I want to go to PA school, but need your help!

[alexj2005]

Hello everyone, I've been a lurker for some time but decided to finally register in hopes that you guys could offer me some guidance. I do apologize in advance for the long post but hope you'll read it anyway.

 

First a little background info: 

 

I am 28 years old, living in Florida ( in case that makes any difference lol). I graduated high school in 2005 with a 3.8 unweighted GPA and simultaneously received an AA degree from the local community college at the same time. My GPA at the community college was 3.41. Then I was admitted into the University of Florida where I started in August 2005. My major was nutritional sciences and it had all of the prerequisites needed so I went that route.

 

Around the time I went off to college, 18 years old, first time living away from home, a know-it-all, feeling invincible, I started hanging around the wrong crowd. I started caring too much about making friends and having a good time. Slowly I developed some bad habits that included drinking and smoking marijuana. In the beginning of my time at UF, I really wasn't doing too bad at all, I was still getting decent grades. As time went on, my drug habits got worse and I started doing more and more, leaving less time for school. My grades started to reflect this and for the first time in my life I was receiving C's, D's and even F's. The real shocker for me was when I was put on academic dismissal. I tried to tell myself I didn't have a problem, that it was just me not taking classes seriously enough, so I never quit. With the help of my advisors I was  let back in, only to eventually be dismissed again. I didn't know what to do with myself so I took some time off. Eventually I realized I want to make something of myself so I needed to figure my life out and with the help of my advisor, she told me that I would need to take a study skills class at the community college down the road and if I did well she would let me back in and allow me to try and finish. So I did that and Ace'd the study skills class. And as she said, she let me in in order to finish my degree. The problem was I still had this bad drug habit. But I wasn't about to let that stop me from finishing my degree, so I pushed and I pushed. Somehow, I managed to pick myself up just enough to get out of the deficit hole I had dug myself in, received pretty good grades actually the last few semesters and graduated with a 2.01 UF GPA. But when I moved home, I wasn't around the crowds anymore, I wasn't around the marijuana and the alcohol. I knew it was time to grow up in a sense and I think finally finishing my bachelors helped me close that chapter of my life. 

 

I was able to kick my habits and no longer drink or smoke marijuana and decided to really begin working on my future. Even with my bad habits I was able to pick myself up and finish my bachelors degree so I know I could do much better clean! I enrolled in the EMT training course at the community college near my house and am about to finish that this week. I can't stress enough how different I feel without the drugs. It's like finally having this weight lifted off my chest (literally can breathe easier too lol). The point of all this really anyway, is to ask what my chances would be on eventually making it into a PA school, after gaining enough direct patient experience and doing really well on the GRE?

 

Now I know most schools require a 3.0 minimum GPA, and some a bit less, but my cumulative GPA between the community colleges and UF is currently a 2.43. Obviously this isn't great, but my record would show that I was an excellent student originally and then the trend started going downward. But would any school even look at an application with a GPA that low? I know at this point it is impossible for me to apply but I'm asking for advice for future cycles. 

 

If I were to work as an EMT to gain say 1,000 hours of direct experience, have glowing letters of recommendation, and a solid essay along with it, what would be my chances? I ask because a lot of schools don't require a specific number of hours or some requirements are a lot less. And most likely since that won't work, what would you guys recommend I do from here? Should I consider a post-bacc program at one of the universities here? Or should I just go non-degree and retake some of the classes I already took and did poorly in (received a C in biochemistry for example) to show that I am a better person and student now and could handle these courses? But even if I did that, would it make any difference since I have such a low undergrad GPA? And would those even be calculated in my CASPA GPA?

 

The truth is I was an excellent student until I developed some really bad habits, and now that I've done some cleaning up and growing up, I feel like my old self again and I want to chase my dreams again if that makes any sense. I know I can handle the work load and could succeed in the profession, but I just need a chance to prove myself. Since my initial grades were good, and then went way downhill, and then came back up some at the end, what would you guys recommend my pathway be?

 

Since I am about to finish my EMT certification, I plan on using it to help get my experience and I have been shadowing a PA for some time now. I just want to know what to do next, should I work and gain experience while retaking classes I did poorly in, maybe take some new science courses as well? Or should I go for a post-bacc program to help bring up my GPA?

 

I appreciate any and all advice, I know what I want to do and I am determined to do it, I just hope my past doesn't come back to haunt me and prevent me from ever getting into PA school. Thanks again!

