What do percentages mean?

[marymatthews]

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If someone receives a score of 20 on RC with a percentage of 64%, how does that differ from a score of 20 on RC with a percentage of 94%?
What is the difference? Does it mean the 94% test was harder? What do the percentages tell you exactly?
Also, when ADA send the DAT score report, are the percentages on the score report they send to schools? Or do they only send the score itself?
Thanks

 

[gigawatt]

I don't think you see 30 point swings like that, those percentiles are supposed to indicate the percentage of test takers scoring at or below what you scored in a given section. They tend to be in flux, supposedly because it changes as people take the test and isn't finalized until the end of the year.

The weird thing, though, is that our standardized scores are supposed to be comparable across test versions and dates, but I have never heard of those changing...even though the percentiles do?! So I don't really get that.

But to answer your question, no schools don't see percentiles--only the standard scores for the reason above.

 

[marymatthews]

So is it not a good idea to send my unofficial score report to schools right after taking my DAT since they would see my percentages?

 

[gigawatt]

Well, the main reason you would fax an unofficial score report is that you already submitted AADSAS, were mailed out, and don't want to let your DAT score coming through hold things up. In that case, by all means, fax it in. Percentiles or not, who cares?

Keep in mind that you should check if a given school wants an unofficial report by calling in advance, though. Not all schools want/take them.