how are DAT scores and percentiles correlated?

[journeybegins]

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After noticing people's breakdown of their DAT scores and their percentiles, I've been trying to figure out how it all works, so I can know what I'm up against in the scoring process.

Can someone explain to me how it works?

I understand that your raw score gets normalized/standardized. The thing that confuses me a bit is seeing people score in the 99 percentile and only getting 24 or 25 in certain subjects, even though the total possible score is 30.

Does that mean people who score in the 98-99% missed only one problem or didn't miss any at all, but also didn't get a perfect score of 30, or even 29?

Does that mean that if I want to aim high for 24, I'd basically have to get everything right???


Another question I have is, will my DAT score be affected by how other people are scoring or will it be moreso out of the percentage that I get correct?


Any feedback would be great! Thanks! 🙂

 

[vindicate]

yeah, essentially thats how it is. depending on how hard the exam is, you can miss 1 question in gchem section and end up being in 99% with a 24 in the section (if the exam is very hard).

generally though, missing 1 question shouldnt bring you to a 24 (as the average exam isn't likely to be very hard)



the mcats is similar and goes something like:
if you miss 1 in either of the sciences, you drop a point.
and that goes until your about at 12-11, at which every 2-3 point drops you a point score. but med schools also look at the percentile you scored as well along with your score. not sure about dental schools
verbal section is more forgiving.

 

[americanpierg]

I understand that your raw score gets normalized/standardized. The thing that confuses me a bit is seeing people score in the 99 percentile and only getting 24 or 25 in certain subjects, even though the total possible score is 30.

Does that mean people who score in the 98-99% missed only one problem or didn't miss any at all, but also didn't get a perfect score of 30, or even 29?

Does that mean that if I want to aim high for 24, I'd basically have to get everything right???


Another question I have is, will my DAT score be affected by how other people are scoring or will it be moreso out of the percentage that I get correct?


Any feedback would be great! Thanks! 🙂

Usually none wrong in a section is a 28-30, one wrong is 26-28, two wrong is ~24, and below that you can get more wrong inbetween each grade change. So yea, to get around a 24, you can only get like ~2 questions in each section. so its relatively easy to score around average (18-21) because you have room to get a couple more wrong than if it was a straight scale, but this also means its very difficult to score very high (24+) becuase you have very very little wiggle room.



As for your second question, no your DAT score will not be affected by how others taking the test are doing. You think it would since since its standardized according to the version of the test you take, but i think they just distributed the specific version of each test to a bunch of volunteer test takers and created a standardized scale off of that volunteer group way ahead of time and the scale for each version of the test never changes. This is because I've seen people take the same exam over a year apart and the percentiles don't change at all (including that one infamous exam where the percentiles were very very low compared to the norm and people started questioning if they made up their scores or not)

Going through the forum, you can find out who had the same exam as you just by matching up the percentiles.