Exercise Physiologist wanting more

[deezytide]

A little background to start - I got my undergraduate degree in Exercise Science in 2012(3.8 GPA), followed by a master's in Biomechanics in 2014(3.9 GPA). My GRE scores are still current(V:150 Q:163, 4.5 on writing).

After I got my master's degree, I worked as a full-time strength and conditioning coach at a D1 school for a year before getting let go due to school budget cuts. After interning for 6 months at another school, I found a job as an "exercise physiologist" at a spinal cord injury rehab clinic. We are not PT's, although we do pretty much the same job as PT's in this niche(although with a more intensive exercise component).

Although I love my job, I only make $20 per hour and I think I would top out around $25/hour(~50k/year). We can't really bill insurance either because we are not PT's, so that limits us as well. After much thought and discussion with my wife, I want to go to PT school to further advance my career. I have a few questions, though.

1-Would my work experience now as an exercise physiologist count towards volunteer experience? We do have one PT on staff, although she is not licensed in the state that we work.

2-Do you think my verbal GRE score would keep me from getting in to most schools?

3-If the answer to question 1 is no, do you think I would be able to get accepted with just the minimum number of required hours? I'm a good interviewer, so that would help

4-Is it really worth it to quit my job and go to PT school when I have something good going doing something VERY similar? I'll probably be making close to 50k/year when I finally leave to go to school, plus 50k total in student loans, I'll be 200k in the hole.

5-This may be a dumb question, but are there such things as graduate assistantships in DPT programs? I had one in grad school, which was a tremendous help paying for school.

Thanks to anyone who is willing to answer these questions!

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[CaptainMonty]

First off this is my own 2 cents, so feel free to ignore it 🙂

Now i'm making assumptions, but since you graduated in 2012, i'm going to guess your 26 right now. First off your grades are great, and the 150 on the GRE isn't going to hurt you. Your other stats look great and since it's not some drastic fall off they won't really mind.

As for the hours, that's going to have to be up to each school. Once you have a list of where you want to go, contact them. Most places are great about getting back to applicants and will be up front. I'd say there's a pretty good chance they will say no (that the hours don't count). It's not to be mean, it's just because you didn't technical shadow or work as a PT. It's close, but again it'd be up to the school.

Getting the minimum hours COULD work. You'd need to diversify them and get some good LOR's. Don't do them all in 1 or 2 settings, this would be where you could lose some footing.

As for financial sense...probably not. Right now your talking about a salary increase of 10-20k (when you first get out of school) after taking on an extra 100k+ of debt and losing income for those years. You'd be 30 by the time you graduate and would have a large debt compared to where you are now. However...this is your life. If your wife can support you and help you, this may be something to go for.

And as for your last question: Not that I've heard of. It's scholarships and student loans all the way.

 

[DesertPT]

1-Would my work experience now as an exercise physiologist count towards volunteer experience? We do have one PT on staff, although she is not licensed in the state that we work.

I would contact the schools you are interested in applying to with this question. Generally observation hours need to have occurred directly with a licensed PT. Many schools also require verification of hours (though many also do not) and I believe that the verification form asks for license number. So if you have never been directly supervised by a licensed PT my guess on this one is that the answer is probably no. But again, contact your schools of interest - you may very well be pleasantly surprised. Even if the hours don't count, your experience working with people with disabilities will hopefully count for something when it comes to essays and interviews. Don't bank on it being your ace in the hole or anything, but it certainly can't hurt.

2-Do you think my verbal GRE score would keep me from getting in to most schools?

