Roughly $117,360, at the point where it matters most. Move your Academic Average from
19 to 20 and the cheapest school whose class average you meet drops from
$467,217 to $349,857. Same degree. Same licence.
Drag the slider and watch what your score is worth.
What this does and does not tell you. This shows the schools whose published class average is at or
below your score, and what those seats cost. An average is the midpoint of an admitted class — about half
that class scored below it — so it is not a cutoff, and this is not an admissions prediction.
Committees weigh GPA, experience, interviews and state residency too. Cost figures are 2024 estimates;
averages are the most recent each school has published. Confirm both with the school.
Your DAT Academic Average
Drag to see what each point buys you.
20Academic Average
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Schools whose class average you meet or beat (of 48)
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Cheapest of those, four years, with interest
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Your percentile rank (ADA national data)
Every school, against your score
Green means your score is at or above that school’s published class average. Grey means it is below.
Neither is a verdict on your application — it is just where you sit against the midpoint.
At or above the class averageBelow the class average
The cheapest way to save $117,360 is to study correctly for eight weeks.
You cannot negotiate tuition. You cannot re-do your GPA. The DAT is the one number on your application that is still moving — and it is the one that decides whether you are choosing between offers or grateful for one. 40 full-length tests, infinite generated PAT questions, an AI tutor that re-teaches every miss, and a 60-day plan.
Every pre-dent asks the same question: “what score do I need?” It is the wrong question, because it treats
admission as the finish line. Look again at the table. The schools are not interchangeable. They differ by
$361,085
across four years — for a credential that is, functionally, identical.
Hitting a school’s average makes you the median applicant there. It gets you considered. What it does not get
you is leverage: a second offer to weigh against the first, a merit scholarship conversation, or a realistic
shot at the public school in your state that costs half of what the private one does. That leverage is the entire
financial argument for over-preparing, and it is why “good enough to get in” quietly costs people more
than any other decision they make as an applicant.
Frequently asked questions
Does a higher DAT score really save you money?
Indirectly, but the numbers are large. Your DAT score is a major input into which schools admit you and which offer merit scholarships. Among the 48 schools in this dataset the four-year cost ranges from $349,857 to $710,942 — a spread of $361,085 for the same DMD and the same licence. Widening the set of schools that will take you is the only way to get access to the cheaper end of that range.
What does one DAT point actually cost me?
In this dataset the largest single-point cliff is at an Academic Average of 19: moving from 19 to 20 takes the cheapest school whose class average you meet from $467,217 to $349,857 — a difference of $117,360. It also takes you from 2 schools at or above whose average you sit, to 14.
Does meeting a school's average DAT mean I will get in?
No. An average is the midpoint of an admitted class, not a cutoff — roughly half of that class scored below it. Admissions committees weigh GPA, science GPA, experience, letters, interviews and (for public schools) state residency. This tool tells you which schools' published class averages your score meets or beats. It does not, and cannot, predict an admissions decision.
What DAT score should I aim for?
Higher than the average of the school you want, not equal to it. Matching an average makes you a median applicant; clearing it decisively is what creates choice between offers and opens merit scholarship conversations. Given the six-figure cost spread between schools, aiming for the 99th percentile is a rational financial decision, not an act of perfectionism.
Which scale does this use?
Both. Enter your score on the old 1–30 scale or the new 200–600 scale and the tool converts between them using the ADA's official concordance table. School averages are shown on both scales for the same reason — schools currently publish in a mix of the two.
Don’t study to get in. Study to choose.
Built by 97th-percentile scorers: 40 full-length tests on the real 200–600 scale, an 11,000+ question bank, infinite PAT questions, and an AI tutor that closes every gap in 60 days.