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Thank you so much! This is great advice.

 

My final question is when wrapping up the interview do you think it appropriate to close in a panel interview and ask "when can I expect to hear from you?" I want to sound confident but not arrogant. Perhaps there is a better way to say this?

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@Pa 1487 I forgot to answer that one! Sorry for the oversight. I'm hopeful that information is provided by the admissions coordinator or someone in the program so you don't have to ask that question. If that is not provided by the end of the day, I would politely ask the main person of contact if they could let you know their response time line. The best way to end the interview is to thank them for their consideration and that it was a pleasure meeting with them. Keep it short, simple and to the point. Hope this helps!

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@Pa 1487 I forgot to answer that one! Sorry for the oversight. I'm hopeful that information is provided by the admissions coordinator or someone in the program so you don't have to ask that question. If that is not provided by the end of the day, I would politely ask the main person of contact if they could let you know their response time line. The best way to end the interview is to thank them for their consideration and that it was a pleasure meeting with them. Keep it short, simple and to the point. Hope this helps!

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Thanks for answering our questions. I am applying this cycle to multiple schools in the midwest. Here is the situation - I took A&P 1 and 2 fourteen years ago (my first year of college) and had C's both semesters. I am retaking those classes this summer. I will be done with them the first week of August. I expect to get A's in both courses. 1) how does CASPA calculate this - do they average it? 2) I really want to apply early to some schools due to rolling admissions. Should I wait until after early August? I'm worried about schools only recognizing the C's since they only recognize GPA calculations from the time of application. Is this really an issue and should I delay application for this reason? This is the down side to CASPA in my opinion.

 

Thanks in advance.

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Thanks for answering our questions. I am applying this cycle to multiple schools in the midwest. Here is the situation - I took A&P 1 and 2 fourteen years ago (my first year of college) and had C's both semesters. I am retaking those classes this summer. I will be done with them the first week of August. I expect to get A's in both courses. 1) how does CASPA calculate this - do they average it? 2) I really want to apply early to some schools due to rolling admissions. Should I wait until after early August? I'm worried about schools only recognizing the C's since they only recognize GPA calculations from the time of application. Is this really an issue and should I delay application for this reason? This is the down side to CASPA in my opinion.

 

Thanks in advance.

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GPA- 3.45

Science GPA-3.36

GRE: Verbal 156

Quantitative 153

Writing 4.5

 

HCE 430 Shadowing hours.

 

I plan on getting several hundred volunteer health care contact hours, I am being mentored at a hospital and I am going on a medical mission this summer to acquire direct contact hours. Do you think I stand a chance of getting into a PA program, or would you advise me to take a year off and gain more HCE and improve my GPA? I know I am not going to get into a top ten program, but I have researched schools in which I fit the criteria for GPA and HCE. I would just like to hear from an admissions director if you think I am competitive or not.

Edited by mmeveritt
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GPA- 3.45

Science GPA-3.36

GRE: Verbal 156

Quantitative 153

Writing 4.5

 

HCE 430 Shadowing hours.

 

I plan on getting several hundred volunteer health care contact hours, I am being mentored at a hospital and I am going on a medical mission this summer to acquire direct contact hours. Do you think I stand a chance of getting into a PA program, or would you advise me to take a year off and gain more HCE and improve my GPA? I know I am not going to get into a top ten program, but I have researched schools in which I fit the criteria for GPA and HCE. I would just like to hear from an admissions director if you think I am competitive or not.

Edited by mmeveritt
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Hi, this is my second time applying to PA school. The first time I had applied my GRE score was not very good, I had no patient experience and a C in one of my science classes. Since then I have taken and completed an EMT course and I retook the class I received a C in and now have an A. I also have been working as a Resident Assistant in an Assisted Living facility where I have been med trained and diabetic trained. I am about to take retake the GRE exam as well. My GPA is a 3.34

 

I wanted to know what you think my chances of getting into a PA school this time around are? Also, what my CASPA essay should entail to sell me as a candidate.

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Hi, this is my second time applying to PA school. The first time I had applied my GRE score was not very good, I had no patient experience and a C in one of my science classes. Since then I have taken and completed an EMT course and I retook the class I received a C in and now have an A. I also have been working as a Resident Assistant in an Assisted Living facility where I have been med trained and diabetic trained. I am about to take retake the GRE exam as well. My GPA is a 3.34

 

I wanted to know what you think my chances of getting into a PA school this time around are? Also, what my CASPA essay should entail to sell me as a candidate.

