Does DAT difficulty change throughout the year?

[bambam987654]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Just out of curiosity, does the difficulty level of the DAT change throughout the year?

Looking at people's breakdowns, I see such a range of opinions when comparing certain practice materials to the real exam. For instance, some have written that the for-pay ADA sample test is similar to the actual DAT whereas others say the opposite.

It's kind of scary to think that scores could fluctuate due to the exam you happen to get... Any insights would be appreciated. Thanks! 🙂

F.Y.I. I'm taking mine at the end of this month in Washington state.

 

[bambam987654]

Bump!

 

[john333]

I would also like to know an answer to this question... Lol I also think that your score can be affected by the difficulty of the tests.. because I saw no many breakdowns, the percentiles all differ for every score. I am taking mine on mid August and I've heard from some people that my DAT actually might be a bit harder 🙁

 

[Ari Rezaei]

The difficulty of the DAT is the exact same throughout the entire year. You're ranked against a set of students who've already taken the test in the past, not against everyone who took the test that day. They go through a lot of work to ensure that there are no grade differences due to timing of the test, gender, location, ethnicity, etc. You can read about it for yourself starting on page 6: http://www.ada.org/sections/educationAndCareers/pdfs/dat_users_manual.pdf

 

[hope_to_match]

The difficulty of the DAT is the exact same throughout the entire year. You're ranked against a set of students who've already taken the test in the past, not against everyone who took the test that day. They go through a lot of work to ensure that there are no grade differences due to timing of the test, gender, location, ethnicity, etc. You can read about it for yourself starting on page 6: http://www.ada.org/sections/educationAndCareers/pdfs/dat_users_manual.pdf

that's good to know..why does the percentile differ so much sometimes? (i.e 20 can be 80 something % or 98%)..That's what I have seen on this forum..

 

[Ari Rezaei]

Percentiles don't matter. They're not even reported to schools. Your standard score is all that is considered.

 

[ModifiedBass]

After reading through these forums and reviewing the link provided by GatorD, I believe you are giving the short version of this topic, not the entirety. Percentiles are not reported to schools, that is correct, but they do have something to do with the difficulty of the test I believe. As Eugeniager pointed out, the same score can correlate to vastly different percentiles. These percentiles, if I am correct, correlate to how all previous individuals did on this particular section of your test (if not the whole test, then sample questions from said section). For example, an 80something% 20 in a section could be considered an "easier" question set than a 90something% 20 in the same section in a different question set for the same section. However, I believe the ADA attempts to put the tests together to make sure that no one is given a more difficult test overall. In the end, the percentiles are not given to the dental schools, so it really doesn't matter, but if anything, it can help you gauge how well you did overall to other test takers based on sectional difficulty. This topic relates to me as I had multiple sections with high percentiles (RC, QR, AA) for my standard score (typically higher than the standard score a point above). Hope this helps, if I am incorrect in anything that I have said, please feel free to correct me. The best information is the right information and I'm basing mine off of quick research.

 

[athomas]

I don't think it varies. However, I think maybe we see more of the high scores in mid to late summer because those are the people who have committed a lot of time to studying.