonheel]

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I have a general question about DAT percentages. It seems to me from reading this board that the percentile they give you cannot be right. For instance, I got a 23 academic average. My printout said this score was in the 99.6 percentile. I was no math major, but it seems to me that the percentile means only .4% of the people that took the test did better than me (ie, those that received 99.7, .8, .9 and 100%). So, 4 people in 1000 did better. Assuming there are 10,000 that take the test each year (I seem to recall hearing a stat like that), only 40 people will do better. I bring all this up not to stroke myself, but to point out that there may be 40 people on the SDN alone that did better than me. Surely, these percentages (or some of my assumptions) must be wrong.

Any insight?

 

[calidreamin]

I don't know how this all works. I got a 23 on the academic and it was like 98.4% or something and I also got a 23 on the perceptual abilty and it was a 99% Logically, it would seem that we have the same score...but since your percentile is higher than mine, you must've done better than me. I hope someone can shed some light on the subject.

 

[jacksonheel]

Calidreamin, your response is interesting. On the PAT, I got a 21, which corresponded to a 98.5%. I would be interested in knowing what other scores were v. the percentages recieved. Possibly, each different test has a different percentage v. scaled number distribution. This would probably mean that the percentage you receive is more important than the scaled number.

 

[tinker bell]

there are a few different tests that we take. And the % compares only the performance level of who have taken that same test. I got 25 on my o-chem, and I got 98%. I'm not sure how the o-chem score and % of my test compare to other tests.
Hope that answers your question. I think that they have about 7 or 8 tests
T

 

[ItsGavinC]

Tink is correct, although there are not entire exams that are the same, but there are groups of questions (5 or 6) in each subsection which determine which exam you have.

For example, people with "exam A" would have had the same 5 or 6 questions in their bio section, and the other 35 questions or so would have been randomly selected from a database.

The percentile score you seen compares your exam to others who have taken your same exam in that subsection.

Note that although percentiles do differ from exam to exam, they do not differ drastically. A 23 is NEVER going to be a 93 percentile, etc. etc.

So, to the original poster, there are probably actually 100-120 exam takers who scored better than you did, although this is just a rough estimate. Of those who took your battery of tests, you did better than 99.6 of them.