Seriously Considering PA Programs: help a girl out

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Shayla Flowere

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Hi all!

I've been doing a lot of self-reflecting as of late and I'm strongly beginning to think that PA School rather than med school fits what I want to do in medicine. I'm just wrapping up my sophomore year as a Bio Pre-med student though so I'm not sure if I'm on the right track for PA School. could you guys look over my stats and let me know what you think?

cGPA: 3.11
sGPA: 3.22

Volunteering:
-30 hours an art gallery (been doing this for a while pretty sure it doesn't count since its kind of medically irrelevant)
-41.75 hour tutoring at risk students with disabilities (working on this throughout junior year as well)
-starting a volunteering gig at my local hospital over the summer (I should be able to get 100 hours over the three months that I am there,)

*Also so schools I'm looking at are not asking for GRE scores what is up with that?

Thank you!

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Your GPA is fine if it stays above 3.0 but get it as high as you can - especially in sciences. Your real issue is needing significantly more clinical experience hours before application. 1000-2000 hours of dedicated clinical experience makes you competitive from what I've seen.

Good luck!
 
The average accepted GPA for PA school is around a 3.5, both for the cGPA and sGPA so I would try to get your GPA up a bit with the 2 years you have left. Not to say your GPA is absolutely horrible, but it will be much easier for you to get interviews if you can bring it up. You will also need paid, direct patient contact experience for PA school. Many people take a gap year in order to get experience so if I were you I would focus on your grades now and get the experience later. Shadowing a PA or two will also be beneficial. Most schools require students to take the GRE, but some don't. I personally think the GRE is stupid and the schools I was interested in didn't require it so I never took it.
 
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Grades are the single most important thing you can invest in, and do so at the expense of anything else....volunteering, obtaining health care experience, etc. as a sophomore, it’s totally possible to get your grades up by the time senior year finishes up. You can also take science courses as electives that help broaden your biology knowlege, but don’t bite off more than you can chew. Every semester when you register for classes, the only question you should ask yourself is “how many classes can I take and still manage to get A’s?”. That’s how important grades are. Yes, other things are important, but they pale in comparison to the doors that good grades open for you. It takes years and tons of effort to make up for poor grades... if it’s even possible.

So..... grades. Again.... grades.
 
@Pacmac I definitely am learning that. It's just so hard to not get obsessed with getting the experience as well. Questions: Does CASPA take retake courses into consideration when calculating GPA? Also how are CLEP credits and AP credits counted? I transferred in 3 AP Credits and I'm thinking about taking a CLEP exam to get a gen-ed req out of the way.
 
CASPA will calculate your GPAs based on all classes you have ever taken, including retakes. Not 100% sure about CLEP or AP credits. I would go to the help section of CASPAs website for more information.
 
The help feature on CASPA, as has been mentioned, should be your guide. Within the website, I’m certain that most of your answers will be spelled out. Some schools treat your clep or AP courses different than CASPA, so do your research there too. For instance, some programs will not accept prereqs if they are clep’d or are AP, although I don’t know off the top of my head what AP classes would also be prereqs, or if that’s even possible... I guess maybe AP biology, statistics, or psychology (a school I looked at had stats and psychology as prereqs... somin that case, if they were taken as AP, then they wouldn’t accept them... I’d have to take them as a college student). Again, you are talking about the entrance requirements for well over 100 or more schools that are all wildly different... nobody here can do you any favors by speculating. We only know what we know about schools we know about. Ya know?

Health care experience is certainly tempting. It keeps folks motivated towards their goal, and gives them insight. It can also mess up your plan if you don’t have your act fully together. I work with folks that are great students and awesome CNAs that are chasing PA prereqs. Several have what it takes to go to medical school. They manage time well, and have their books with them to work on tough subjects if they get downtime. But they are completely at the mercy of the needs of the shift. Basically, all of them have no time to really study, and would be better off leaving that for home while they just work. But they aren’t depending on getting time at work to do their homework because they are already working hard at home. They can handle getting their healthcare experience while in school. The question is, can you? Folks who are used to getting A’s and ditching their social life can have it all. Folks that struggle to get high B’s will end up getting high Cs if they work while in school. And folks that are taking pre med weed out classs where most of the class should plan on getting B’s should be really nervous about working. Any time you have a boss, especially in healthcare, you have someone who can single handedly steal you away from an extra day of studying you might need before an important test, and they can do it simply by changing the schedule.
 
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