The CASPer Test for Dental Program Admissions in the USA

Dental programs in the USA are always overwhelmed with the candidate inflow every year. Therefore, admission committees in certain programs take assistance through peripheral assessment tools to get/judge applicants. One such test to gauge people skills and to get a holistic perspective of the candidate’s persona is the CASPer test.

What’s the Casper test & Its Importance?

Casper is the Computer-Based Assessment for Sampling Personal Characteristics. It is a test that some dental programs require as an obligation to select candidates who they find compassionate, ethical, empathetic, motivated, resilient, and with decent overall interpersonal skills to suit their program needs.

It serves as a valuable indicator for selectors as to who they would prefer to interview since this assessment, along with other traditional and obligatory scoring criteria like the GPA, the INBDE (the INBDE is a pass/fail exam), the TOEFL, the Statement of Purpose, Letter of recommendation, clinical experience, etc. gives a more holistic perspective of the candidate to the selector. It tells them more about the backstage human skills responsible for the numbers and the scores. As a professional, you are bound to encounter situations where you need to examine, assess, and finally decide on your course of action.

CASPer Test Rules and Structure

The exam is an open-response situational judgment test. The test is an amalgamation of 12 scenario-based sections, of which 8 are video-based scenarios, and 4 are written scenarios. The order of the presentation is random and jumbled. Each scenario, after being played or displayed in written format in front of your screen, will be followed by a 30-second reflection period, after which you will be shown three open-ended questions.

Regarding the timing and submission, the candidates are given five minutes to type in suitable responses for all three questions. Once submitted, a candidate cannot go back to edit or delete their original responses or play the video again. A candidate should not fret too much about grammatical errors in their response as the test raters judge responses based on content.

The entire test can last for 60-90 mins, with an optional 10-minute break given halfway through the test. The response to each scenario is rated by a different human rater who is a diverse group of people. Once a test has been rated it is sent automatically to the programs selected by the candidate.

University Requirements

As of April 2023, the Casper test is a mandatory requirement for admission to a few universities, including:

• Indiana University
• The University of California San Francisco
• Temple University
• California Northstate University
• Case Western Reserve University
• The University of Louisville
• The University of Utah

However, some universities, such as Boston University and the University of Missouri-Kansas City, offer the Casper test as an optional requirement for admission.