Can You Cancel Your DAT Score Before It's Released?

Yes, you can cancel your DAT score — but only in the short window right after you finish testing, before you've seen a single number. Once you view your score or leave that screen, the choice is gone for good. And here's the part that surprises most students: canceling doesn't make the attempt disappear. Schools can still see that you tested and canceled.

That last fact changes the whole calculation. Plenty of students walk out of the Survey of Natural Sciences feeling wrecked, push through the rest of the exam anyway, then stare at "view score" vs. "cancel score" like it's a coin flip. It shouldn't be. Here's exactly how cancellation works, what it actually erases (less than you'd think), and how to make this call with data instead of panic.

How Can You Cancel Your DAT Score? The Actual Process

When you finish the Quantitative Reasoning section — the last section of the exam — you're given an on-screen choice before your unofficial results ever appear: view your scores now, or cancel the entire attempt. This happens right there at the Prometric test center, on the same computer, in the same sitting.

A few things about this process matter more than students expect:

• It's all-or-nothing. You can't cancel just your weakest section — say, a rough Organic Chemistry set — and keep the rest. Canceling wipes the entire attempt's score, not a piece of it.
• It happens before you see anything. This isn't a "request a cancellation later" process. The decision point is baked into the same screen that would otherwise show you your unofficial Academic Average, Total Science, PAT, and section scores.
• It's final. Once you choose to view your score, or once you leave that screen having viewed it, there's no walking it back.

Exact button wording and screen flow can be updated by the ADA, so confirm the current process at ada.org before your test date — don't rely on a forum description of a screen someone saw years ago.

Can You Cancel Your DAT Score Before It's Released — How Long Is the Window?

The window is narrow on purpose: it's the few minutes at the end of your appointment, before your unofficial score report displays. There's no multi-day grace period where you go home, sleep on it, and call in to cancel later. Once you leave that testing room having seen your score, that score is locked in as your official result for that attempt.

This is why cancellation decisions get made under terrible conditions. You've just finished a roughly five-hour appointment — Survey of Natural Sciences, the Perceptual Ability Test, an optional break, Reading Comprehension, and Quantitative Reasoning — and you have seconds, not days, to decide. Anyone who calls this a calm, rational moment has never actually sat the exam.

Do Schools Still See a Canceled DAT Score?

Yes. This is the single most misunderstood part of the whole process. Canceling your score does not erase the fact that you tested. Your official DAT report, which reaches schools through the ADEA AADSAS application, lists every attempt you've made — and a canceled attempt shows up on that report as a canceled attempt, sitting right next to whatever scores you post later.

So a cancellation isn't a clean do-over — it's a flag. Admissions committees who look closely at your testing history will see that you sat the exam on a given date and chose not to release the result. Most won't obsess over a single cancellation followed by a strong score, but "I'll just cancel it and pretend it never happened" isn't how this actually works. For the fuller picture of how committees weigh an imperfect testing history, see our guide on how much your DAT score really matters.

Can You Cancel Your DAT Score After You've Already Seen It?

No. Once your unofficial score displays on screen, that attempt is done — there's no retroactive cancellation, no calling the ADA the next morning for a do-over, and no way to make a viewed score "un-happen." The whole point of the cancel-before-you-see-it design is that the decision has to be made blind, before the outcome can bias it.

It also means you can't cancel a score weeks later because a target school raised its minimum, or because you'd rather retake sooner than planned. If you're rethinking your timeline for reasons unrelated to test-day performance, look at rescheduling before your appointment instead — see our guide on how to reschedule your DAT for the process, deadlines, and fees.

Should You Cancel Your DAT Score? A Data-Driven Way to Decide

Our honest take, having both sat this exam: the cancel button exists for genuine disasters — you got sick mid-test, a technical glitch derailed a section, something in your life blew up that morning and you never should have shown up. It is not a safety net for "I think I bombed Organic Chemistry."

The reason is simple math. A rough feeling about the whole test is a terrible predictor of your actual score, because test-day anxiety inflates every miss in your memory. Meanwhile, a canceled attempt still shows up on your record — so you'd be trading a real, possibly-fine score for a flag that tells schools nothing except that something happened.

The decision you actually want to make is a go/no-go call, and it should happen before test day, using data — not in the parking lot after, using vibes. Here's how that plays out:

Notice what's doing the real work there: full-length practice data, not test-day emotion. If your trendline has been consistent for weeks, the version of you sitting in that Prometric chair already knows roughly what score is coming. Trust that person, not the exhausted one staring at the cancel button five hours later.

What to Do If You've Already Canceled Your DAT Score

If you've already canceled, don't spiral — but treat it as a real signal, not a wasted appointment. Confirm current retake wait periods and any fees at ada.org, since both change over time and an outdated forum number will only mess up your planning. Then use our guide on rescheduling your DAT to lock in a new date.

Before you rebook, get honest about why you canceled. A genuine disruption just needs to be addressed and left behind. Gut-level panic about your performance is a prep-data problem — build a real trendline with full-length, full-timing practice tests before your next attempt, so your next go/no-go call is made with numbers instead of nerves.