Non-traditional student - out of UG financial aid, low GPA - what would you do next?

[biomajor2019]

Hi everyone! I am posting this on behalf of my fiancé who is a pre-PT student.
He has a bit of an interesting story, so bare with me while I share it and look for advice on how we can help him find the most successful path to DPT school.

My fiancé is a non-traditional student who received his bachelor in Business Management in 2019. During the pandemic, he ended up working for the local hospital for patient registration and after hackers took over their system, they were looking for people from his department to work on the floor. My fiancé stepped up and began doing patient registration in the ER and spent a lot of time learning from the nurses and other healthcare professionals about their roles within the field. Long story short, this was when he found an interest in healthcare.
He graduated with a low GPA - I blame that partly on myself as we are both from lower income households, and he worked A LOT while we were in school to afford our apartment (on campus housing was too expensive) food, utilities, etc and school was definitely on his back burner. I worked as well, but he wanted me to focus more on school as I was looking to apply to veterinary school shortly after graduating. He graduated with ~2.4 GPA and his grades had a downward trend junior and senior year when he began working more when we both received less financial aid those years.
We are now living in the town where my veterinary school is (we're both going to LMU), and he has been working for over a year now at a physical therapy office and is their top aide. He is taking pre-requisites for DPT school, is active in their Exercise Science and Rehabilitation Club, volunteers within the community fairly regularly, and is doing fairly well grade-wise. Unfortunately, he has completely run out of financial aid and is paying for this semester in private loans.
We have discussed the pros and cons of him continuing to take out private loans to complete pre-requisites versus pursing a masters degree, but I am just not that familiar with how DPT schools look at these cases. I know with DVM programs, it's dependent on the school, and some will combine the UG and Masters GPA, and some will look at them separately, so I am looking for some insight from those who are more familiar with the field on how you all view a masters degree? What masters degrees are considered most beneficial for pre-PT students? He has been considering either a masters in Nutrition or Athletic Training.
The schools he is interested in are LMU, MCPHS, and UMass Lowell and he has been in communication with all of them and plans to ask them specifically how they view a masters degree.

Long story short, I am looking for some peer insight on if you were in this situation, what would you do next? I am trying my best to help him given the knowledge I have from applying to veterinary school, but I know that these programs may view certain things differently.

Thank you all so much for your time!

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[mochipoki]

I think what he's doing now is the right way to go about things! The only thing comment I would have is to look at getting a larger variety of hours (ie. Go to other settings such has hospital, skilled nursing, etc since he sounds like he only has hours in one setting). Otherwise, yes, communicate with those schools! MS in athletic training is a great choice if he's interested in working with athletes when he gets his DPT as most PTs that work with professional sports are ATs. He needs to make sure he does very well on any prereqs he takes in the meantime

 

[biomajor2019]

I think what he's doing now is the right way to go about things! The only thing comment I would have is to look at getting a larger variety of hours (ie. Go to other settings such has hospital, skilled nursing, etc since he sounds like he only has hours in one setting). Otherwise, yes, communicate with those schools! MS in athletic training is a great choice if he's interested in working with athletes when he gets his DPT as most PTs that work with professional sports are ATs. He needs to make sure he does very well on any prereqs he takes in the meantime

Thank you so much for this feedback! Yes, as of now he only has experience at the one outpatient office! He’s looking at getting into the local hospital for observation hours over break, but I’ll mention the other settings, as well!
His goal is to work with athletes, so that’s so awesome to hear that the athletic training degree would be beneficial!

Thank you so much!

 

[DSDPT2022]

I would advise both for and against it. It may make financial sense for both of you for him to wait until you're done with Vet School and then after you get a job and start earning more, he can start applying. Other than re-taking classes, he could get a post-bacc rather than a masters but if masters is the choice, then do it in a field where he can use it practically rather than something like kinesiology or exercise science where post graduate opportunities are not that great and pay isn't worth the debt for him to get the degree.

For me, I was and am in a similar situation. I screwed around earlier on in my academic career and was placed on academic probation and subsequent suspension for a year, but after being able to return, my GPA did not drop below a 3.0 other than two semesters (at the community college) out of 4 years. I had a last 60 hours GPA of 3.67 and graduated from the university which I transferred to with a 3.41 gpa.

Now, the sad part is that because of the classes that I failed and got Ds in, even after retaking all of the prerequisites for PT school and not getting below a B other than in Stats and Math, my overall calculated GPA is a 2.8(?). I applied to 13 schools and was rejected from 6 of them because of my GPA alone, no consideration about my character, experience, research experience, work experience, didn't read the essay, GRE score, Casper score, none of it matters other than one fn GPA number. It's really disheartening and if I knew that these schools didn't care about anything else other than GPA, I would not have even considered them let alone waste almost a thousand dollars paying their application, secondary, and GRE fees.

Here's the good part, I did have three interviews and was accepted to St. Augustine and waitlisted at UNC and am awaiting results from another programs along with schools that haven't started reviewing applications. So there is a chance he can get in, I'm just not sure how many programs he should apply to try and get into one or two programs. I think in hindsight, I would have emailed all of those schools that rejected me and been straight up about my academic history to see if they would give me a fair shot instead of wasting that money.

Hope that helps.