<p>Do things like MCAT’s content, level of difficulty, and so on differ in some way across different nations? I think I heard that Canadian version of DAT is harder (or easier… I don’t exactly remember) than American version. Is that the same for MCAT?</p>
<p>I think the MCAT is only written in Canada and the US, and both countries write the same exam on a given test day.</p>
<p>For the DAT, Canada and the US each have their own separate test (Dental Aptitute in Canada, and Dental Admissions in the US) The Canadian one can be used for American dental school admissions, but not vice versa, because the American version doesn’t have a manual dexterity component.
[The</a> Canadian Dental Association - The Dental Profession - Dental Aptitude Test - DAT Information](<a href=“Canadian Dental Association”>Canadian Dental Association)</p>
<p>Won’t be the same exam on a given test day…</p>
<p>Even with the paper MCAT, testers at the same location were highly unlikely to have the same version of the test. Possible to have the same passages but in different order, but not the same version of the exam. Given the way Computer Based Testing is set up - as I understand it - each exam is created as a unique entity when the tester signs in, and is downloaded in it’s entirety to the computer being used for the exam before the exam begins (the MCAT is not a computer adapted test in which the exam changes based on right or wrong answers as the test progresses).</p>
<p>Essentially each exam is set up as a template with a certain number of easy, medium, and hard difficulty questions/passages, so that everyone has an exam of similar difficulty. The computer just goes into the database and selects passages/questions that fit the exam profile so that everyone has an exam of similar objective difficulty (certainly, depending on the topics covered, some people will find a particular version easier or harder than another version).</p>
<p>Right, makes sense for test security, fairness, etc (even with the SAT exam there’s multiple versions for a given test day)
A poor choice of words in my earlier post…I probably should have said taht the MCAT is administered by the AAMC for both Canadian test centres and American ones, so it’s the “same” test, whereas different organizations administer the DAT, depending on which country it is in, hence the differences.</p>