Question About the PTCAS Essay??

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I am aware there is an essay when you apply through PTCAS, but how do I find out what it is or when do you? Is there any way to find out what the essay is before July 2nd when the application process starts or do you have to wait?

There has been some discussion of this on the pre-physical therapy forum and the consensus seems to be that the essay will be: "Describe your decision making process in choosing physical therapy as a career choice versus other health care careers" and not a question about autonomous practice (as had been initially planned).

This is from the PTCAS instructions updated for the 2012-13 application cycle (from their website):

"Standard Essay:
Use your own words to create a personal essay that responds to the question below:
"Describe your decision making process in choosing physical therapy as a career choice versus other health care careers.”*
PLEASE*NOTE:*You can NOT make any edits to your personal statement after you have e-submitted your completed application to PTCAS. PTCAS does not review your essay response for grammar or content.

If you have applied to a physical therapy program in the past five years, what have you done to
improve upon, or enhance, your application for this current admissions cycle?
Leave*item*blank,*if*you*are*applying*to*physical* therapy*programs*for*the*first*time.**If you have previously applied to one of more PT programs, use this text box to respond to the question. PTCAS will share your response with all of our designated programs participating in the Service.

Technical Requirements:
You*are*limited*to*approximately*1*page*(4500*char acters,*including*spaces).*Some formatting characters used in programs like Word (angled quotes, accents, special characters, bold, underline, or italics) will not display properly. You can NOT make any edits to your personal statement after you have e-submitted your completed application to PTCAS. PTCAS does not review your essay response for grammar or content."

For the full updated PTCAS instructions, go to www.ptcas.org and click "Print Instructions." It will open as a pdf file.