[Johnson2018pac]

Alex, that is a deep dark hole that your gpa is in and it's going to be hard to even get that up to the minimum before your application would even hit the desk of an admissions committee. If a school says 3.0 minimum and you submit an application with a 2.9 gpa, it's going to get filtered out. They just don't have time to go through the thousands of applications and look at every persons individual scenario and see that their is an upward trend or something that stopped them from getting good grades at the time. There are a few schools out there that look at last 60 credit hours earned (don't know what they are off the top of my head), but they are gonna be getting tons of applications from people who are also trying to crawl out of a gpa hole.

May be worth your time sitting down and figuring out how many credit hours you would have to take to bring your gpa up to a 3.0. Maybe you can do a masters of public health or something in the meantime assuming you got all A's. Either way, best of luck.

[EMEDPA]

a few questions:

were you ever arrested or convicted of a drug or alcohol related charge? that might make it harder to get into school.

what was your gpa for your last 60 credit hours? some places weight those more heavily.

you need to do a few things as I see it to make up for the gpa and it will probably take a few years.

continue to rack up hce, the more the better. > 2000 hrs would really help. take a bunch more courses. it doesn't need to be a formal post-bac. community college would be fine. alternatively a college based health career 2nd degree would help too like a second A.S. degree as a paramedic, RN, or resp. therapist.  get 100% As. don't withdraw from any classes.if you can get 10-15 science courses and/or prereq or professional courses with all As you should have a good shot somewhere. volunteer somewhere. a lot. a free clinic would be ideal. get a few hundred hours, say 10 hrs/week for the next 2 years. shadow some pas in several specialties for a total of 100 hrs or so. get some good letters from those folks. best of luck. you have a long road ahead of you if you want to make this happen. should make for a good application essay.

[alexj2005]

Alex, that is a deep dark hole that your gpa is in and it's going to be hard to even get that up to the minimum before your application would even hit the desk of an admissions committee. If a school says 3.0 minimum and you submit an application with a 2.9 gpa, it's going to get filtered out. They just don't have time to go through the thousands of applications and look at every persons individual scenario and see that their is an upward trend or something that stopped them from getting good grades at the time. There are a few schools out there that look at last 60 credit hours earned (don't know what they are off the top of my head), but they are gonna be getting tons of applications from people who are also trying to crawl out of a gpa hole.

May be worth your time sitting down and figuring out how many credit hours you would have to take to bring your gpa up to a 3.0. Maybe you can do a masters of public health or something in the meantime assuming you got all A's. Either way, best of luck.

 

Thats what I figured, that anything below the minimum would get filtered out. The thing is, I know there are some schools that require a 2.5, 2.75, and some that just look at the last few semesters. I did the calculation and I know I could raise my GPA above a 2.5 in a semester or two of taking classes at the community college, but this would still only put me at the bare minimum (and for only a couple of schools), but I suppose its enough to get me into the application pool. Like you said though I'm sure I'll be competing against others in the field who are like me, only with a less checkered past. Because I've taken so many credits, I would basically have to get a 2nd bachelors degree to bring it up to 3.0. If my undergrad GPA were to stay at 2.43, but then somehow managed to get a masters of public health and keep all A's in that, wouldn't I still be filtered by the 3.0 minimum of most schools?

 

 

 

a few questions:

were you ever arrested or convicted of a drug or alcohol related charge? that might make it harder to get into school.

what was your gpa for your last 60 credit hours? some places weight those more heavily.

you need to do a few things as I see it to make up for the gpa and it will probably take a few years.

continue to rack up hce, the more the better. > 2000 hrs would really help. take a bunch more courses. it doesn't need to be a formal post-bac. community college would be fine. alternatively a college based health career 2nd degree would help too like a second A.S. degree as a paramedic, RN, or resp. therapist.  get 100% As. don't withdraw from any classes.if you can get 10-15 science courses and/or prereq or professional courses with all As you should have a good shot somewhere. volunteer somewhere. a lot. a free clinic would be ideal. get a few hundred hours, say 10 hrs/week for the next 2 years. shadow some pas in several specialties for a total of 100 hrs or so. get some good letters from those folks. best of luck. you have a long road ahead of you if you want to make this happen. should make for a good application essay.

 

I appreciate your advice EMEDPA! To answer your questions, thankfully no I have never been arrested for anything. As for my GPA for the last 60 credit hours, I don't have my transcript in front of me but a good guess would be my last 60 hours at UF were around ~2.7. Still not great, I know, but it's a huge improvement over the previous few years especially considering I still had bad habits and the type of courses I was taking at the end (biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, and the other upper level courses). I know for a fact I can do better now though.

