Is anyone considering applying to any of the new or developing programs listed on the CAPTE website? or have thoughts about new programs?
Directory of developing physical therapist education programs.
www.capteonline.org
Hi,
My school is on that list, and I am set to graduate next month! We are also fully on track to be accredited.
I am part of the inaugural class - our rejection rate for this first cohort was 75-80% if I remember correctly (don't quote me), so they weren't exactly just letting anyone in. I have no idea how competitive we are as compared to other schools as this was the only school I applied to.
As someone else already mentioned, I would not overly worry about being a part of a new program, in terms of accreditation. Every program has to start somewhere, and if a program is granted candidacy (which is the hardest step), there is an excellent chance they will become accredited. Having watched my program go through it over the past 3 years - there aren't any rude surprises, CAPTE made all expectations very clear to my school and they meet regularly to ensure we are on track.
In terms of what it's like as a student - I can't pretend it wasn't stressful at times. Just little things that would come up where the details weren't ironed out, or they were ironed out but it turns out they didn't make sense in real life. Nothing that ever made us question our education, not speaking of content, more just the "housekeeping" side of things. They also asked for our feedback following any unique class/lab experiences to ascertain whether it was educational for us or not, feedback on the program in general after each semester, as well as the normal course evals. And we saw in the second cohort the changes they made based on our feedback, and further improvements were made for the third cohort. Perhaps an upside to this is my program is very open-minded to suggestions - I don't know if fully established programs would be as open-minded?
What I think is the most important is for each of my rotations I felt fully prepared, capable of being there, passed each rotation, and was rated as entry-level at two of them. I also passed a PEAT over the summer (*barely*, but I passed), so I also feel I was more than adequately educated to pass the boards. Rotations and the PEAT are unbiased assessments of a student's capabilities so these make me feel good about my program.
I obviously don't know what it is like in other new programs, but these were my experiences with mine. I hope this helps!
