DAT Scores -English and French Stats

[Guest Spritzer5]

When I received my DAT scores in Jan-03 I was surprised to find that in several sections of the exam- including carving, the sciences, and PAT- the scores out of 30 and the percentile scores that correspond to them were extremely different in the English and French groups. For instance Science score of 19 translated to a percentile score of 58% on the english exam and 100% on the french exam. My understanding is the questions on both exams were the same. Perhaps I understand this incorrectly, but it seems to me that had I written the exam in French, my scores would have been much higher. Moreover, as there is no Reading comprehension test, one would not have to know much French anyways. I do acknowledge that far fewer people wrote the exam in the french language, but if the content is the same then the groups should be pooled.

[Guest Biochem10]

I'm not absolutely sure of this, but I have a friend in Dentistry in Quebec and I think they get some exemptions in the DAT. For instance, Dentistry in Quebec starts straight after CEGEP (which is essentially equivalent to 1st year university), it is my impression that your science background in CEGEP is much less than if you had done a year in university. I remember my friend being worried about it at first, but then she told me that they weren't marked the same as the Ontario students because they didn't have the same kind of background.

[Guest toothy]

now I wonder if it's possible to write the french DAT and try to apply to an english school with it?

[Guest quebecboy]

Actually, french schools don't consider the science scores. As long as you have the minimum scores for carving and perception, they don't take the DAT into consideration for admissions. So, french candidates probably spend less time studying for something that doesn't even count. Toothy, I don't know if you could, because we don't having the reading comprehension (and I know english schools take it into consideration). However, when I was doing it in Montreal (U de M) last year (Feb 2002), there were several people from Toronto up there doing the french Dat, so it might be possible. Better inform yourself with the university you want to get into, the Dat is pretty expensive, and if they don't accept the French Dat, it,s pretty much money thrown out the window.

 

Quebecboy

[Guest quebecboy]

By the way Spritzer, I don't think your scores would have been higher (unless your first language is french), because even though you might have been in the 100th percentile, the score itself is not normalized, meaning that your 19 (at 58th percentile) would still have been a 19 (at 100th percentile).

 

Quebecboy

[Guest kellyl20]

does the 19 mean that 58% of the people ie 42% of the people writing it had done better than you? and the 19 on the French scale means that 19 was the top mark with the people writing the french version?