Again, depends on the school. Some weight the GRE heavily, some weight it lightly, some don't require it at all. In general I would say no, it will not keep you from getting in to most schools if other aspects of your application is strong. Luckily your GPA is good, hopefully your pre-req GPA is good too. GRE could keep you ought of some. Obviously if your score is below the minimum required for admission it will keep you out of those schools (as an aside, please, please don't be one of the literally thousands of people who apply to PT schools each year without meeting the minimum stated requirements or without having fulfilled all the pre-requisite coursework - your application will be filtered out automatically by the computer system and never looked at by human eyes). 150 should be right about at or slightly above the minimum for most programs though. But once again, worth a call to the admissions office of each school of interest to ask them this along with your other questions. You can learn a lot about programs that you don't learn from their website by giving them a call with thoughtful questions. Just make sure you have read their website as well as the PTCAS instruction manual thoroughly first to avoid asking questions you could have easily answered yourself.

3-If the answer to question 1 is no, do you think I would be able to get accepted with just the minimum number of required hours? I'm a good interviewer, so that would help

Maybe. More is always better, but as far as raw numbers go you generally don't need much more than the required total. Some schools do care about hte total number but many will say as long as you have met the requirements you could have 100 or 2000 and they wouldn't really care. As was stated above, what is important is diversity of settings. If you have at least the minimum hours, but they are spread across multiple settings (outpatient, acute and rehab being the cardinal 3 that all have multiple sub-settings/specialties within them) you should be good to go at most schools. Again, an admissions office could clarify if going significantly above the minimum total number is advantageous at their school or not. From a less concrete standpoint, also consider that the more time you have spent around PT in a broad spectrum of settings/specialties, the more knowledge of the profession you have to draw from when it comes time for essays and interviews. But don't kill yourself standing around watching someone else do their job for hundred and hundreds of hours on end just for the sake of it. Also, most people think they are better interviewers than they are, so try to avoid taking your self-perceived interview abilities into this overall equation. The interview is very important at many programs, which you obviously understand, but you can't self-predict ahead of time how well you will do with any reasonable degree of accuracy.

4-Is it really worth it to quit my job and go to PT school when I have something good going doing something VERY similar? I'll probably be making close to 50k/year when I finally leave to go to school, plus 50k total in student loans, I'll be 200k in the hole.

Unfortunately, this is not a question we can answer for you. If you are smart enough to get into PT school you are smart enough to crunch the numbers and decide what kind of idea it is from a financial standpoint, and to weigh the pros and cons and decide what kind of decision it is from a personal and career standpoint. I wouldn't take others opinions on this subject to seriously, especially on the internet where opinions are more often on the negative side of the fence. There is a lot more that goes into a decision to go back to school than finances, although that is a crucial component. All we can really tell you with confidence is that you should keep reading and educating yourself on the profession of physical therapy and spend time sitting and really hashing out whether or not that profession lines up with your individual life.

5-This may be a dumb question, but are there such things as graduate assistantships in DPT programs? I had one in grad school, which was a tremendous help paying for school.

A few schools do have them for PT schools, but the vast majority do not at least as far as what I've heard and seen. I honestly couldn't tell you how many programs have them. Mine does have some for second year students that pay quite well actually, but only about 15% of the students are selected for a position. These things generally aren't advertised, so you'd have to ask each school. I feel like they are probably more likely at a traditional 4-year university where there is a graduate college that deals with such things, compared to the health-professions only schools. Who knows, I haven't studied it much. It was a surprise to me that my school had them for PT students when I got to interview day, although I didn't end up getting selected for one. Basically, don't count on it. There's a remote possibility of it that you could be pleasantly surprised by, but definitely don't count on it.

Sounds like you have some great goals in mind and you are starting to get a feel for this process. Thank you for putting together an organized list of legitimate questions that were easy to process and answer. That is a lot better than the 2-page long stream of consciousness or the easily Google-able in 2 seconds questions and/or answered by the PTCAS instruction manual questions we get from a lot of posters.

The PT school application experience is more of a saga than an event, so prepare psychologically for a long and tedious road ahead. But of course if PT is your dream and you get accepted, it's all worth it. Then once you're in the real hell begins. 😉 Let us know if you have any more questions, and good luck.

