DAT vs. MCAT

[CurryPower]

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How does DAT compare with the MCAT in terms the type of students taking it (the academic caliber) and the difficulty of the exam in general? It's weird, but, I usually see kids getting 38-40s getting into UPENN Med school or Harvard Med School, but for dental school the statistics seem a bit lower, and this even applies to GPAs too.

 

[Suzan]

MCAT

• Physical Sciences - 77 Questions - 100 min - Score of 1 to 15
• Verbal Reasoning - 65 questions - 85 min - Score of 1 to 15
• Essay Writing - 2 questions - 60 min - Score of J to T
• Biological Sciences - 77 questions - 100 min - Score of 1 to 15

DAT

• Survey of Natural Sciences - 90 min
• Perceptual Ability - 60 min
• Rest - 15 min
• Pretest (not scored) - 25 min
• Reading Comprehension - 50 min
• Quantitative Reasoning (math) - 45 min

MCAT is supposedly harder but everyone has their own opinions on what "difficult" really is.
For some, perceptual ability (paper folding, line angling, etc) comes easier while for some, essay writing comes easier.

It all rests on your opinion.



Even though the number of medical schools is far beyond the number of dental schools (only 56) in the United States, to some extent, the level of competitiveness is generally the same.

Med school calls for outstanding academics most of the time while there are some dental schools who look at GPA/DAT but also want to know what you've done outside of school and any hobbies. Not just this, but dental schools do realize that not everyone oozes with radiating brilliance 24/7. They realize some have had bad starts and slow starts and therefore, they are interested to see a level of maturity and a trend of improvement. (The trend is the friend.)

The job of a dentist isn't just to do teeth, but also provide comfort through words while doing this. How will any dentist relate to patients if they're not well-rounded? No one wants a dentist where the only thing he/she can say is "This won't hurt much" and can't converse.


The most important thing to keep in mind though is those are just statistics, meaning they are merely averages and ESTIMATES.

Numbers can tell a lot of truth, but it can only go so far before it hits a limit.








I'm sorry this was long
but I hope this gave a lot of info. 🙂

 

[CMistry]

You seem confused. The MCAT is scored out of 45. The DAT is scored out of 30. That is why you see lower score numbers. For everything else, see above post. 🙂

-Cyrus

 

[zriceman]

isn't reading comprehension 60 mins?

 

[CMistry]

isn't reading comprehension 60 mins?

Nope, 50 minutes.

 

[95881]

Nope, 50 minutes.

RC IS 60 minutes. For some reason Kaplan practice tests are 50 minutes but on the actual DAT you have 60 minutes for RC

 

[SuperDuper]

I asked my teacher about this. She said that it was Kaplan's strategy to make us read even faster (probably not realizing we have 10 minutes less) so we don't feel rushed during the real exam. 😉🙂🙄

RC IS 60 minutes. For some reason Kaplan practice tests are 50 minutes but on the actual DAT you have 60 minutes for RC

 

[CurryPower]

Well, what I meant was that in the MCAT, i.e.- people get 12-13/15 in a bio section to get into top dental schools. In the DAT, people get like 23/30 on a particular section and thats good for a top dental school. Why the large difference in the margin of error?

 

[domonas]

Well, what I meant was that in the MCAT, i.e.- people get 12-13/15 in a bio section to get into top dental schools. In the DAT, people get like 23/30 on a particular section and thats good for a top dental school. Why the large difference in the margin of error?

i think you need to do some research on both tests. a 12-13/15 is an excellent score on any section of the MCAT, as is a 23/30 on the DAT's.

 

[ramforte]

they are totally different, I have taken the DAT and I know about the MCATs , it is not easy getting a 23 on the DAT, 23 on DAT is like 35 on the MCATS, a 26 DAT is pretty much like a 40 on the MCATS , so even though MCATS appear to be harder in nature , due to the scoring differences between the two tests it is much much harder to get 23 or 24 on the DAT than a 33 or 34 on the MCATS.

 

[jigabodo]

Well, what I meant was that in the MCAT, i.e.- people get 12-13/15 in a bio section to get into top dental schools. In the DAT, people get like 23/30 on a particular section and thats good for a top dental school. Why the large difference in the margin of error?

If you strictly look at the percentiles, 23 in DAT should be around a 97 or so. That should explain why those scores are good for top schools.

 

[Montserrat]

How does DAT compare with the MCAT in terms the type of students taking it (the academic caliber) and the difficulty of the exam in general? It's weird, but, I usually see kids getting 38-40s getting into UPENN Med school or Harvard Med School, but for dental school the statistics seem a bit lower, and this even applies to GPAs too.

If you're comparing the DAT and the MCAT by the same sliding scale, you've poisoned your own investigation.

 

[SuperDuper]

Well, what I meant was that in the MCAT, i.e.- people get 12-13/15 in a bio section to get into top dental schools. In the DAT, people get like 23/30 on a particular section and thats good for a top dental school. Why the large difference in the margin of error?

The information you seek is going to very hard to find. This is because there are not very many people who take both MCAT and DAT. Even if they do, there is a big time gap between taking two exams (because they are switching from pre-med to pre-dent and vice versa). This means these people probably studied or took more classes during this time gap, which makes it almost impossible to make the direct linear model between DAT and MCAT scores.

For instance, if student A takes MCAT and gets 26 on it. Then, this person wants to switch to pre-dent because he/she doesn't think the score is good enough. This person probably will take some time before taking the DAT (more studying and possibly taking more classes in the meantime). Then, this person takes the DAT and gets 20. This doesn't mean the student would have gotten the 20 on his DAT had he taken it right after taking the MCAT with no time gap.

I hope this makes sense. It makes sense in my head, but sometimes that doesn't mean much. 😎😀🙂

 

[armorshell]

Yeah, you need to look at the percentiles, not the number score. My DAT AA would have been a horrendous MCAT score, but it was 100 percentile, which doesn't really make any sense

 

[thethethe]

are the DAT science sections passage based?

 

[TheWiredNerv]

They are two different tests. Some people find the MCAT easier than the DAT and vice versa. Depends on the person.

 

[thethethe]

i took the mcat before. from what i heard, the dat is question and answer format. if you remember the facts and formulas you will do okay on the exam. for the mcat, we had to remember all the facts and formulas and apply it in a way we never saw before.

my friend was able to study for his DAT in 3 weeks and got a 21. i never heard of anybody studying for the mcat for that short of a time and done well.

 

[Shunwei]

i took the mcat before. from what i heard, the dat is question and answer format. if you remember the facts and formulas you will do okay on the exam. for the mcat, we had to remember all the facts and formulas and apply it in a way we never saw before.

my friend was able to study for his DAT in 3 weeks and got a 21. i never heard of anybody studying for the mcat for that short of a time and done well.

I have taken both (albeit the MCAT was a ways back) and done decent on the tests. My opinion is that the MCAT is harder. The reading comprehension is quite hard and the physics is no joke either.