Bensmith Posted December 13, 2020 Share Posted December 13, 2020 Long story short I got rejected from pa school recently. I ended up with 2 interviews one that I felt that I did fairly well in and the other that I felt didn't go well due to a lack of preparedness. My stats: Sgpa:3.71 Cgpa:3.69 Hce: 2000 hours with 1/4 coming from a nursing home and the rest from assisted living/dementia care Volunteer:0 Shadowing:0 Gre: verbal 155 (67%) quant 153 (48%) writing 4.0 (55%) I admit that I screwed up i really thought my GPA was going to be enough to get me in this year and as a result did not prepare as much for my interviews as I should have (lesson learned). Since I was not expecting to have to apply again I did not continue to improve my application (again stupid I know). It was suggested to me that I move to a more acute Healthcare setting however, I would rather continue to work where I have been and focus solely on volunteer and shadowing over the next few months as I feel these are the categories I can improve upon the most. I already started working with habitat for humanity and have 11 hours just last week and am shooting to get 100 by April. With shadowing unfortunately no one will allow me to do any right now because of covid (which is what stopped me last year). Is my hce a problem I applied to some different jobs (medical scribe and medical assistant neither require certifications where I live) but feel like the job i currently work with has a schedule which will allow me to do volunteering and shadowing more easily ( I currently work 2-10 and can therefore volunteer and shadow in the mornings). I also think that I should be able to shadow once the covid vaccine is out. Any opinions on jow I should procede? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrad627 Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 I haven't applied yet, so my opinion may be useless (lol) but, you did get two interviews, so you must be doing something right! Don't give up hope!! From what I've researched, most schools don't differentiate between types of PCE hours. However, a variety probably wouldn't hurt! I've been aiming for PA school for years, and I have around 7,000 PCE hours. 1300 are from an assisted living center, and the rest are from hospitals, with 3,000 in the emergency room. I personally feel more prepared for PA school from having the hospital experience (ER specifically) as I did from just assisted living. But like I said, that's just me! If you're worried about timing in terms of availability with volunteering and trying trying to find a new job, keep in mind most hospitals a full-time schedule is only 3 days a week with 12 hour shifts (at least in my area), and that would leave you with more days off than a full-time 8 hour shift job. I think if you prepare well for your next set of interviews, and come back with some strong volunteering and shadowing, you will have better results! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bensmith Posted December 14, 2020 Author Share Posted December 14, 2020 2 hours ago, mrad627 said: I haven't applied yet, so my opinion may be useless (lol) but, you did get two interviews, so you must be doing something right! Don't give up hope!! From what I've researched, most schools don't differentiate between types of PCE hours. However, a variety probably wouldn't hurt! I've been aiming for PA school for years, and I have around 7,000 PCE hours. 1300 are from an assisted living center, and the rest are from hospitals, with 3,000 in the emergency room. I personally feel more prepared for PA school from having the hospital experience (ER specifically) as I did from just assisted living. But like I said, that's just me! If you're worried about timing in terms of availability with volunteering and trying trying to find a new job, keep in mind most hospitals a full-time schedule is only 3 days a week with 12 hour shifts (at least in my area), and that would leave you with more days off than a full-time 8 hour shift job. I think if you prepare well for your next set of interviews, and come back with some strong volunteering and shadowing, you will have better results! I think that might be good advice i think im going to possibly continue working where I have been I think I definitely need to apply to more schools though What are you doing for pa shadowing the pas in my area won't take on students right now because of the pandemic im going to some virtual shadowing over zoom i think but I don't know how schools will look at that Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mrad627 Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 I got my shadowing done pre-covid, I have 65 hours of shadowing a PA, and 15 with an ER Physician. That may be another perk of working in a hospital. Cold calling places right now probably won’t get you anywhere, but working in a hospital you already have an ‘in’ and would probably find people to shadow much easier! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheFatMan Posted December 14, 2020 Share Posted December 14, 2020 I would recommend contacting the programs specifically to see what areas they think you need improvement on. You could also ask if they have recommendations regarding shadowing or see if they are making exceptions for that. As an alternative, get a new job where you work directly with PAs. I had 0 shadowing hours but since I worked directly with PAs for a long time doing high quality PCE, none of the programs I applied to seemed to care. The caveat is that you should also contact the programs to see if this would be acceptable - I imagine it would be. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UGoLong Posted December 15, 2020 Share Posted December 15, 2020 Your grades and experience were fine for many programs, assuming you have a reasonable undergrad major. My guess: you probably didn't interview well enough. Too shy, not enough of a team player, didn't share anything about yourself, something like that. That you felt you didn't do well enough on an interview because you "didn't prepare enough" might be something of a clue. Other than knowing a few things about the school, interview prep should be pretty much universal: knowing why you want to be a PA, some teamwork in any group interview activities, a rudimentary plan for surviving the didactic year, some examples of how you've overcome obstacles in the past, and having an open mind about the areas of medicine that you might be interested in. Before you restructure your whole life to try again, I'd spend some time thinking about that. And good luck next round. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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