 

[NJ DPT HOPEFUL]

A little background to start - I got my undergraduate degree in Exercise Science in 2012(3.8 GPA), followed by a master's in Biomechanics in 2014(3.9 GPA). My GRE scores are still current(V:150 Q:163, 4.5 on writing).

After I got my master's degree, I worked as a full-time strength and conditioning coach at a D1 school for a year before getting let go due to school budget cuts. After interning for 6 months at another school, I found a job as an "exercise physiologist" at a spinal cord injury rehab clinic. We are not PT's, although we do pretty much the same job as PT's in this niche(although with a more intensive exercise component).

Although I love my job, I only make $20 per hour and I think I would top out around $25/hour(~50k/year). We can't really bill insurance either because we are not PT's, so that limits us as well. After much thought and discussion with my wife, I want to go to PT school to further advance my career. I have a few questions, though.

1-Would my work experience now as an exercise physiologist count towards volunteer experience? We do have one PT on staff, although she is not licensed in the state that we work.

2-Do you think my verbal GRE score would keep me from getting in to most schools?

3-If the answer to question 1 is no, do you think I would be able to get accepted with just the minimum number of required hours? I'm a good interviewer, so that would help

4-Is it really worth it to quit my job and go to PT school when I have something good going doing something VERY similar? I'll probably be making close to 50k/year when I finally leave to go to school, plus 50k total in student loans, I'll be 200k in the hole.

5-This may be a dumb question, but are there such things as graduate assistantships in DPT programs? I had one in grad school, which was a tremendous help paying for school.

Thanks to anyone who is willing to answer these questions!

Former exercise physiologist (quit last week, starting my dpt program next week)

In my case the hours at work didn't count but I was able to fill in for our pt aide when he was on vacation and they counted those hours. Talking about my work experience in interviews definitely helped me.

For 5 I'm no expert but some programs I looked into did have GA type of deal . But those seemed to be more the state universities with large undergrad populations. My current program is at a medical campus and they do not have such programs

Good luck and feel free to message me if you have any questions. Other than you having a higher GPA and masters our situations are very similar

 

[deezytide]

First off this is my own 2 cents, so feel free to ignore it 🙂

Now i'm making assumptions, but since you graduated in 2012, i'm going to guess your 26 right now. First off your grades are great, and the 150 on the GRE isn't going to hurt you. Your other stats look great and since it's not some drastic fall off they won't really mind.

As for the hours, that's going to have to be up to each school. Once you have a list of where you want to go, contact them. Most places are great about getting back to applicants and will be up front. I'd say there's a pretty good chance they will say no (that the hours don't count). It's not to be mean, it's just because you didn't technical shadow or work as a PT. It's close, but again it'd be up to the school.

Getting the minimum hours COULD work. You'd need to diversify them and get some good LOR's. Don't do them all in 1 or 2 settings, this would be where you could lose some footing.

As for financial sense...probably not. Right now your talking about a salary increase of 10-20k (when you first get out of school) after taking on an extra 100k+ of debt and losing income for those years. You'd be 30 by the time you graduate and would have a large debt compared to where you are now. However...this is your life. If your wife can support you and help you, this may be something to go for.

And as for your last question: Not that I've heard of. It's scholarships and student loans all the way.

My wife makes enough to at least pay all of our bills(although not much more), so I shouldn't have to take out loans for living expenses. Because of this, I can't really afford to move, and there are only two DPT programs within driving distance of where we live. One is a top 15 school and would cost 150k, the other is... well, let's say it's not even top 150 but it only costs 50-60k TOTAL so that's what I'm banking on. 50k total debt is not bad compared to what some people take on, but it's the missing 3 years of income that is seriously making me reconsider. It could take me 15-20 years to recoup if I'm only making 60-65k.

Assuming I go through with all of this, do you think my masters degree and background as a strength coach and exercise physiologist working with SCI patients would give me a leg up when applying for jobs? Or the ability to negotiate for more money since those are both specific niches?

Thank you guys for the responses!