19 The Dental
Admission
Test (DAT)
Importance of the DAT
Contents of the DAT
Preparing for the DAT
Sample DAT questions
Scoring of the DAT
Canadian DAT
This test is conducted two times a year (October
and April) and is sponsored by the
Division of Educational Measurements, American
Dental Association, 211 East Chicago
Avenue, Chicago, IL 60611. Students planning to
enter in the fall of the following year
should take the examination in the preceding
April or October. The choice between
these two dates is dependent on your state of
preparedness (since admission announce-
ments are not made before December 1). If you
plan to use the summer to study, the
DAT should be taken in October; otherwise, it
should be taken earlier and gotten out of
the way (as well as ensure an opportunity to
repeat it if necessary).
An application for the DAT can be obtained from
the Division of Educational
Measurements at the address above, or from the
predental advisor. The application
should include a recent photo and the $150 fee.
This fee covers the cost of sending five
official transcripts of scores to selected
dental schools, as well as a copy for the appli-
cant and the predental advisor, and DAT
preparation materials. Additional official tran-
scripts of scores can be sent if requested. The
charge is $5 each if ordered at the time of
applying or if requested later.
Testing centers for the Saturday administration
are located in one or more cities in
each state, as well as in the District of
Columbia. Sunday (or Monday) administrations
are provided in about 10 states and require a
letter from a religious leader confirming
the applicant's affiliation with a
Sabbath-observing religious group. Foreign testing
cen-
ters are set up as needed, but require special
arrangements. The additional fee for a test
administered in a foreign country is
$25.
IMPORTANCE OF THE DAT
About six weeks after taking the DAT, each
applicant will receive a personal copy of the
scores (with an explanation of them) at the
permanent address listed on the original
application form. DAT scores are based on the
number of correct answers recorded. The
scores are reported to the dental schools
requested by the applicant as standard scores
rather than raw scores. The conversion of raw
scores to standard scores is based on the
distribution of applicant performances. Scores
used in the testing program range from 1
to 30. There is no passing or failing score,
but a standard score of 15 signifies average
performance on a national basis.
By the use of standard rather than raw scores
it is possible to compare the perfor-
mance of one applicant with the performance of
all applicants. Also, since the DAT is
designed to predict performance in both
academic and technical areas, two average
scores are included in the test report--the
academic average and the Perceptual Ability
Test (PAT) average. The former is an average of
quantitative reasoning, verbal reasoning,
User Comments Add a comment…