Choosing Programs to Apply To - Meilin L.

Hi everyone, my name is Meilin Liang and I’ve been with PPASO since my 2nd year. I graduated in June 2016 and will be attending PA school in August 2018. There are over 200 PA programs and choosing which schools to apply to can be overwhelming. I hope sharing my experience in choosing programs will help ya’ll narrow your list. These are the factors I considered:

Mission – I resonated with programs that focused on improving access to healthcare for underserved communities, valued leadership, and encouraged cultural sensitivity.

Minimum Requirements – Did I meet them? Such as prerequisites, PCE hours, GPA, GRE score. For example, I did not apply to schools that required classes I did not take i.e. sociology and general psychology. I also did not apply to schools that did not count scribe hours towards PCE since that was the bulk of my experiences. Most programs list the competitive statistics of their incoming class so I applied to schools where most of my numbers fit within their ranges.

Location – This is where you will be living for the next 2-3 years so it’s important that you see yourself happy there. Is the program in the city or rural area? East Coast, West Coast, Midwest, South? I was open to going out of state so I picked schools that were in close proximity to large cities (Chicago, Portland, Philadelphia, Denver). Another thing to be mindful about is that some schools prefer in state residents (OHSU).

PANCE Pass Rate & Accreditation – Currently, the 5 year national average on the PANCE is 96% so I looked for programs that also had an average of 96%, or above. The pass rate is important because it indicates how well the program’s curriculum is in preparing their students. I also applied to schools that have Accredited-Continued status. For newer programs that are Accredited-Provisional, I recommend applying to them only if their pass rate is high (> 90%). I stayed away from programs that were Accredited-Probationary.

Duration of Program & Cost – I preferred programs that were 24 months because the overall tuition would be cheaper. However, there were some longer programs that I liked i.e. Touro (CA) for their dual MSPAS and MPH degrees and University of Colorado for their focus on pediatrics.

Clinical opportunities – I’m passionate about global health so I looked for programs that offered international rotations/opportunities (Arcadia, Yale, Duke, Touro). In addition, I also looked for programs that provided 2 or more clinical electives so that I can dab my feet in many specialities.

My biggest advice is to really do your research on programs you are interested in. There’s so much information that can be found on their websites. With that said, it is also really hard to truly know which program is the best fit for you without going to the school and talking to the students/faculty/staff. If you live close to a program, I recommend contacting their staff to see if you can sit in on a lecture. There were schools that I liked based off their websites but I did not get a good vibe during interviews & there were also schools I had low expectations for but was completely blown away when I got there. If you have the means, I recommend applying broadly.

Overall, I applied to 17 schools. That is more on the excessive side but I only wanted to apply once and I did not want to risk not getting in. A good ballpark would be 10-15 schools!

Programs I applied to:

• Duke

• Stanford

• Arcadia (Glenside, PA)

• MBKU

• USC

• Northwestern

• Rush

• Rosalind Franklin

• Yale

• Pacific University

• Touro (Vallejo, CA)

• University of Colorado

• University of Iowa

• Samuel Merritt

• OHSU

• University of Utah

• Jefferson College of Health Sciences

Best of luck on your journey! Keep up the hard work If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at liangmeilin4531@gmail.com.