Guest predentalguy Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 Be easy..... although an 89.2 is an amazing percentage you have to think that most people now a days have very competitive percentages.. and so the admissions committee needs to have other cutoffs... and plenty of people are just good at doing bio or chem ...... a dentist is one who can communicate with there patients at an effective level... bio and chem and percentage for that matter are certainly not great measures of that... in fact the RC may be of higher importance for this reason... and i can almost bet that most schools with the competiton getting even more competitive every year... in about 10 years...will have to rely moreso on the DAT and RC marks much like the MCAT cutoffs have become so integral to the medical application... So its not the fact that the RC is a stand alone mark that is more important to the application than the GPA... but rather.. the RC is a component of the application that can decipher the best of the best.. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sensodyne Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 The Canadian DAT is worthless as a standardized measure of one's reading comprehension ability. That's a pretty strong statement...I know... 2 years ago, my friend wrote the OAT and then a month later, wrote the DAT. The reading section were identical. Needless to say, he finished that section well ahead of time before anyone else. This is is not the only mistake CDA has made in the past. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnwoo19 Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 I agree with sensodyne. The RC on the DAT is not about being able to comprehend the passage, but being able to find the answers within the text. That means a person totally incapable of understanding the passage may be able to score reasonably high. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest buzz15 Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 Hey Sensodyne, The DAT/OAT RC was the same thing this year...my girlfriend wrote the OAT (and did very well) then wrote the DAT and did well with an unbelievable 28 on RC...not fair to everyone else but c'est la vie. Like johnwoo19 said...it's the person who can read fast enough and remember all the right answers... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tonick Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 I'm a supporter of the DAT and all its components, because it is the only totally objective measure of an applicant's knowledge. Everyone knows that a certain amount of effort could get you a 90 in a course in one school, and a 70 in another school. I've studied at both of these types of Universities and I can guarantee you that. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sensodyne Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 it's objective but it's reliability and validity are another issue. ever heard of soap breaking during shipment? OAT and DAT similarities were already mentioned. question 67 and 68 (or something like those) from last year's november PAT had no right answers. The invigilator actually stopped us during ours for 3 mins b/c everyone was in panic. I wonder how many people just kept writing...at least one. so reliability was just addressed and now you're asking what about validity. well...carving! there's still no consensus whether it is actually an indicator of your future drilling skills. the DAT is unfortunately a joke compared to the MCAT. Thos of you who have taken it before will agree w/ me that the reading comprehension as well as the other sections demand far more intellict from the test-taker. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Gattuso19 Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 Agreed, I wrote the MCAT and DAT within months of eachother. No question the MCAT is in a different class of tests - both in preping and writing. If you don't believe me compare the two verbal sections. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest bebostyle Posted March 14, 2006 Report Share Posted March 14, 2006 for one, the mcat is about verbal reasoning...the dat is readhing comprehension..basically can you read and find info, and a FEW questions about reasoning....if you don't do wel in that section, which doesn't need any prep...it does say something ..fine some of it was basic retrieval and there is a time limit..but how else can they do this right? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ChinaMan2004 Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 well, I guess what sensodyne was getting at is that DAT is not a very good estimate of one's ability esp when what was required was simply skimming thru the passage and find some obvious answers. I believe this section was supposed to evaluate how well a person is able to absorb information in a limited amount of time. Since this is essentially what will happen during the first year of dentistry when you are facing tremendous amount of reading. But really...when think about it again... how does the ability to quickly retrieve a piece of information even relevant when if you are accepted, what you are required to do is far more than just retrieving facts from a chapter in that 500-pg textbook.... So I agree the RC is not a very well rounded section... this does not mean other sections of DAT are simply crapz... at least i think the PAT is very true in that it faithfully evaluates a person's perceptual ability which will faciliate the person's success in certain aspects of dentistry... also, this is the section you can't hardly prepare yourself for, so if you are good at it, then you just are....practice can prolly bring you up 1 mark...but to achieve a score more than 20, i think you need more than practice~ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tamkhan1 Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 first off, the carving is just useless. infact, uoft doesnt even look at carving anymore and US schools dont even have a carving section!! im pretty sure, 4 or 5 years down the line, carving is going off the dat.. overall, the dat is def. easier than the mcat and thats not cuz medicine is harder:b ..its only cuz medicine has A LOT more applicants. i mean, in a life sceince course, how many people actually want to do dentistry? out of a 100, hardly 10 or 15. as for RC, yeah, the CDA def. needs some new passages, man. nov 2005 dat had 2 passages that were stolen from the a previous month version of the US dat! