Is pGPA good indicator of success in PT school?

[Highlife.himalayas]

I was recently accepted into PT school (yay) but now I'm worrying I won't be able to handle the workload. I have a 3.85 pGPA and I'm anticipating it climb after this semester. I guess I'm wondering, current students out there, was your pGPA a good indicator of how you fared in PT school? Will I achieve similar marks with how my system is going now, or should I anticipate a more challenging transition?

Is there even a "pattern" or is this just different for everyone?

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[topher031888]

I don't know about pGPA but from my experience the students who struggle at least initially were not taking a full load in undergraduate or had been away from school for a while and quickly became overwhelmed by the amount of material in PT school. Most (all but one) of them had a hard time for the first 2-3 semesters as they adapted to the workload and then did fine for the rest of the program.

 

[Cheezy89]

GPA gives the general impression that you will be able to do well in the program. After all, schools are, in some way, ranked by the number of people that graduate the program and obtain their license. So every program has to be really careful about who they pick. It's a lot more reassuring to select student with high GPA. However GPA does not paint the whole picture. You have to take into account motivation and maturity. Some people could not figure out what they wanted to do in Undergrad. They struggle because they had no clear goals thus, a lack of motivation. By the time people commit themselves to a high cost graduate level education, they had figured out what they really want for a career. It's easier to do well when you have clear goals. Also the people in my class that are a bit slow to start were not from a science background so they had to do a lot more work than the rest, but nobody has failed a class yet. I had a 2.6 cGPA and took three years before I could get to PT school. Now I am an A- student 5 months into PT school. I refuse to even drop to a 3.3.

 

[starrsgirl]

In my case, I would say no. My pGPA was pretty low because I was a non trad student and had to retake a lot of classes before applying (you can never really recover that GPA, haha). I believe I was around 3.3 and I'm doing really well. Likewise, we lost of a few students who had high GPAs too (everyone has high GPAs).

I agree with the workload idea above. If you have a high pGPA and you had really tough course loads (6+ classes) and maybe worked and did sports/extra curriculars, then you will have a good idea on the workload of PT school. If you have a high pGPA because you don't do much else, then the hours may shock you. Depending on your school, they might not give out a lot of As. That's a tough reality for many straight A's in undergrad type students. But students who pulled Bs (and maybe did that while doing a ton of other things) are more used to the B range and don't flip out about it as much.