aea08257a Posted July 15, 2018 Share Posted July 15, 2018 Hello, I am going into my junior year and recently decided that I would like PA instead of PT. I have an alright GPA of a 3.30. Definitely not the best but a strong upward trend. The requirements are so different school by school, I was wondering what classes I should take to get into a PA school. I also saw that some schools had an extreme amount of medical field experience required to apply. Is there any way to get into a PA school straight out of college. I want to know what I should do to make myself the best applicant possible. Any help would be great thanks! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MT2PA Posted July 15, 2018 Share Posted July 15, 2018 Browse the pre-PA section of this forum and you'll find all of your questions have been asked and answered numerous times. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Anachronist Posted July 16, 2018 Share Posted July 16, 2018 As MT2PA mentioned, that is a lot of questions, and all of it is here, somewhere. But to get you a head start, decent minimum PCE is going to be about 1,000 hours, 2,000 is better (or 6 months - 1 year full time) so expect to work for near minimum wage for a year or two after graduating (some folks get in immediately after graduation but because they were working during undergrad getting PCE, but they are rare). Volunteering is also important, there is a big push in medicine and especially PA programs to have experience with underserved populations. They will also want you to have shadowed a PA so you have an idea of what you're getting into and understand the role as it isn't "common knowledge." For the most part prereqs are very similar from program to program, major outliers are OChem and BioChem (many require, but many don't; and varies from 1 OChem or 2, or both + BioChem), but better to have them than not. The GRE minimum bar is about 300 combined and balanced with a 4+ in writing. GPA and GRE are mostly AdCom "filters," make sure yours aren't too far out of the class average for the programs you're interested in (most programs publish some sort of class data). Also start familiarizing yourself with CASPA, it is a system that almost all PA programs use to submit applications. Hope that helped, keep reading stuff on here and check out the program specific threads on this forum under "Physician Assistant Schools." Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.