Healthcare experience and application question

[daysgoby]

I'm graduating from undergrad in May and I'll be applying to schools as soon as possible. I'll have only about 750 hours of health care experience as an EMT (and about 100 hours shadowing) at the time of my application, but for the next year after graduation I'll be working as a patient care tech. Is there any particular spot on CASPA that I can mention the fact that I'll be working as a pct for the next year? Should I just include it in my narrative?

[cinntsp]

You can mention it in your narrative and send periodic updates to schools that you apply to.

[okadam]

Some schools will actually ask you to put down all healthcare experience/ all anticipated health care experience and hours in the supplemental applications too. If I were you, I'd mention it in the narrative/send periodic updates to the schools you apply to as wutthechris suggested. If mentioning it in your narrative disrupts the flow of your essay though, I don't think it would hurt to put it down on your CASPA as "0" hours as long as you know your job description/employer's info/write in the description box that you will be starting it.

In my opinion, if your job starts soon enough, you can even hold off on submitting CASPA until you get a few hours of work in at the new job/bump your HCE hours as much as possible (a lot of schools want you to have at least 1,000 hours by the time you apply). People say "APPLY EARLY!!" as if you should submit it in April or May....But you'll still be considered pretty early if you submit sometime in June AND have more HCE hours to increase your chances of standing out. I submitted mine on the last week of June and submitted all my supplementals by the first week of August. I got invited to interviews in August, but a LOT of schools seemed to wait for a good pool of applicants to give out the bulk of their interviews in Oct/Nov.

[daysgoby]

So applying in June/July is considered early? One of the schools I'm applying to says they review applications as they're submitted and they fill their class early...I'm afraid if I don't submit in May, I'll be locked out of the program.

[okadam]

Which school is that one? I would go to the PA Schools sections and ask previous applicants when they submitted CASPA/supplementals, and when they were interviewed, etc. If that school is the one you ABSOLUTELY want to get into, you'll have to tailor your CASPA/submission dates to that school. But submitting your CASPA in June will not cause you to be "locked out" of MOST programs. Since each year the number of applicants increases, I wouldn't submit CASPA later than July this cycle. There was only one school out of the twelve that I applied to that already had a number of seats filled because they had what was called a Combined MS/BS Physician Assistant Program...so in that case, it would have been advantageous for me to submit in May (but I didn't look too into it before submitting haha...it was only later I discovered they only had 15-20 seats for graduate applicants).