What's your best CASPA tip?

[thecaspareview]

Everyone knows that the CASPA was designed to torture unsuspecting  PA applicants, BUT what 1 piece of advice would you give to new applicants?

#1 Tip: START EARLY!!

The whole process is cumbersome and time-consuming, so start organizing your application now before the cycle opens? How do you do that? You already know that you have to write you personal statement, so start that process now! Also, think about what clubs or achievements you can list. Have your mentors/professors to be your recommendations yet? Many people forget this step early on, and they are scrambling at the last minute to have quality references. 

What are your tips?

[pastudentw]

Gather information as you go. Keep track of phone numbers, emails and contacts of those you may be putting down on your CASPA application or those you may need to contact for your letters of recommendation.

[PAtoB]

1) Open an account a year or so or a cycle before you are actually applying, check out the application, read everything, including the tiny details and learn about it ahead of time so you know how time exhausting and detailed it will be when you actually apply.

2) Order your transcripts and send the links/requests for LORs at the start of CASPA, and make sure they are completed.

3) do not wait until last minute to write your personal statement/narrative. Start it early and get multiple eyes (master's degree-level eyes/edits) on it.

[BearDown]

dont use transcript entry... 

 

Quality control of it is very poor.

 

I found multiple spelling errors regarding my courses.

[JD2012]

Get those LOR's locked and loaded BEFORE THE CYCLE OPENS!  It is the most delaying obstacle for getting those apps in and submitted.  

 

[pastudentw]

On the note of LORs, I would also recommend getting your contacts informed about it early on. You can advise them to write it up at any time and save it as a word file. Then when they get the request email from CASPA, they can simply copy and paste their essay over. They should be advised to check for formatting/typos when they do the copy over. This will greatly speed up the process and won't delay your CASPA app.

Another option is to give some main topics for the person writing the LOR to focus on. This might give them more focused points to write about rather than just hey can you write me a recommendation? You can also provide them with a CV/resume so they can have that to refer to when writing the letter.

For example, I had applied to an xray tech program (which I didn't end up attending) but one doctor who wrote my letter spelled my name wrong and wrote "You guys would be crazy not to accept her!" as part of the recommendation. I was not thrilled but I learned a lot of what to do better for my PA school LORs.

[Guest HanSolo]

- Write your descriptions for jobs, volunteer positions, etc. in a Google Doc (or something similar) first, then copy and paste it into CASPA. You don't want to lose all that work if the system goes down. 

- Find and copy and paste the supplemental app questions for schools you plan on applying to before the cycle opens. That is, find last year's questions. These are very important to your overall application success.