Physicians Assistant Program: Which School Is Right For You?

You have researched the duties of a physicians assistant and decided this is the career for you. Congratulations, you have selected a very rewarding career field both emotionally and financially. The question now facing you is how do your select the right physicians assistant program to fit your goals. Although there is not an easy answer to this question if you approach it in an analytical fashion it becomes much easier to conquer the challenge. What I’m going to describe in this article are six steps you need to complete to identify which school(s) you should be applying for admission to. This article is written for the person who has earned or is about to be awarded a bachelor’s degree as this is a requirement to gain entrance to a physicians assistant program. Individuals who have not or are not close to completing a bachelor’s degree can check back in a couple days as I will be posting an article specifically for this situation.
Step Oner
You have your bachelor’s degree and hopefully it is in a medical field but that is not an absolute requirement. The first task facing you is to list out the classes and grade point average for any of the college courses listed below.
1. Anatomy and Physiology I and II with lab
2. General Chemistry I and II with lab
3. Biology I and II with lab (Mammalian, Cell or Human BiologyEnglish
4. Statistics, Algebra, Calculus, Finite Math, or other equivalent Advanced Mathematics:
5. Humanities and/or Social Science
6. Microbiology, genetics, organic chemistry, biochemistry and any additional advanced chemistry or biology courses.
The ones listed in 1-6 are widely required in most physicians assistant programs, the ones in 7 will strengthen your application package.
Step Twor
List out all your experiences working in a health care field and separate them as volunteer and non-volunteer. Estimate the hours for each particular experience then add up your volunteer and non-volunteer hours separately. Both columns must be itemized for use in step five.
Step Threer
If you haven’t done so research the physicians assistant field to identify what area you desire to work in. You can be a generalist or specialize in any number of medical specialties, you can even specialize in treatment areas such as rural. The research can be accomplished via web searches, going to the library or purchasing a comprehensive book on the physicians assistant field.
Step Fourr
Okay by this point you have a list of classes taken with grade point averages from step one. A comprehensive list of your experiences working in health care fields and you have identified the type of physicians assistant you want to be. Now begins the real but very critical work. You need to identify the physicians assistant programs that offer the type of training you want. If you are training to be a generalist then at this point the list contains all 142 certified programs across the United States so you can list out maybe 10 schools that are located in the area of the country that you would like to attend school. If you are looking for a program that teaches a very specific specialty then the list could be very short.
Step Fiver
Research each school on your step five list, this can be done via the net, and list/print their minimum prerequisites for entrance. You should have minimum lists for college courses, health care hours (check to see if they require work hours and not volunteer hours), and type of health care field experience they accept (hospice, EMT, RN, etc). A lot of colleges also list the collective grade point averages and graduate record exam scores for a current class year group. This collective data can give you an idea how you compare to the average of the school’s accepted students.
Step Sixr
Compare your data from steps 1-3 against the list of schools from step 5. Do you meet all the minimum requirements for a school(s). If you do then congratulations you clear the bar to submitting an application(s). If you haven’t met all the requirements and there are more schools that can be research from step four then repeat step five using the new schools then repeat this step.
If you have more then one school that you meet all the minimum requirements then I strongly suggest you apply to several as this is a very competitive process and the non-selection rate is very high for all schools.
If you have completed step six and have not met any school’s minimum requirements then you need to reconsider applying for a physicians assistant program at this time. I suggest you take the time required to strengthen your records so that during the next entrance cycle your will meet and hopefully exceed the minimum requirements. Waivers for not meeting minimum requirements are very rare and more than likely if you just meet the minimum requirements you chances of gaining acceptance will be very low due to the competitive nature of these schools.
Additional information regarding physicians assistant program schools can be found at http://hubpages.com/hub/Physicians-Assistant-Program In that article you will find more information on the training length of a physicians assistant program, types of physicians assistants and tuition costs of specific schools.