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@crawl731 Thank you for your questions. When you retake the courses you will input your grades on the CASPA application just like any other course. CASPA will include all grades in their calculations.Each program will do 1 of of 2 things: Average your old courses with the retakes OR take your highest grade in the courses. It all depends on what program you're applying to. I always recommend applicants applying early, rather than later because of rolling admissions and then update programs with an official transcript when you're done with the classes. I would allow applicants to approach it that way, but you may want to touch base with the programs you're applying to to see if they allow updates to coursework after you submit your application. If you chose to apply before the courses are complete your new grades obviously won't be listed on the application. However, be sure to put that you're in progress or planning to take these courses on your application. There's a section for you to list those courses. I hope this helps!

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@crawl731 Thank you for your questions. When you retake the courses you will input your grades on the CASPA application just like any other course. CASPA will include all grades in their calculations.Each program will do 1 of of 2 things: Average your old courses with the retakes OR take your highest grade in the courses. It all depends on what program you're applying to. I always recommend applicants applying early, rather than later because of rolling admissions and then update programs with an official transcript when you're done with the classes. I would allow applicants to approach it that way, but you may want to touch base with the programs you're applying to to see if they allow updates to coursework after you submit your application. If you chose to apply before the courses are complete your new grades obviously won't be listed on the application. However, be sure to put that you're in progress or planning to take these courses on your application. There's a section for you to list those courses. I hope this helps!

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@mmeveritt Thank you for your questions. If you're comfortable with the programs you have researched and feel they would be a good fit for you, I would encourage you to apply this year if you're ready and if you feel you meet their requirements. Although I think shadowing is important, I believe more hands on experience may be more beneficial to making your application more competitive and preparing you better for PA school. It never hurts to take a year off to get "real life" experience as that too will be beneficial for some applicants. I do think your GPAs are solid, but you may want to consider boosting your science GPA into the range of 3.4-3.5 to open up more options for you (the same advice can be applied to accruing more hours). I hope this helps!

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@mmeveritt Thank you for your questions. If you're comfortable with the programs you have researched and feel they would be a good fit for you, I would encourage you to apply this year if you're ready and if you feel you meet their requirements. Although I think shadowing is important, I believe more hands on experience may be more beneficial to making your application more competitive and preparing you better for PA school. It never hurts to take a year off to get "real life" experience as that too will be beneficial for some applicants. I do think your GPAs are solid, but you may want to consider boosting your science GPA into the range of 3.4-3.5 to open up more options for you (the same advice can be applied to accruing more hours). I hope this helps!

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@lbuzzins Thank you for your questions. If you've made the improvements needed to be competitive with applicant pool your chances of being considered further should increase. I like to see applicants dedicate a few sentences in their personal statement on what they've done to improve their application from last year. Make sure to touch on your academic improvements, but highlight your healthcare experience and how that has solidified your understanding of the role of the PA and their importance to our health care system. Programs don't want to see the same personal statement especially if you've made the improvements necessary to expose yourself to PAs, how the healthcare system works and to better prepare yourself academically to handle the rigors of PA school. I hope this helps and best wishes!

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@lbuzzins Thank you for your questions. If you've made the improvements needed to be competitive with applicant pool your chances of being considered further should increase. I like to see applicants dedicate a few sentences in their personal statement on what they've done to improve their application from last year. Make sure to touch on your academic improvements, but highlight your healthcare experience and how that has solidified your understanding of the role of the PA and their importance to our health care system. Programs don't want to see the same personal statement especially if you've made the improvements necessary to expose yourself to PAs, how the healthcare system works and to better prepare yourself academically to handle the rigors of PA school. I hope this helps and best wishes!

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@farfan Thank you for your question. Yes, military medics are favored by the majority of programs, including ours. Your medical experience and military experience brings a lot to your application and to the profession. From a program standpoint, your leadership qualities are beneficial to your classmates. There are some programs that have seats reserved for veterans, especially medics. Click here to view the Health Career Prep website for veterans. It should help you connect to these type of programs. Keep in mind though, although there are programs that reserve seats for medics I think every program values your experience and what you can bring to the classroom and profession.... so don't limit yourself to only a few programs. I hope this helps and let me know if you have any further questions!

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Hello paadmissions!

 

I am a re-applicant. I did not have valued HCE hours (500 as a patient escort in between college, and 200 as a aquatic therapy internship during my exercise physiology program.) This cycle i will have 1500+ hrs as a patient care technician for a surgical unit at a tier 1 hospital by me in Delaware.

 

I have a 3.3 cum and 3.35 sci in regards to caspa, but my last 60+ credits is ~3.8+

 

My undergrad for exercise physiology was a 3.18 and since I had 150+ that 3.18 is heavy and preventing me from getting to more of a competitive range.

 

I am worried that I will get weeded out before they look into my application.

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Hello paadmissions!

