PTCAS Essay Prompt Ideas

[preptgirl1313]

Hi all! As you all know the 2020-2021 PTCAS essay prompt is as follows:

Every person has a story that has led them to a career. Since there are a variety of health professions that "help" others, please go beyond your initial interaction or experience with physical therapy, and share the deeper story that has confirmed your decision to specifically pursue physical therapy as your career.

I want to include experience from my time in PT in my essay, but I am worried it will be too cliche since I am a typical case of "I tore my ACL in high school and want to be a PT." However, I want to more show the struggles I had and tie it to a non-PT experience that more confirmed my decision to be a PT. My current ideas are more along the lines of how I had a hard time recovering from an ACL but then linking it to how another experience made me realize why it was so hard for me and made me really want to pursue PT as a career. I believe the way in which I want to present it is not a typical "I went to PT so I want to be a PT" kind of story, but I am worried if they see that I wrote about a torn ACL in high school that they will just disregard the rest of my essay.

Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on including this in my essay? Thanks in advance!

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[JMarcusDPT]

Hi all! As you all know the 2020-2021 PTCAS essay prompt is as follows:

Every person has a story that has led them to a career. Since there are a variety of health professions that "help" others, please go beyond your initial interaction or experience with physical therapy, and share the deeper story that has confirmed your decision to specifically pursue physical therapy as your career.

I want to include experience from my time in PT in my essay, but I am worried it will be too cliche since I am a typical case of "I tore my ACL in high school and want to be a PT." However, I want to more show the struggles I had and tie it to a non-PT experience that more confirmed my decision to be a PT. My current ideas are more along the lines of how I had a hard time recovering from an ACL but then linking it to how another experience made me realize why it was so hard for me and made me really want to pursue PT as a career. I believe the way in which I want to present it is not a typical "I went to PT so I want to be a PT" kind of story, but I am worried if they see that I wrote about a torn ACL in high school that they will just disregard the rest of my essay.

Does anyone have any thoughts or recommendations on including this in my essay? Thanks in advance!

It sounds like you have a well-thought-out and unique essay idea, so my advice would be to go for it! In my opinion, and in my experience reading essays so far this cycle, the nature of the prompt means most people are going to end up talking about being in PT because you have to say what got you into PT and that's it for most people. I think taking an idea that seems overdone, but making it unique is the best thing you can do, and you also definitely don't want an essay that doesn't answer the question.