A correlational study of preadmission predictor variables and dental school performance

The purpose of this study was to determine the predictive validity of preadmission scores on the performance of 131 students from nine successive classes at the Harvard School of Dental Medicine. The predictors included high school rank, SAT Verbal and Quantitative, selectivity of undergraduate college, college GPA, and DAT Academic, and PAT averages. The performance scores included science GPA, clinical GPA, oral examination scores, and scores on Parts I and II of the dental National Board examinations. Correlation coefficients were calculated between each predictor and performance measure. Only one was significantly greater than zero: DAT Academic average was positively related to Part II Board scores (r = .29). The apparent lack of validity of the other predictors was attributed to their restricted range.