 

So just for clarification, you recommend I take more courses, even at the community college level is ok? Thats good news as I was unsure of whether to do a formal post-bacc program or not. My problem is though, due to my major, I've already taken most of the courses like chemistry, organic, biochem, genetics. Now most of them I didn't do so well in at UF, some better than others. Would you recommend I re-take those classes or should I take new science classes even if they aren't really relevant (or a mix of both)? A lot of schools require that the pre-reqs be taken in the last 5 years so this might be a problem by the time I'm ready to apply, so I'm thinking of just re-taking my pre-reqs (and hopefully getting A's in all of them), and then maybe I could take a few more. But even with this, it probably would not put me at a 3.0 unless I went back and finished an entire bachelors again, would schools notice my marked improvement even if my overall GPA is still lower than optimal?

 

I also thought about doing this A.S. program in emergency medicine here at the community college, it basically allows me to continue the EMT program and go into paramedic and get an A.S with that. That could help with my experience and proving I am an able student, but then I'd still have the problem of pre-reqs being out of date by the time I applied, and less than stellar grades in those pre-reqs. Would you recommend I re-took pre-reqs and other courses to boost GPA, or would you recommend I went the A.S. route for example?

 

I know I have a long road ahead of me, and I'm absolutely willing to work for it, I have so much to be excited about now that I'm free of my habits! I just want to formulate a plan so that I don't get lost in all the excitement and waste even more time. Thanks again for your advice guys

[EMEDPA]

do the A.S. in ems. get all As. community college credits are fine. research the prereqs of programs you are interested in and take those courses. good luck.

[Johnson2018pac]

I don't think that CASPA discerns between your undergrad gpa and a masters gpa. It tabulates overall gpa and science gpa and its all lumped in together so doing a masters would raise that assuming you got better grades.

 

You are right in that if you decide to stay on this path it will be a long hard road. It's not something that hasn't been done before though as if you search through the older topics you will see where some people have actually came out of gpa holes deeper than yours and still got in. My advice, do your research and find those schools that have the lowest gpa requirements and as you continue to take classes to bring your gpa up start earning healthcare more healthcare experience. At least if you have a ton of that they might be more likely to overlook your gpa if you meet the minimum qualifications.

[AliB]

Yes, CASPA does separate overall undergraduate and graduate GPAs, as well as cGPA, but does not break out the level in calculating science and other subject matter GPAs. In the CASPA FAQ there are example GPA charts that show what GPAs are presented in your verified CASPA under

CLICK THE LINKS BELOW TO REVIEW CASPA GPA TYPES:

 

If you really want to go to PA school, prepare to take some time and put in a lot of effort. It will take you more than a year to get yourself to a level to be considered. Retake ALL the prerequisite courses, and then some, and make As. Community college is fine, especially if all As. Bottom line is you will have to get your cumulative to a 3.0 to be considered in my recent experience. Then your recent years of coursework will show your dramatic upward trend. Even schools with lower published minimums are very discerning unless you have exceptional other attributes (like many 000s hours of solid HCE -- a year as an EMT probably isn't that). A good masters degree could demonstrate to some schools that you can handle graduate level work. There are multiple factors in play depending on the program.

 

There are at least a dozen threads in this forum on a similar vein, with details of how some of us with 'less than stellar' years in our academic history did what we needed to do in order to reach our goal of joining the PA profession. Do a search and check out the posts in those threads for more details.

[Glorious_Ignoramus]

This is going to be a long road for you, but it can be done.  Timon has great posts about reforming a low gpa.  You could put an application together within 2-3 years (for more schools, sounds like 1-2 for schools which will take a lower min. GPA) if you get that GPA up...sounds like a long time but from the time I started undergrad until this round of interviews is over it will have been over 5 years.  If I get accepted it will be closer to 6 years.  It's a long, hard road but it can be done; this is the part where you will find out how bad you truly want this.

 

Becoming a medic is a good step.  Everything about your life for the next 1-3 years needs to show that you have matured, learned from your mistakes and are turning your life around for the better.  All grades need to be As, volunteer where you can, keep working full time if at all possible.  Commit to a single college if you can (if nothing else to make things easier on you...transcripts cost $$), and in the meantime learn the PAEA directory in and out.  This will help you apply to the schools at which you are the most competitive.

 

Best of luck to you - what you want is out of reach right now, but not for good.