Realistically, how difficult is it to get 22+ on the DAT now

[mpatel24]

I tried to research this question on sdn, but they were all posted around 2008-2011. I was curious how difficult is it now to get a 22 on the DAT. Recently on SDN, people have been posting these awesome scores. People are constantly saying that the 2007 and 2009 sample ADA are too easy and outdated. So enough of my rambling, is it foolish of me expecting a 22+ on the DAT if I'm just an average hardworking student?

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[SmileDesignersDDS]

Talk is cheap. We can talk about getting 22+ all day. Nobody can tell you how to do this. Just get the right materials like cliffs ap, Cambells bio, destroyer books for science and math, crack dat pat for reading and PAT etc. if you study hard and efficiently who know what you can do. Maybe a 21 or maybe a 26! It's up to you

 

[DogeDDS]

There's no way to quantify it. Yes, it's difficult. I'm sure plenty of "hardworking" students score 21 or below. Don't judge what the majority of people score based on the breakdowns that are posted on here. The people who are scoring below 20 probably aren't as inclined to give a breakdown/post their scores. For every 1 person that scores 22+, there's probably at least 10 that score below that. That said, it's very possible to score 22+

 

[Toadesque]

I would say in general it's more difficult to get a 22+ now than it was in 2009. I mean anyone who has taken the DAT in the last year or so and also the 2009 ADA exam can tell you the questions are no longer as straight forward or simple, speaking mostly of the sciences.

 

[distressstudent]

There's no way to quantify it. Yes, it's difficult. I'm sure plenty of "hardworking" students score 21 or below. Don't judge what the majority of people score based on the breakdowns that are posted on here. The people who are scoring below 20 probably aren't as inclined to give a breakdown/post their scores. For every 1 person that scores 22+, there's probably 10 that score below that. That said, it's very possible to score 22+

I guess-estimate that for every one person that scores 22, 35 people score below that

source: 2009 AA score distribution

 

[Chga]

Well if you work hard and assuming 22 is 95 percentile, then you have 5% chance of getting a 22 or better.

 

[customx]

Well if you work hard and assuming 22 is 95 percentile, then you have 5% chance of getting a 22 or better.

I don't believe that there is a 5% chance of scoring a 22 or better. With enough hard work, focus, determination and motivation, anyone can score a 22+ and not leave anything up to chance. The DAT is not an exam which you can take shortcuts preparing for. If you put in the work, your score will reflect that. I was hoping to score a 20 or above, so needless to say I am thrilled with my 22 AA and TS. I'm not a genius, but I studied my tail off and got a score which reflects that.

 

[SmileDesignersDDS]

Bump

 

[hunterx2]

Not that hard. The DAT is mostly knowledge based as opposed to innate intelligence based (like a IQ test). So the more you study the higher your score.

I bet if you studied hard for a full year it would be tough NOT to get a 22+.

 

[distressstudent]

I would argue that the PAT is administered very much like certain IQ tests though. But even an IQ test can be studied/prepared for with the correct resources, so like yeah.

 

[divinewind]

If you want a balanced score it might take some effort, but to just get an academic average of 22 isn't that bad. All you have to do is get a good score on reading, which does not seem difficult at all. My brother only did one practice reading section before the test where he tried to read the passage and then answer the questions and he got around half of it wrong. On test day he decided to skip the passage initially and just skim for the answers, figuring that even if he only gets through 2/3 of the sections, as long as those 2/3 was right, then he did better than he would have otherwise. When he did that he actually finished with 10 minutes to spare and got a 28 on reading, which pulled up his AA to a 23. When I took the DAT this past saturday I have looked at a total of 10 reading questions, used his strategy and got a 27 on reading. From our experiences it seems like you will get about 3-5 questions where the answers is not explicitly stated in the passage. Math is another section which can drastically boost your average with minimal work. As long as you have a good grasp of algebra, all you have to do is memorize the sine identities.

The particularly hard section is bio as how you do there is pretty much proportional to the effort you put forth studying. There really isn't any shortcuts here. For ogro focus on SN2/Sn1 and E2/E1. Aldol condensation also seems like something they like to include at least one question about. Other than that just memorize what different reagents do. The mechanism is not as important on the DAT as it is in orgo class. The road maps in DAT destroyer is really good for this.

Short version: Do well on reading and it will do wonders for your average. All questions that don't ask for a good title for passage, main idea of passage, or tone of paragraph you can pretty much find answer in passage word for word no inference needed

 

[Glimmer1991]

It is hard to get a 22+. However, SDN presents a skewed representation of the applicant pool. This website seems to attract the most hard-working, determined, and intelligent applicants... and of course, those are the ones that are going to have the highest scores.

You can look at the hard numbers that schools give and see that it is very rare for people to score above a 23 or so. However, you see quite a few of these on SDN--which just sort of supports my theory. 🙂

However, I also believe there are more people scoring higher nowadays than there were in 2009. I think this is largely due to the fact that this site has enabled people to easily figure out which study resources are the best.

 

[distressstudent]

I actually don't know how percentiles work. But for someone who does, is it actually possible for something to be "top-heavy"? For example, off the top of my head, I think there was 250 scores that are 23 and above in 2009. But given the same sample size (DAT test takers have been pretty consistent), can that number of 23+ DAT testers actually double in size but still maintain the same percentile/averages by having more people also scoring lower? I wish they would release an updated distribution of the DAT scores.