In 1990, 16AA was the average entering DAT score for US dental school applicants. If you had that score, you could expect dental school acceptance as long as your GPA was a 3.0 and higher. If you had a 16AA with a 3.3 or higher, you were golden. Then in the late 90's, the scores began to kick up as more people applied to dental schools. 17AA was the new entering average at most dental schools, and people with 15's and 16's were still getting in, although fewer in number than the early 90's when competition was much less aggressive. Not as many worries back then.
Now, the trend seems to be that 18AA DAT will get you in somewhere with an excellent GPA and solid background. Anything less than that and you are taking a risk. If the current trend continues, we are looking at 19AA and 3.5 GPA being the new national averages within 2-3 years. The days of scoring in the 'teens on the DAT and getting into dental school appear to be numbered after all.
I know one of my interviewers smiled and told me that guys like him wouldn't have made it to dental school if they applied now. You really cannot afford to mess up in college today like in the past when a 3.3 and 17 DAT were considered competitive marks. If you had below a 3.0 GPA, you aimed for 18 or higher on the DAT to compensate for that iffy semester of C's and that proved your worth. Shelling out hundreds of dollars for prep books and software was not the norm. Perhaps you owned the blue Kaplan DAT book, and that was about it.
Now you are required to pour over DAT prep manuals and gut out loaded semesters of college not for 18's on the DAT and half-A's and half-B's, but for a majority of A's and 20's and higher on the DAT to be considered a competitive applicant at many upper-tier schools. Predental students have little idea how much is asked of them today (academically and financially) compared to students as recently as 2000. So as we move toward the end of the decade, the competition for a seat at US dental schools continues at an unprecedented pace.
