retake or no CDAT?

[guiffre]

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Hello all,

Just received my DAT results for November 2016. Have the option to rewrite in February for this cycle and wanted to get a few opinions as to whether that mightn't be necessary.

Reading and Comprehension 18

Biology 20

Chemistry 19

Science total 19

Academic Average 19

PAT 20

The rest of my application is pretty strong. I'm an older student (30) and my first undergrad GPA was 3.85.

All marks from prerequisite courses taken since have been A+'s (4.3) with an overall average of 94% (Bio, Chem, Physics, Physiology, Organic Chemistry).

I've been working, volunteering and have been a community organizer for years and have also done a lot of shadowing.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks.

 

[GDome]

I think your marks are pretty solid and overall it depends on where you're aiming to go school wise (American/ Canadian) (Super competitive/ Less).

 

[guiffre]

I think your marks are pretty solid and overall it depends on where you're aiming to go school wise (American/ Canadian) (Super competitive/ Less).

thanks for the reply. applying to Canadian schools this time around. all except Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

 

[GDome]

thanks for the reply. applying to Canadian schools this time around. all except Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba.

So I'm going to assume UofT, Western, UBC, McGill?

 

[guiffre]

yup, and Dalhousie

 

[GDome]

I remember skimming through a book containing all the statistics of entrance and for UofT and Western, they had around an admissions of 3.85- 3.9 and 21 score DAT avg. Your GPA seems to be right up there, DAT scores a little lower but I really don't think schools weigh it as heavily as we think. Your volunteering and shadowing can more than make up for them. So really its up to you whether you'd like to retake the cDAT or not.

 

[guiffre]

I really appreciate your feedback.

From what I've been told by three different admissions officers today, the DAT scores are used as a potential discriminator AFTER the interview process.

For instance, Dalhousie uses GPA and non-academic support materials to select interviewees. You interview is scored independently (the panel doesn't have any information about you) and they add that score to the rest of your application. According to Dal the overall weight is 30% GPA, 25% prerequisite GPA, 35% interview, 10% DAT. They sometimes use the DAT score in the event of a tie.

McGill has abandoned the DAT and Western only looks at RC, Bio and Chem (which unfortunately actually works against me in that case).

I think I'm going to proceed as is right now unless anyone out there thinks that is really ill-advised, in which case I am happy to hear that argument. Just hope I'm not kicking myself in July.