How are my DAT scores??

Started by thedarkhorse
Get help with your application

Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.

Browse articles Compare schools My application plan Read Interview Feedback
Practice for interviews Ask an Advisor
thedarkhorse

thedarkhorse

Full Member
10+ Year Member
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
 
I'm sorry, that 18 in the PAT and Reading killed your chances.

i'm sure you very well know how good your scores are. 👎
 
thedarkhorse said:
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
Click to expand...

You'd better have a 3.9+ GPA to even have a chance. No offense.
 
Didn't you ask this in the dat discussions?

Obviously you don't think your scores are good enough. So retake it.🙄
 
I apologize for others. You shouldn't worry about 18 on PAT. Pull As in all classes and we if you are applying 2012 cycle, try to be a well rounded applicant. I am sure you will get multiple acceptances on Dec 1st 2012! good luck!
 
I got 20's and got in.

If you have extracurricular's and good LOR's it's not the end of the world. You should apply at least once to see where you're at.
 
lol, not really sure if the first few posts were supposed to be sarcastic. wouldn't a decent gpa (3.5+) coupled with the OP's DAT make a pretty competitive applicant?
 
thedarkhorse said:
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
Click to expand...

It all depends on your GPA, if you have a 3.5+ GPA you are more than OK!
 
thedarkhorse said:
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
Click to expand...

Your scores are fine, except for the reading comprehension. RC is the secondary factor used to "weed out" applicants. Your GPA and sGPA must be between 3.2 to 3.6 to get a shot at an interview. You can only increase your DATs and not GPAs at this point. Good luck!
 
yappy said:
Is 3.2 competitive these days?
Click to expand...

No.

From what I've seen on the forums and according to the statistics in ADEA, a 3.5 is competitive coupled with a decent DAT. A 3.4 is alright as long as you have an above avg DAT. 3.3 is cutting it close. 3.2 its time to look for post-bac/masters.

You may get a 1-2 interviews. But once your GPA drops below 3.4, I believe your chances drop dramatically.
 
Hey thedarkhorse,
Most of my scores were lower than yours and I still was accepted. If you have time to retake and improve the perceptual ability and reading, I'd go ahead, but if you are a well-rounded person, I think they are alright.
 
You're SO stupid and your DAT is atrocious. Burn in lava, you donkey face S.O.B. I hate you.

Am I doing it right, guys?

But seriously, we can't really help you without at least knowing your GPA. A 21 is great, if you have a 3.4 or a 3.5 or a 4.0. But if you have a 3.0, then you probably should do a retake...or boost your GPA up...or grow a beard!!!
An 18 for a couple of sections isn't too bad, though.
 
aelian said:
You're SO stupid and your DAT is atrocious. Burn in lava, you donkey face S.O.B. I hate you.

Am I doing it right, guys?

But seriously, we can't really help you without at least knowing your GPA. A 21 is great, if you have a 3.4 or a 3.5 or a 4.0. But if you have a 3.0, then you probably should do a retake...or boost your GPA up...or grow a beard!!!
An 18 for a couple of sections isn't too bad, though.
Click to expand...

Good advice coming from the person with a 23 TS and 23 AA. Don't trust aelian.. he/she just wants you to get rejected. Re-take your DATs, Darkhorse.
 
dang! I could have guessed though.

I'm this situation where I have done 3 yrs of work getting 3.7 GPA full time but still have a 3.2 sci & cumul. I'm kinda at a loss because I've taken alot of hard classes and got mostly all A's. Do you think I should apply this cycle or would I be just burning money? If I wait a year and finish my bio degree I can get up to 3.45 science, 3.35 culm GPA.

I have yet to take the DAT but feel kinda optomistic about it. I just dont know if it's worth burning alot of money to be rejected. On the other hand I feel ready for dental school and want to start ASAP.

beatsdre said:
No.

From what I've seen on the forums and according to the statistics in ADEA, a 3.5 is competitive coupled with a decent DAT. A 3.4 is alright as long as you have an above avg DAT. 3.3 is cutting it close. 3.2 its time to look for post-bac/masters.

