hello folks,
A little info about myself 26 year old male currently a junior studying history at Suffolk University (marine corps after high school)
Ive always been interested in becoming a pt, havent taken any science courses and im not great in math at all...what should be my first step right now? also im looking at schools currently and i want to know if umass lowell is a good program? tough to get into? can someone please tell me what a normal day of a pt is? also what gpa is standard to get into this program
Thank-you
I checked petersons.com hoping for acceptance figures, which it often includes, but it does not include them for this school. But, like many other schools, the minumum GPA is 3.0. I'm guessing that it is "easy" to get into, relative to other schools in the area, since it's not a very highly-ranked institution. But, I'm not sure that there are any DPT programs that are truly easy to get into.
Your first step right now, having none of the prerequisites and not being good at math, would probably be to take a couple courses... biology, and especially chemistry or physics. It may be (and I'm not trying to be discouraging) that you don't have the math and science abilities needed to do well in the prerequisite courses. On the other hand, you may find that you have untapped abilities and you do great. But, since you'll need a significant number of science courses to get into any DPT program, you might as well sign up for a couple of basic ones you know you'll be able to use, and see how it goes. Somewhat surprisingly (to those new to the field) prereqs for DPT programs are very similar to those for med school, minus the MCAT. You'll have some work ahead of you to meet the prereq requirements.
Did you check their website? Here are the admissions requirements:
http://www.uml.edu/college/SHE/PT/pt.html#admission
This also says that up to 60% of the seats go to UMass Lowell Exercise Physiology grads, leaving only 40% of the seats to "outsiders".
One of their admissions requirements is a documented 35+ hours of experience in a physical therapy setting... this should give you an idea of what PTs do.