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sensodyne Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 ok so moral of the story is: take the OAT and the US DAT before taking the Canadian DAT and you will ace the reading section. (fyi, OAT is being revised for those who are actually taking me seriously...well..I'm half serious) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest predentalguy Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 sensodyne.. U bring up some interesting points... the reason why i disagree with you is that there is no 'perfect' standardized test.. you wont be able to find that anywhere. So the examples of messed up PAT questions, broken carving soap.. or even the repeated RC section from the OAT, are all examples of glitches in the system... I think of it as a tradeoff... having such a large scale objectively standardized test.. you are bound to have repeated questions....mistakes in transport of materials etc... its a tradeoff... but the optimal solution is still gauging the applicants to decipher the best of the best.... johnwoo19... Sure the RC is about finding the answers in the passage.. but that still requires a keen reader who is able to go back to the passage and skim very quickly (do to the time limitations) and find the correct answer.. and if it were so easyyy... then why do many people do so bad in it... im sure many people would say that the RC is a tough section in the DAT... so ya reading fast enough is in my opinion an objective measurement of a individuals capacity to comprehend information quickly... I think as bebostyle pointed out the verbal section and the RC are differenttypes of tests... one for analytical purposes the other is more comprehension...both have there advantages and disadvantages.. Chinaman2005.... trust me in not working for the CDA... haha... but i think the RC is not that bad when it comes to measure a persons capacity to basically really quickly retrieve answers from a paragraph... it helps distinguish those who are faster readers.. and those who can work quickly under pressure... a lot of people cant find the right answer because they need to understand the entire paper before answering q's... now i dont think if one does better in the DAT they will automatically be better dentists or surgeons... there is no correlation there.. but still it is a standardized measure to differentiate between people in our competitive year... one last thing... i agree 100% with what tonick says.. cuz i go to uoft.. and i know that it has this image of being the worst and one of the harder universities when it comes to marks... so this is a good way of standardizing the pool.. but dont expect a flawless standardized test... plus who can complain of repeated questions! haha cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest johnwoo19 Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 I think the RC section of the DAT should be more like the reading comprehension of the SAT. For the SAT, you actually have to UNDERSTAND the passage. I seriously had no idea what the passages were talking about on the DAT - all I did was look at the questions, go back to the passage, and choose an answer that seemed to be the most analogous to the wording of the passage. I ended up with a score in the 20's. I seriously doubt that a high score on the RC section is an accurate representation of comprehension ability. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tonick Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 RC = a dentist reviewing his patient's chart in a matter of seconds, and getting the jist of it. Of course it's a good representation of comprehension ability! It is also a good test of overall language skills, which many dental applicants who have a strictly scientific background may lack. My other major is in the humanities so I'm used to speed reading through more wordy articles and texts, and that helped me a whole a lot on the RC. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest BeEasyy Posted March 15, 2006 Report Share Posted March 15, 2006 predentalguy, I still believe I have a point. I think one needs to be given credit based on aboveaverage performance in GPA. Generally, GPA is obtained over a number of years rather a few hours and in my opinion is a lot more indicative of a student strength that DAT is (not that I have a good GPA, I am just saying this in general). I think a real cut off would be a combination of DAT and GPA, as an stupid example a formula like Total = 3*GPA + 1*RC + 1*CompositeDAT or something along these line would seem a lot more reasonable to me than just not even giving someone an interview based on not doing too well in one section. Anywho, that being said, it doesn't change anything. Good luck to all who go for interview. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest 2oothfairy Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 Will we be finding out this week if we get an interview invite.. what day??? anyone know? Thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Audio Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 we don't know but i have a feeling it'll be earlier in the week than later. Just a feeling. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest predentalguy Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 on the website... it says: INTERVIEW INVITATIONS WILL BE SENT OUT THE WEEK OF MARCH 2OTH (All applicants will be notified of the status of their applications at that time) So im not sure which day... but im hoping it is Monday so we can just find out and move on cuz this wait is killing me...... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest tamkhan1 Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 true that..i think it'll be march 20th Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tonick Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 Oh man I'm so nervous, this is my last shot at a CDN school! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest predentalguy Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 Tonick... we are in the same boat man... ive been waiting for UWO badly... cuz i think this is my best shot at getting into a CDN school... just gotta wait and see i guess... cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest sensodyne Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 man...I'm going to be checking my email every 5 mins on Monday. The sad thing is that I'm not joking. :rollin Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Tonick Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 Hey predentalguy, did you apply to schools in the states? I think that's my only avenue right now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest predentalguy Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 tonick... actually i didnt apply to the states... i think if i dont get in CDN schools here I m gonna complete a masters and try again .... i wanna do a masters anyway either before or after dentistry.. so i figured if i dont get in this year it will be a masters before... haha... what about u ? whered u apply? cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Massari Posted March 19, 2006 Report Share Posted March 19, 2006 Man everybody wants to get in to UWO. I had my hopes at UBC but apparently I failed the interview. So I guess I can say UWO is my final chance as well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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