You may get a 1-2 interviews. But once your GPA drops below 3.4, I believe your chances drop dramatically.
Click to expand...
 
James Dean said:
Hey thedarkhorse,
Most of my scores were lower than yours and I still was accepted. If you have time to retake and improve the perceptual ability and reading, I'd go ahead, but if you are a well-rounded person, I think they are alright.
Click to expand...

id love to retake it and improve those scores but the problem is i dont know if i will do better the second time around... theres no way to garauntee that... correct me if im wrong, but if i do worse the second time around im assuming this will hurt my chances of getting into a dental school??
 
ToothAcres said:
Your scores are fine, except for the reading comprehension. RC is the secondary factor used to "weed out" applicants. Your GPA and sGPA must be between 3.2 to 3.6 to get a shot at an interview. You can only increase your DATs and not GPAs at this point. Good luck!
Click to expand...

this does sound like a logical situation and im not doubting you. i'd love to hear how you know this though. im just curious as to how you know that they use the rc as a secondary factor?
 
your fine, i had scores that looked like that maybe a bit lower. and i got into all schools i applied too. i had a 3.9GPA in a good biochem program tho.
 
Your scores are fine as long as you have a decent GPA and a handful of extracurricular. As long as you haven't sat in a cave cooking marshmellows for 4 years of undergrad... you are in good shape like I said in your other thread. Most of the posters here are being sarcastic or they are all pulling your leg because you did well... yet you are still being paranoid over this. As I have said before, take a good look at the statistics.

Screenshot2011-01-07at111313AM.png



Dental schools have what? seats for roughly 4,800~ or something around that ball park...

The mean accepted AA is ~19 correct?

The number of people who scored a 19+ is 4,023... that does not fill up all 4,800~ spots so they will have to draw from another source... Most likely some in the 18 AA. Consequently this will 'lower' the average accepted AA, thus stabilizing it at more along the lines of 19 AA.

Of course there are exceptions... outliers... and what not. Who knows, probably some 17s or even some super 16s get in every year and maybe some 25 didn't get in lol.

Sure this table is for 2008 and the bell curve does shift slightly from time to time... but there will never be an ultra drastic change from year to year... the average AA is not suddenly going to shift to a 22! Indeed you do see a lot of great break downs with high scores on SDN but does SDN have 9000+ pre-dental members? NO...

Anyway, didn't doctoothache come up with some formula to calculate your gpa + dat and then use that to compare your chances? I suggest you go take a look at that 👍
 
I could have sworn that the percentage of people who got 21+ AA was higher on doc toothache's post?

Perhaps that was % accepted?
 
thedarkhorse said:
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
Click to expand...

The reason most people aren't treating you seriously is because.... you scored in the top 10% of the nation and you are asking "are my scores gud-enuf"

come on, your smart enough to wanna pursue dentistry, u should be smart enough to know how strong your scores are.
 
The average AA for 2009 is different from 2008, as you might expect. It is going up by a ton, it seems.

datdat.jpg


The percentage of people with 21AA have basically doubled! 😱 The mean DAT AA went up by a whole 0.80 this one year? 😱

22 & 23 AA percentages have both gone up by a LOT

almost 10x more % of 24 AA in 2009 than 2008.

I was really shocked to see this initially too, it means that my AA, which is 24, is only the top 4th percentile or so compared to the previous year, which was the top 0.4th or so 😱😱😱😱😱

This would also mean that OP's score is only in the top 20% of test takers in 2009 instead of what we think? 2010 might be even more competitive!


perhaps we need doc toothache to explain this to us!
 
Last edited:
The distribution and curve is getting a little screwed up...

Perhaps they'll adjust the test to make it harder for the 2011 test takers 😀


Anyway, the morale of the story is to do well and GET IN FAST so you can just forget all of this... lol :laugh:
 
The analysis is really nice. However, we have to keep in mind how many students are enrolled into dental schools each year (~4500?). And Ｉthink the acceptance rate is double (based on what I heard in almost all schools interviewed), i.e. ~9000. So if you plug the acceptance number into the diagram, I would say OP's score is still pretty decent, even though the scores have gone up.

