My biggest mistake when I applied to PA school

When I started looking into PA school, I quickly realized that there were numerous pre-requisite classes that I was going to need to take. And, oh-so-conveniently, what I needed for one school may be entirely different than what I needed for another school. It looked like it was going to take some time (at least a year, probably) for me to take the courses I needed to apply. 

I knew a handful of schools I wanted to apply to (since my goal was to stay local, if possible, to be close to my family and boyfriend at the time), so I made a chart of the schools with all their requirements for coursework, if I needed the GRE, etc. 

And that’s when I realized, oh shoot, here’s a school I can apply to right now because I’ve met all but one of the requirements -- taking the GRE. I could apply and, if I got in, start a whole year before I had originally anticipated! In this whirlwind of excitement, I decided to take the GRE in just eight days and see what happened. Why just eight days? Because I was nearing the end of the CASPA submission period for that school and needed enough time for the scores to be processed. 

There are numerous problems with this situation.

For starters, only having eight days to study for the GRE was a big risk and could have been a colossal waste of time and money. Luckily, I scored high enough that this wasn’t the case (whew!). 

As I stated, the end date for the CASPA submission was coming up. In retrospect, this was my biggest mistake -- waiting until the last minute. Huge, huge mistake. This school had a rolling admissions policy (meaning they review and select applications as they come in… read: apply early!), which meant my chances of acceptance were getting slimmer by the day. 

Unintentionally waiting until the last minute had a trickle-down effect of problems, too. This meant I was rushing to ask people for letters of recommendation (so not cool, and then I embarrassingly asked most of the same people again the next year for letters). I was rushing to write my personal statement and other essays (meaning they weren’t my very, very best work). 

And knowing that this was a rolling admissions school and my chances were going to be so slim by the time I submitted, it was a total waste of money (application fees for the school and CASPA aren’t cheap, ya’ll). And of course, we can’t forget that by applying to just one school, I put all my eggs in one basket. Not ideal. 

Because I like to see the silver lining in things, I considered this a trial run for the next year of applications. I was very familiar with the requirements, “practiced” using CASPA, and had time to work on strengthening my application. 

When I applied in 2018, I was super prepared. Everything was ready, perfected, proofread and geared up when the applications opened. That meant the only thing left to do was (politely) remind my references to submit their letters of recommendation. 

Moral of the story? Prepare well in advance to apply for PA school. This is necessary to ensure you’ve taken all your pre-requisites, of course, but also to get to the front of the line for those schools with rolling admissions. 

I’ll have more tips in the future about asking for letters of recommendation and preparing your application, but for now, learn from my biggest mistake! Be ready early. 

Be well,

Olivia