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For pre-PA's who have applied, are actively working toward applying, or recently been accepted..... what are issue/struggles you faced regarding applying to PA schools outside of academic mistakes? This can be anything (not related to your personal GPA/academics). Some examples are lack of quality PCE options, disadvantaged location for PCE opportunities, challenges securing shadowing positions, socioeconomic struggles. List anything you've found that made your journey to becoming a PA student more difficult!

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6 hours ago, trianglePA said:

For pre-PA's who have applied, are actively working toward applying, or recently been accepted..... what are issue/struggles you faced regarding applying to PA schools outside of academic mistakes? This can be anything (not related to your personal GPA/academics). Some examples are lack of quality PCE options, disadvantaged location for PCE opportunities, challenges securing shadowing positions, socioeconomic struggles. List anything you've found that made your journey to becoming a PA student more difficult!

Personally, I have a small criminal background from years ago. And it has come up with one school. That's my biggest barrier. However, I have been accepted to 3 schools. So it's definitely not a deal breaker. 

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4 hours ago, KaiteKakes said:

Personally, I have a small criminal background from years ago. And it has come up with one school. That's my biggest barrier. However, I have been accepted to 3 schools. So it's definitely not a deal breaker. 

Thanks for your input! Glad to see you've been accepted. I'm working on this for a project with my program.

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Definitely time management and proper research into programs. The first two times I applied, I didn’t get any interviews but I also don’t think I actually met their prereq requirements. I also didn’t apply early and so seats were likely already filled if I even had a chance.

Because of poor time management, my personal statement also wasn’t so great those first two times. This third cycle, I made sure to plan months in advance so I could have friends give feedback. I spent more time on it this round than I did the first 2 rounds combined! The hard work surely paid off, as I was offered 5 interviews and waitlisted from 2, but accepted into my top choice! Now I’m here to try to help others as much as I can, because I know there are folks out there with similar stats to mine.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 11/16/2020 at 2:23 AM, trianglePA said:

For pre-PA's who have applied, are actively working toward applying, or recently been accepted..... what are issue/struggles you faced regarding applying to PA schools outside of academic mistakes? This can be anything (not related to your personal GPA/academics). Some examples are lack of quality PCE options, disadvantaged location for PCE opportunities, challenges securing shadowing positions, socioeconomic struggles. List anything you've found that made your journey to becoming a PA student more difficult!

I think my main challenge that I have to explain in my applications is that I have a shaky history up until getting sober 5 years ago. I struggled with a lot of mental health problems in my late teens and early 20s. Got dismissed from my first college after failing all my classes during freshman year due to severe depression and anxiety. Improved drastically after that and performed much better academically, but I got an Incomplete in my final class of my Bachelor's program and didn't finally resolve it until 7 years later. (Between that I was homeless and an addict/alcoholic). I also got a misdemeanor DUI back in 2011. My personal statement is about my story of getting sober and establishing a healthy and happy life, and how that desire to help others led me to the PA profession, so I'm hopeful that my experience will resonate with the right program. Time will tell!

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