Blog

Apply to PA school, if it were easy, everyone would do it!

If it were easy, everyone would do it. Applying to PA school is no simple feat, it requires years of planning prior to even beginning the application process. In order to apply to PA school, applicants are expected to complete a bachelor’s degree as well as several additional prerequisite courses, many of which differ between individual programs. In addition, many programs require applicants to take a standardized exam such as GRE or PA-CAT, write a personal statement and supplemental essays and submit documentation of direct patient care experience, letters of recommendation, health care experience, volunteer work, research opportunities, and shadowing. 

While the application requirements themselves can be an overwhelming task, it can become particularly daunting when comparing your statistics with current applicants and the impressive averages of current cohorts.

While it is useful to compare your GPA to other applicants and ensure you are within a competitive range, it is also wise to consider your GPA as just a piece of one whole picture of who you are as a person and future provider. 

As I look back at my own application process, I would recommend recalculating your GPA based on the specific prerequisites required for your top 5 programs and ensuring all courses have been completed within the past 5 years.

If you have one or two bad grades, I would encourage an applicant to be completely honest with themselves about all aspects of their application prior to retaking the course for a better grade. If their GPA is not what they want to highlight, do other aspects of their application make up for it? For example, a subpar GPA can be overlooked if an applicant has strong letters of recommendation, extensive shadowing hours, and direct patient care experience above and beyond what is expected.

Similarly, if your GPA is stellar but you have little to no direct patient care experience, an applicant who has more experience and has exemplified a true passion for the profession may be chosen over an applicant who is strictly academically qualified. On the same note, if you have the time and financial ability to retake a class that you performed poorly in, it only serves to strengthen your application by showing growth and determination to succeed. 

If you retake the class and show drastic improvement, I would be prepared to discuss the methods you implemented in order to be successful in a course you struggled in. This may be discussed in your personal statement, supplemental essays, or even in the in-person interview- wherever it feels most natural and pertinent to the question at hand. 

Moreover, it is vital to take complete responsibility and ownership when discussing a bad grade or an obstacle you’ve had to overcome. For example, your teacher is not to be blamed for your poor grade, you are the one responsible for learning the material whether you believe you were effectively taught it or not.

While outside circumstances can certainly play a role in academic performance, it is essential to be able to explain the situation in a way that promotes self-awareness of your own faults and weaknesses and how those qualities contributed to the poor outcome. It is important to carefully identify your strengths and weaknesses and develop a plan to improve upon weaknesses and combat similar obstacles you may face moving forward. 

Overall, I would advise any pre-PA student that the best form of luck is preparation. Instead of wishing for luck or for an easy path into PA school- take control of that wish by ensuring you are as prepared as possible.

While I did not have the opportunity to use myPAbox when I was applying to school, I would’ve been ecstatic to utilize the resources that are now available. Instead of having a giant excel sheet trying to somehow organize every program and their individualized prerequisite courses and healthcare hours, along with differences in standardized testing, shadowing hours, and rolling vs non-rolling admissions, myPAbox does all the work for you.

Instead of having to wonder if a school’s requirements were updated at the last minute or if you are still within their average student’s statistics, myPAbox has the answer to your questions at the click of a button. This platform ensures that no time is wasted, and the tireless hours you would’ve spent organizing and double-checking your calculations can instead be used to focus on the aspects of your application that matter most, and leave every other worry behind. 

If you found this article helpful check out top 5 reasons why applicants get rejected from PA school

Use code “PATIPS20” to save 20% on your subscription to myPAbox

Other Blog Post

This Post Has 0 Comments

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Back To Top