 

This cycle will be my first time applying for the programs I am interested in. I currently have roughly a 3.4 in both my cumulative an science GPA. But my real strength lies in my clinical experience. I have a bachelors of science in nursing with over 1000 hours as a patient care tech in an ICU. 1900 hours as a registered nurse on a neurology/telemetry floor. And I have 1500 hours as a registered nurse in a level 2 trauma center emergency room as well as significant volunteer work. I also have letters of recommendation from PAs and MDs that I have worked with and I even work side by side with PAs the express care unit within our ER. My GRE score was ~300. I guess my question is are there programs that place more value on experience and would I be a good candidate to get an interview into a majority of the programs participating in the CASPA system? (Hard question to answer given you don't know every programs requirements, but just in general terms.)

Thank You!

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Good Evening and thank you for taking the time to answer so many questions.

I know that many of the others have asked specific questions concerning their applications and, to be honest, I was wondering if my overall application would be competitive. That is, my situation is a little different than many other applicants, so I am not sure how it will be looked upon.

 

I have worked as a Respiratory Therapist for nearly 12 years (mostly with neonatal and pediatric patients, but also as an ECMO specialist, transport therapist, and as a clinical instructor for a BS level respiratory program. My initial GPA from when I went to Respiratory School was not that great but I recently went back and completed by BS. So my current overall GPA is about 3.6 and the GPA for my BS (300 and 400 level classes only) was a 3.99. Currently, my science GPA is 4.0. I have not taken the GRE yet and am currently retaking many of the prereq classes as they are too old from my initial degree.

 

 

So, while I have worked in the medical field for a long time and have a lot of experience, I am not as young as some of the other applicants (as I will be 31 when I apply) and while I have not heard of this with PA programs, I know that Med schools consider age. Also while HCE is important, is it looked upon negatively to be switching from one specialty (respiratory) to another (PA)? And, I was given an opinion once (by a PA professor with whom I used to work) that he always looked upon applicants with a great deal of clinical experience and/or university level teaching experience questionably as he felt that making the transition from practicing HCP or running a classroom to becoming a student could create a difficult situation.

Thanks in advance for your time and I do greatly look forward to reading your response.

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Hi paadmissions,

 

I am looking to apply to PA school by 2015. I am currently finishing up my last semester of undergrad, but I am taking a year off to get HCE as an EMT/CNA. I also plan to take some prereqs (Organic Chem and Medical Terminology) and maybe some additional courses like pathophysiology to prepare me for PA school. If I take all these courses at a community college for financial purposes would that be alright? Also, does the EMT basic course have grades and would the courses be added to my science GPA? What about the CNA course? I currently have an overall science gpa of a 3.45, non-science gpa of a 3.74, and prereq gpa as a 3.6. I took the majority of prereqs a community college, however I have taken a lot of upper level science courses at a four year school. I combined GPAs from the two different schools that I have attended. Is that what we are supposed to do? A lot of the courses that I have taken are in Animal Science. However, would courses such as Animal Welfare or Contemporary Perspectives of Careers in Animal Science still be considered as science courses even if listed as Animal Science? I also took a course in Natural Resources. Would that also be considered a science course? Also, would a W on a transcript look very bad (I got this in Orgo at the four year school and could not do well with 500 students in the class)? I'm afraid that I won't be competitive for PA school because of that. Does the rigor of the program get taken into account? I am currently in the best Animal Science program in the country at a top school. I would also like to know if I should mention some research that I did in behavioral ecology, even though I don't think this is really relevant to PA school. I had questions about the recommended courses as well. I took Animal Nutrition, Animal Genetics, Comparative Nutrition/Toxicology, and Calculus for the life sciences. I would like to know if these courses would meet the requirements for the recommended courses (the courses I took covered the human in some way). Besides taking the GRE, do you have any other recommendations for me before applying? Hope to hear from you soon and thank you :) Sorry to ask all these questions, but I still don't know where I stand or what I should do to improve. I appreciate your time and once again thank you so much!

Edited by lavender19
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@DMaistre Thank you for your questions. I think you've made positive improvements to your application and hope programs see that your last 60 hours is a solid performance and that you've taken strides to gain more quality healthcare experience. Some programs are open to providing feedback on if you'd be a competitive applicant with the improvements to your application. Consider emailing these programs to see if they can provide feedback before you reapply...or if you're open to looking at other programs, contact them to see if they can review unofficial transcripts and your profile before you apply. I hope this helps and best wishes!

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@soxman352000 Thank you for your questions. I think you've got a decent shot of being competitive with programs especially with your clinical experience. Check out the range of GPAs of incoming students for the programs that interest you. Sometimes you may need to contact the programs directly to get that information (if they'll provide it) because averages are usually the only bit of information provided on websites. Make sure you apply early..meaning now! The earlier you apply the better chance you have of being considered first. I hope this helps!

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