HopefulPAinCA Posted November 15, 2015 Share Posted November 15, 2015 Just wanted to start off by saying thank you to anyone who takes the time to respond. I value your input. I am currently using the Post 911 GI Bill to pay for my undergraduate degree. I am a dependent and will complete my BS in Chemistry Spring 2016 (this up coming semester). Fortunately, I did not use the entire 36 months of the GI Bill. I think I only used about half of it ( I would verify right now, but the website is undergoing maintenance). My plan was to use the remaining benefits during PA school, but i'm not sure if that will be possible now. I was browsing the VA website and read that the benefits may not be used after I reach 26 years of age. I am currently 23 and am not sure if I will be in a program by then. Here is where I stand. After completing my undergraduate degree and completing the required pre-requisite courses I expect to have a cGPA and sGPA in the ~ 3.1-3.2 range. I have yet to take the GRE and have recently started building my clinical (CNA) and volunteer hours. I am worried that it would take a tremendous amount of clinical hours to overlook my mediocre gpa. That is why I am considering applying for a Masters in Public Health program. I would get to use up my benefits before they expire and I would have the chance to raise my gpa. The downside I see is that I would have to be a full time student again for another few years and may not accrue as many health care hours as I would like. Any thoughts on this matter? Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator rev ronin Posted November 15, 2015 Administrator Share Posted November 15, 2015 That sounds reasonable, given your situation. An MPH seems to pair nicely with an MS/MPAS/whatever, and will open some doors IN PUBLIC HEALTH and related fields. You will likely get some traction on PA school admissions with an MPH, but you're right, you do want to keep accumulating direct patient contact hours as well. You might consider another post-baccalaureate program to demonstrate science competency and improve GPA if you don't like the public health aspect of an MPH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MT2PA Posted November 15, 2015 Share Posted November 15, 2015 Unless you have a strong interest in public health type fields, my advice would be to wait on the MPH. It may boost your GPA, but it will do nothing for your science GPA. If you apply to the right schools, your GPA can get you in if the rest of your app is strong. It is absolutely a nice pairing, but an MPH would be just as easy to acquire later in your career (potentially with some employer tuition reimbursement). If you commit to an MPH, you are most certainly putting off PA school. You won't know what your PA chances are until you try, you could get in sooner and still use your GI bill on that. Keep in mind that while 'public health' sounds like 'obviously I care about the health of the public, that's why I want to be a PA', the courses often have very little to do with clinical type fields. It is a lot of research, data analysis, and planning interventions. Completely night and day from the detailed hard science involved in PA school. If it were me, and I knew I wanted to use the GI bill before PA school, I'd attempt something like nutrition, dietetics, exercise science, physical therapy, etc but that's just me. Or better yet is to take a class or two at a time while working and getting HCE. But if you know you want to eventually do rural, community health, or epidemiology, etc then sure, go for the MPH. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Moderator EMEDPA Posted November 15, 2015 Moderator Share Posted November 15, 2015 you could do paramedic, rn, or RT in the time it takes to do an MPH and that would give you a big HCE boost if you worked in the field for a bit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HopefulPAinCA Posted November 18, 2015 Author Share Posted November 18, 2015 That sounds reasonable, given your situation. An MPH seems to pair nicely with an MS/MPAS/whatever, and will open some doors IN PUBLIC HEALTH and related fields. You will likely get some traction on PA school admissions with an MPH, but you're right, you do want to keep accumulating direct patient contact hours as well. You might consider another post-baccalaureate program to demonstrate science competency and improve GPA if you don't like the public health aspect of an MPH. My university offers an MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology and I am very interested. Let's say I complete that program before PA school, would that give me the opportunity to do research in the future as a PA? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Administrator rev ronin Posted November 18, 2015 Administrator Share Posted November 18, 2015 My university offers an MPH with an emphasis in Epidemiology and I am very interested. Let's say I complete that program before PA school, would that give me the opportunity to do research in the future as a PA? Sure, but if you really want to do medical research, a Ph.D. or M.D./Ph.D. program would be a better route. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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