Best luck to OP.

CANgnome said:
The average AA for 2009 is different from 2008, as you might expect. It is going up by a ton, it seems.

datdat.jpg


The percentage of people with 21AA have basically doubled! 😱 The mean DAT AA went up by a whole 0.80 this one year? 😱

22 & 23 AA percentages have both gone up by a LOT

almost 10x more % of 24 AA in 2009 than 2008.

I was really shocked to see this initially too, it means that my AA, which is 24, is only the top 4th percentile or so compared to the previous year, which was the top 0.4th or so 😱😱😱😱😱

This would also mean that OP's score is only in the top 20% of test takers in 2009 instead of what we think? 2010 might be even more competitive!


perhaps we need doc toothache to explain this to us!
Click to expand...
 
Are you suggesting you can get in without having the top DAT score in the country?!


DATlongshui said:
The analysis is really nice. However, we have to keep in mind how many students are enrolled into dental schools each year (~4500?). And Ｉthink the acceptance rate is double (based on what I heard in almost all schools interviewed), i.e. ~9000. So if you plug the acceptance number into the diagram, I would say OP's score is still pretty decent, even though the scores have gone up.

Best luck to OP.
Click to expand...
 
Uhm, you scored better than me.. lol. I got in. AA 19. It also depends on your GPAs, and your Extracurricular aka your shadowing/research/abilities and of course your interview 😀

thedarkhorse said:
I don't know for sure how well my scores are and would love to hear everyone's opinion. I'm especially concerned about my PAT score. Should I take it again or not?

PAT: 18
QR: 20
Reading: 18
OC: 22
GC: 22
Bio: 21
TS:21
AA: 21
Click to expand...
 
I was actually also curious about an 18 in the PAT section. I applied late and it seems that many of the late applicants have very good (20+) PAT scores. I had a 21/22/18, so I'm just wondering if the 18 is actually a killer for someone in my situation (3.34 science and overall).
 
Are we talking ADDSAS September late or July late. Septemeber late is really late for competitiveness but July should still be good. Remember that the first round of interview went out in september, and those are the school most wanted students. Your science maybe a bit low when combined w/ the PAT, but should not be that bad. MY PAT was 17 but my science GPA was 3.75. My score (AA 19, science 22, PAT 17). I took it once lol. Wasn't about to torture myself again.Still, your score is solid if you were only July late.

ZanP said:
I was actually also curious about an 18 in the PAT section. I applied late and it seems that many of the late applicants have very good (20+) PAT scores. I had a 21/22/18, so I'm just wondering if the 18 is actually a killer for someone in my situation (3.34 science and overall).
Click to expand...
 
mcchuster said:
Are we talking ADDSAS September late or July late. Septemeber late is really late for competitiveness but July should still be good. Remember that the first round of interview went out in september, and those are the school most wanted students. Your science maybe a bit low when combined w/ the PAT, but should not be that bad. MY PAT was 17 but my science GPA was 3.75. My score (AA 19, science 22, PAT 17). I took it once lol. Wasn't about to torture myself again.Still, your score is solid if you were only July late.
Click to expand...

July :laugh:

I applied late october, and by that I mean November 1st.

Where is god when you need him?
 
Darn. October? Have you contacted the schools? Ask them about your current status. I mean even email the dean of admission and express your "love" lol for the school. Make urself known. At this point, it's all your can do.
ZanP said:
July :laugh:

I applied late october, and by that I mean November 1st.

Where is god when you need him?
Click to expand...
 
mcchuster said:
Darn. October? Have you contacted the schools? Ask them about your current status. I mean even email the dean of admission and express your "love" lol for the school. Make urself known. At this point, it's all your can do.
Click to expand...

I'm in constant communication with my top 2 schools (as if I should have top choices at this point). I've been emailing about random things being sent to the school, seperate recommendations, the fees, spring semester courses (for pre-requisite purposes). I figured that if I'm this annoying, the only way to stop me would be to give me a shot and go from there :laugh:

Lets hope that doesn't backfire. :xf:
Thanks for your help!
 
You must log in or register to reply here.