What Are My Chances?

[IsaiahRW]

Hey everyone, I am a recent college graduate (December 2018) and I have been interested in PA for about 3 years now and with my recent graduation I’m sure you all can relate to the panick of the uncertainty of my life that I just stepped into .  I’ve mostly been curious about my competitiveness for this upcoming cycle (2019-2020). Here are my stats  

Overall GPA:3.494 

sGPA: 3.54

Last 60 hours: 3.65 

Side Note: I initially had a 2.8 GPA freshmen year and worked my tail off to get where I am now. After I transferred to a new school beginning Junior year I made 24 A’s to 7 B’s with no C’s or D’s.  I know schools take into account upward trends and if that isn’t one then I don’t know what is!

HCE/PCE:By time of application will have have about 750 hours with 300 being a Home Health Aid and 450 as a PT Aide. For schools who do not have rolling admissions I will wait until about late July to apply so that would bring me to around 1000 hours  

LOR: Gastrointestinal Oncology PA, DPT who is my supervisor at work, Chemistry Proffesor

Shadowing: 100 hours shadowing Oncology PA, Family Practice NP; Oncology MD

GRE: Verbal: 153 Quant: 150

Volunteer Hours: Over 500hours through my fraternity,NAACP, and my own efforts. Mostly registering people to vote, educating minors on sexual health, March of Dimes, and various other projects me and my fraternity brothers could think of. I believe this will be the strongest part of my application. I have a ton of other experiences of volunteer/community service I could speak of but that would take hours to type out  

My personal statement will more than likely focus on my experience with the many different types of clients I have dealt with as a HHA. Going into someone’s home is a direct view into their life and lifestyle and the differences and experiences between each is so unique it’s jaw dropping. I’ve had some crazy experiences to say the least

 

 

I appreciate any feedback. Thank you all!

 

*Added some updates so I decided to bump!

[stromfl]

You can get in

[hmtpnw]

Overall things look good.

The only issue I see is that some programs don’t accept home health aide as PCE, or as clinical experience at all. And although you’ll continue to accumulate hours up until you matriculate, programs will generally look at your hours at the time of submission.

Have you confirmed that the programs you’re applying to accept your hours as PCE?

[IsaiahRW]

1 hour ago, hmtpnw said:

Overall things look good.

The only issue I see is that some programs don’t accept home health aide as PCE, or as clinical experience at all. And although you’ll continue to accumulate hours up until you matriculate, programs will generally look at your hours at the time of submission.

Have you confirmed that the programs you’re applying to accept your hours as PCE?

Yes most do! The only one that’s iffy about it is University of Florida.  They will only accept half of your hours as a Home Aid. I know that HHA is looked at as low quality PCE so that’s why I have been applying like crazy to PCT/ PT Aide jobs. 

[Caligal]

Your stats are pretty good. The only thing I would suggest is try to have a variety of LORs. Typically, it would be good to have a LOR from a PA, a supervisor and a professor so that way they can see all aspects of you and not just as a shadower. When I applied, I had one from an MD that I shadowed, my supervisor, and my hematology professor from my undegrad.

[Southpaw45]

The only constructive feedback I could give is the volunteer hours.   All good from an outsiders view, diverse and constructive.

However I have found that schools want volunteer hours in the health field (educating minors on sexual health might be considered).  Schools are looking for mission trips, Peace Corp, volunteering at hospitals, etc that are medically related.

 

In my case working with disadvantaged youths and the disabled in sports was appreciated, however did not add points to the scoring. 

[IsaiahRW]

Bumping since I updated quite a bit of information!