The American Dental Association (ADA) announced new updates to the DAT scoring system, effective March 1, 2025. In this article, we review the new DAT score percentiles for both 2-digit DAT scores and 3-digit DAT scores.
Your DAT percentile serves a benchmark of how your performance stacks up against other dental school applicants. A high DAT percentile can help strengthen your dental school application, while a low DAT percentile would be worrisome.
2025 DAT Score Percentiles
The new, official DAT percentiles below are based on over 30,000 DAT attempts. Percentiles indicate what percentage of test takers scored below that specific score. A higher percentile indicates better performance. For example, a 95th percentile score means that 95% of test-takers score below that score, and only 5% of test takers score above that score.
For the Academic Average, here are the 2025 DAT percentiles for 2-digit scores.
If you're looking for the DAT score percentile's for 3-digit DAT scores, you find those below.
3-Digit DAT Score Percentiles
For 3-digit DAT score percentiles, we have data from the American Dental Association's official percentiles based on 30,000 DAT test takers. You can find the percentile rank for each section of the DAT below.
Generally, a score of 440 (81st percentile) or higher is considered competitive for most dental schools. However, the level of competitiveness varies by school. For example, top-tier programs often expect scores in the 90th percentile or higher, while some schools may accept lower scores if other aspects of your application are strong.
For context, the average applicant in UCLA's School of Dentistry incoming class had a 91st percentile DAT score. Meanwhile, Columbia's College of Dental Medicine's average DAT score for incoming students was at the 96th percentile.
Since each dental school may consider your DAT score and DAT percentile in different sections of the application, such as your Academic Average or Total Science DAT percentile, you can find the latest DAT percentiles for all sections of the DAT below.
Scored lower on the DAT than you were expecting? A great personal statement and application can make up for a lower DAT score. With our personal statement and admissions advising services, we've helped pre-dentals get accepted to dental school from the entire spectrum of DAT scores. Book a free consult here to learn how we can help you get accepted to dental school, regardless of your DAT score percentile.
About the Author: Andrew Ghadimi, DDS
Dr. Andrew graduated from UCLA's School of Dentistry and served on the ADEA AADSAS Advisory Board, helping run the dental school application, AADSAS. He also served as the National Pre-Dental Liaison for the American Dental Education Association (ADEA), the same organization that runs the dental school application. While at UCLA's School of Dentistry, he also served on the Council of Students, Residents, and Fellows Board as the Pre-Dental Chair for California. He has mentored and advised 500+ pre-dental applicants on their journey to dental school and helped pre-dentals receive over $1.7M in scholarships, in addition to acceptances to some of the most competitive dental schools in the country, including Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, UF, UCLA, and many others.
The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this article belong solely to the author, and not necessarily to UCLA, UCLA School of Dentistry, ADEA, or any other organization.