How to Choose the Right PA Program - Ryanne C.

If you’re an aspiring PA who’s spent any amount of time looking into potential target PA programs, you’ve likely found it easier to get a feel for some programs compared to others.

Knowing what it’d be like to be a student within a PA program could help you to make better choices in understanding where you’d like to apply. However, recognizing what a program is all about isn’t always the most straightforward endeavor.

Though there are accreditation standards that guide what information every program must disclose, how much a program shares beyond the required details can vary wildly from school to school. So, when it comes to understanding the culture of a program, most future PAs turn to the mission statement.

However, if you begin and end your search for a program’s culture with the mission statement, you’re only going to scratch the surface, if you can get any useful information at all.

Mission statements are often exceedingly similar between schools. Though they may hint at what’s important to a program, if you want to get a genuine feel for the culture of a school, these statements are just the starting point.

Because though they may provide some guidance, mission statements are declarations, not proof of what a program values most. And, if you hope to get a real feel for the culture of a PA program, you have to move beyond relying on a mission statement and, instead, go in search of tangible evidence.

Here’s how to hunt for proof of program culture using the tools that are usually at your disposal, even for programs with websites that would make minimalists proud.

What’s showing up in the curriculum?

With all that has to be covered in a short two-ish year period, PA school training is incredibly dense. Students are often surprised by how exhausting even the first week of classes can be.

And, to meet accreditation standards, all programs have to include some very particular elements as part of their training. So, when a PA school chooses to incorporate non-required aspects into their curriculum, it’s likely an indication of their values.

When a PA program deliberately carves out time in an already-packed curriculum to do a lecture series on substance use disorder or additional training on a mental health topic, you can bet that it’s a subject that’s of particular importance to them.

When they mandate that all clinical year students have at least one rotation in a medically underserved area, take it as evidence of the significance of the experience to the program. Placing extra parameters on clinical rotations means putting additional pressure on their clinical coordinator to find appropriate preceptors and training sites. If a school is willing to create this obstacle for themselves, they’re true believers in the benefit that the experience has for you.

And while “collaboration” makes an appearance in many mission statements, you might find that some programs put this concept into practice earlier or more substantially than others.

If a program creates interdisciplinary training opportunities with students in other health professions – like medical, nursing, pharmacy, PT, or OT students – consider it not just an ideal but collaboration in action.

In addition to curriculum content, how information is delivered to you may also serve as a hint at the program’s culture. A school that incorporates more opportunities for small group work, problem-based learning, or a “flipped” classroom may expect more student contribution than one that focuses more heavily on lectures.

Because training PAs already requires squeezing ridiculous amounts of information into a fixed amount of time, pay attention to any aspects of the curriculum that seem to suggest a thoughtful, deliberate choice on the part of a PA program. It’s usually a good reflection of what matters to them.

The contributions of faculty members.

When it comes to PA programs, most function as a school within a school. Rather than adopting the attributes of the larger university system they may exist within, programs tend to develop their own ecosystem.

The culture of a PA program is, therefore, greatly influenced by the faculty members who are a part of it. So, when you’re trying to feel out a program, it’s helpful to look at the backgrounds of faculty members.

When you do, don’t get overly distracted by specialties — remember PAs train as generalists. If a faculty member’s clinical experience is in gastroenterology or pediatrics, they can still have extensive knowledge in other areas and provide excellent instruction across a wide variety of topics. And, many programs bring in guest speakers to fill in gaps when needed.

When you look into backgrounds, what’s way more important than the specialties faculty members may have worked in are the environments in which they’ve practiced — outpatient, inpatient, community-based clinics, rural settings, a large teaching hospital, or with specific patient populations.

The practice environment, more than a specialty, is going to influence the perspective they bring to their teaching.

If you have an idea of what area you’d like to practice in or are hoping for a wide variety of perspectives, you can check out what faculty members might be bringing to the program.

Secondly, the staying power of those instructing students can indicate a healthy program culture. Every PA program will have some level of faculty turnover, that’s normal.

But, if a program has a core group of faculty members who have been around for years or, perhaps, were former students in the program, that’s a good sign. These folks know exactly what they’re in for, and they keep coming back, which helps you know that 1) they’re dedicated and 2) that a program is invested in cultivating a welcoming environment.

How are students spending outside of classroom time?

When working to get a feel for a program’s culture, another area deserving of investigation is learning how students spend their time outside of the classroom.

By this, I don’t mean their free time (that, I know, is spent studying, sleeping, and staring blankly at walls) but instead time within the bounds of the program but outside of the curriculum.

Are there community service activities that students participate in as a group? Are the activities mandatory or optional?

Some PA programs may offer opportunities for trainees to participate in a student-run clinic or to go on a class mission trip. Others may focus on participating in community health fairs or sending groups of current students out to talk to high schoolers about the PA profession.

Just as with cramming extras into a PA school curriculum, adding in outside-of-classroom activities is a feat of coordination for programs. So, when they carve out the time to do so, consider it a sign of the activity’s meaning to them.

In addition to extracurriculars, you might also look at the support offered by a program as a reflection of their principles. This might include the timing of program breaks, the length of them, and the purpose of them. Is there a little extra cushion after a few clinical rotations built-in for your sanity? Or a longer-than-is-necessary holiday break?

The support offered by a program may also take the form of resources to help you personally or academically – like counseling services or tutoring.

Programs are nearly universally great at training PAs. But, knowing whether and how much they’re taking your well-being as a student into account make help you to choose PA schools that are the most aligned with your personal style and approach.

What’s a program talking about?

Once you gather what clues you can from a program’s curriculum, faculty background, and out-of-classroom activities, you’ll then have a baseline for the next step: the talking-about-it filter.

If a program offers an opportunity within the design of their training, see if they’re also mentioning it in other areas of their website. In an information session, pay attention to the program highlights mentioned by an admissions coordinator or faculty member.

If a program has a social media presence, what kinds of posts are showing up? Are they featuring the service work of their students? Or profiling individual students to show the diverse backgrounds of their class members? Observing which program attributes are emphasized can provide some insight into what a program deems central to the identity of their school.

Depending on how much detail is provided by a program website and whether or not they’re active elsewhere online, there might not be much information for you to find before an interview.

But, if you land an interview, your opportunity to tap into a program’s culture can expand greatly. So, if you’re in an interview, what are the first things that seem to be mentioned about the program?

If you found out about the support services they offered through your research, are they bringing up these attributes without prompting? Or, do faculty members seem stumped when you ask about these offerings?

What program representatives choose to talk about in an introductory interview session (and what’s mentioned repeatedly and potentially even reinforced by current students throughout the interview day) is a good indication of what the program believes to be its most important features.

Rarely will you find an “About Our Culture” section within a PA program’s website or materials for prospective students.

However, the clues are all around. It may take some digging, and it may take an in-person experience to get a better idea of a program’s style.

But, if you're strategic about your search, you can figure out a lot about a program from the information they share. And, you can use what you find to select the programs with cultures that seem most aligned with your own values that will support you through your next phase of becoming a PA.