US and Canadian DAT

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msbdental

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I think it's my turn to give back to SDN after using it so extensively for all my questions :)

Background:
I am a Canadian and a very "non-traditional" applicant. I have a bachelor in engineering and a masters in healthscience and after several years of work in the industry as an engineer I decided that I wanted to become a dentist. Since I wanted to cast a wide net and because of some other complicated timing issues, I took both the US and Canadian DATs and applied to dental schools in both US and Canada.

My Scores breakdown:
US DAT: Bio - 26, Chem - 30, Orgo - 29, RC - 17 :(, Math - 20, PAT- 23, TS - 30, AA - 24
Canadian DAT: Bio - 21, Chem - 23, RC: 20, PAT - 23, TS - 22, AA - 21

Study material:
- Kaplan Online course for everything - I wouldn't recommend Kaplan for PAT and the math is much easier than the real DAT
- Bio: Cliff Notes
- PAT: Crack the DAT software

US vs. Canadian DAT:
There were a few reasons that I did better in US exam compared to the Canadian and my lower scores in the CDAT were not necessarily because of the difficulty level of CDAT. I took my USDAT at my peak and the CDAT three month later while I was working full time (with a lot of travelling) since my USDAT and definitely not at my peak. Nevertheless there were some differences between the two exams that contributed to my lower CDAT score.

Bio: I definitely spent most of my study time on Bio. I am very good at Cell Bio, Biochem and Anatomy/Physiology. I've taken a few courses on these topics in undergrad but I have never taken any Bio courses in Ecology and Zoology etc. Unfortunately, I found the Canadian exam to have a much stronger emphasis on these topics which were my weak spots that I hadn't invested much time on. For CDAT takers, I would strongly recommend spending more time on those topics. I think Cliff Notes is a good resource for that. Regarding the other bio topics, the two exams were very similar.

Chem: I have always been very good in Chemistry so I didn't spend too much time on this. I found the exams very comparable and not too difficult. Although I still don't know why I didn't score higher in the CDAT chem.

RC: This was definitely my weakest topic and the one I avoided practicing for. and yes, at the end it did bite me in the a$$. So if you're not very good at this make sure to practice a lot. Although I'm still not convinced practice makes any difference on RC :) I don;t think either exams really test your comprehension or English skills anyway. I am not a native English speaker and I've never considered myself a fast reader but my English is pretty good overall. I have taken other standardized English exams and have done well. The most important thing in DAT RC is to remain calm and stick to one strategy (which I didn't do either). I think the search and destroy DOES NOT WORK for the USDAT. There are a lot of questions that require a good understanding of the passage. The CDAT is very different. You have 10min less and the same number of questions and passage length but the passages are easier and questions are bit more straightforward so search and destroy works much better.

PAT: I found the USDAT a bit more difficult but maybe the main reason was that the exam is computer-based and i prefer paper for this topic. In general I was doing very well in my practice tests and my only weak spot was the damn angle ranking. I'm pretty sure that's what I messed up in both exams. without this topic I think I would score much higher. Remember the best strategy for keyhole and top/front/side sections is elimination. I found the CDAT in particular much easier. Specially in hole punch and cube counting. The CDAT had more shapes in the cube counting section but the shapes were simpler than USDAT. I finished going through the whole PAT section in CDAT in about 40mins so I had an extra 20mins for review - maybe that ended up costing me since I changed a few answers in angle ranking section. Overall, as almost everyone agrees, the "Crack the DAT" is the best resource for PAT in both exams.

I know this is a long post but it is still missing a lot of details so let me know if you have any questions!

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Congratulations on those scores! Since Canadian dental schools only look at the Canadian DAT scores, your RC score should be enough to make UWO Schulich dentistry's RC cutoff and your AA scores are competitive for UofT :)

To add on to what msbdental said, the Canadian DAT reading comprehension tests are completely different than the one on the American DAT. The questions on the Canadian DAT reading comprehension section tend to be more straightforward and you can find most of the answers right in the passage.
 
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Congrats on the two sets of scores. I could not imagine taking the DAT twice. You have an amazing tolerance for pain!! Those scores are awesome though!!!!!!
 
UBC, USask,Uoft, and Dalhousie take the American dat. Western only takes the American dat if you are living in the states or are an international applicant.
 
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