Narrowing Your School Search

Before you even think about applying, creating a spreadsheet of schools and doing research should be your priority. With hundreds of PA schools and more popping up all the time, this can be understandably overwhelming; I’m going to break it down for you.

The first step in this process is to figure out if you are willing to move anywhere for school or if you want to stay in a certain area. Personally, I didn’t want to take a gap year and was willing to go wherever I got into school. And increasing the number of schools I applied to increased my chances of getting that acceptance. I understand that some people have ties to their area and wouldn't be open to moving. This obviously limits the number of places you can go and might mean having to take a gap year if you don't get accepted into one of those schools. Neither way is right or wrong but it’s crucial you know what you want before moving on with your school search.

Next, create a solid spreadsheet or system to easily input the data from your school research to easily compare schools. Necessary information includes: program name, direct patient care hour requirements, shadowing hour requirements, minimum accepted GPA, GRE and minimum/recommended scores, extra classes needed on top of normal prerequisites, reference letters needed, if there is a supplemental application, start date, application due date, etc. I also included information about statistics from an average admitted student, interview format and timing, and then a column to check off when I sent in the necessary information to the school after applying. 

Here's an example of a similar spreadsheet I used to get you started.

The best place to get information is straight from the school website. There are great resources that compile this information, but with schools changing requirements all the time, I think it’s safest to get the information straight from the source. If you still can’t find certain info, it’s ok to pick up the phone and call or send an email, just make sure the answer is not readily available on their website. 

Once you’ve filled a spreadsheet of schools of interest, you can easily delete the schools that you don't meet the criteria for. For example, I took numerous science courses but not biochemistry and it wasn’t going to fit in my senior year schedule. That was a limiting factor for me and I deleted all the schools requiring that on my spreadsheet. Then I was down to a more manageable number of schools. I knew I'd have about 750 direct patient care hours by the time I wanted to get my application in, so I deleted all the schools requiring more than that. At that point I was down to a solid list of 30ish schools and then I researched all of those more in depth: what are the statistics of a typical candidate and did I relatively fit into that profile? Since schools have a spring, August, or January start, I asked myself if I wanted to wait to start school 3 or 6 months after graduation or go right away. I didn’t want to wait so I deleted the ones not starting in May/June. I was down to about 20. Four of those schools were either on probation or not yet fully accredited: this is an iffy topic but I had a good list of other schools and so I nixed those. I then applied to those 16 schools that I qualified for and was the most interested in attending (I know it's so many and it is not cheap) and went from there. My main goal was to get in to a school no matter what, and it's hard to know where you stand amongst the other applicants, but I felt this was the way for me to increase my chance of acceptance.

I hope this gets your wheels turning and started on your own spreadsheet. If you've made it this far, I know you've already put in countless hours, and I promise this isn't for nothing. Good luck, I'm rooting for you and as always, let me know if you have any questions!

✤Courtney