How to Get into PA School: The Ultimate Guide
/A step-by-step guide to help you get into your dream physician assistant program
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Part 1: Introduction
Being a physician assistant is the best healthcare job in the country, according to U.S. News and World Report. It boasts a six-figure median pay at $112,260 a year, and it receives better ratings under “stress” and “work-life balance” than being a dentist or a physician do.
But how do you become a physician assistant? How do you get into physician assistant school? What grades do you need for admission? How much prior healthcare experience is required? Do your volunteering activities matter? And how do you write that personal statement?
This guide will tackle those questions and more. First, we’ll detail what PA programs typically entail, how you can choose the one that’s best for you, and what resources exist to help you finance the degree. Then we’ll explain how to master the admissions process, complete with a personal statement example and a timeline to help schedule your work.
How do you become a physician assistant?
Physician assistants take on many of the same functions as doctors. They diagnose and prescribe, act as a patient’s main healthcare provider, and even perform some surgical procedures (though always under some sort of doctor supervision).
So, given the scope of their responsibilities, the requirements to become a PA are fairly strict. You’ll have to pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination (PANCE), a five-hour test with 300 multiple-choice questions covering medical and surgical material.
You’ll also need a Master of Physician Assistant Studies from a program approved by the Accreditation Review Commission on Education for the Physician Assistant (ARC-PA). Some states, like New York, require the degree explicitly, but it’s also a prerequisite to even sit for PANCE.
PA programs take two to three years, half of which are dedicated to clinical rotations (around 2,000 hours worth) and half to courses in biology, policy, medicine, critical thinking and interpersonal skills.
Once you’ve cleared those two hurdles, you’ll have to apply for licensure from a specific state, some of which will have their own particular requirements. 20 states, such as California and New Jersey, require you to be co-signed to a physician who’ll agree to supervise your work. And Texas requires you to pass its Physician Assistant Jurisprudence Examination, which will test medically relevant legal knowledge.
Once you receive your PA license, you’ll also have some work to do to maintain it; namely, you’ll need to complete 100 hours of continuing medical education credits every two years and receive a passing grade on the Physician Assistant National Recertifying Exam every 10 years.
Which PA schools are right for me?
Most PA schools don’t report their admissions statistics, so deciding where to apply isn’t as easy checking out their acceptance rates and putting together a “safety,” “target,” and “reach” list. Some programs—like Yale and Boston University—do report their stats, however, and you should plan according to their admissions and academic averages where available. Nationally, the average matriculation rate is around 7 percent—about as competitive as getting into an Ivy League school for undergrad—and the average successful GPA around 3.58.
You should also make sure that your list includes a few schools from your home state, since most schools prefer in-state applicants, as they receive funding from state governments who want graduates to practice within their borders.
But since admissions statistics are so sparse, your main consideration when creating your PA school list is to find the programs that will best kickstart your career. That means taking the following factors into account.
First, only apply to schools that have ARC-PA accreditation, because many do not—and if you graduate from an unaccredited institution, you’ll have serious problems converting your degree to a PA license. You’ll find a list of accredited schools here.
Second, consider tuition rates. PA school can cost anywhere between $25,000 and $100,00, with most well-regarded schools falling somewhere in the middle. Whether your degree falls in the high or low end of the scale will make a world of difference when you’re juggling your career and your debts. (We’ll talk about loans, bursaries, and scholarships later on.)
Next, make sure your schools offer decent quality of instruction. The U.S. News PA school ranking is a good guide to this, as their methodology surveys deans, administrators, and faculty at accredited programs regarding each school’s academic reputation. And while it’s unlikely that differences in a program’s position will mean huge disparities in how well you learn, the fact that a school is ranked near bottom should prompt you to do your own research before you apply there. Duke and the University of Iowa top the list.
Also consider the programs’ scheduling requirements—their length, whether you can take them part-time, and whether they have an online option—and ask which best suit your lifestyle.
Finally, take a look at whether the schools offer any concentrations that match your interests. For example, Stanford offers concentrations in policy, community health, and clinical research, whereas most other programs do not. If you wish to delve into any of those areas of study, dedicated concentrations can make a huge difference to your educational experience.
What financial resources are there for PA students?
Though your PA salary should help you cover the costs of any loans you may have to take to finance your degree, the more frugally you live, the better. So, be sure to check your preferred programs’ websites or call them directly to ask about their financial aid resources, and check out our scholarship master guide for more helpful information.
There are also a number of scholarships specifically for PA students. The PA Foundation and a number of organizations for specialist PAs—such as the Association of Physician Assistants in Oncology—offer thousands of dollars in scholarships for PA students every year. These will typically require you to be currently enrolled in a PA program, and award their prizes based on both academics and personal characteristics.
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Part 2: How to apply to PA school
A complete PA school application will almost always include the following components:
Proof of bachelor’s degree completion
Completion of prerequisite courses
Transcripts from all postsecondary institutions attended
Short descriptions of relevant activities
GRE score
3 reference letters
Completed personal statement
Interview (invites are usually granted months after the application deadline)
Prerequisite courses vary, but schools will usually ask you to have completed postsecondary credits in chemistry, anatomy, microbiology and other scientific disciplines, and sometimes in the humanities and social sciences. Some schools, such as Boston University, will also ask you to complete a supplemental application once you’ve submitted your first, but these typically will not include any time-intensive secondary essay questions.
Around 90 percent of schools require you to file your app through the online Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA), which opens in the spring—but deadlines vary from school to school. Many, like George Washington University, close October 1st, whereas others, like the University of Utah, close around August. Some schools also accept applicants on a rolling basis.
You’ll therefore want to start preparing for your applications as soon as possible, partly to make sure all the rolling seats aren’t taken and partly so you don’t miss any deadlines amid the chaos. It’ll also help you get through the enormous amount of work that PA apps require, since you’ll want to apply to numerous programs—we recommend applying to 12 or more.
In the next sections, we’ll guide you through each application requirement. The timeline below, however, will give you an idea of when and for how long you should be working on each. We’ve used the August CASPA deadline so that you can be among the early applicants.
PA school application timeline
3–4 years (or more) before August CASPA deadline of your application year:
Put together list of PA schools
Begin (or make plans to begin) completing unmet course prerequisites (if bachelor’s already completed, take classes at a local university or community college)
Begin (or make plans to begin) accruing patient care hours
Pursue other healthcare activities
1 year before August CASPA deadline:
Complete at least 2,000 patient care hours
Complete course prerequisites
Continue extracurriculars
Identify 3 potential references
6 months before August CASPA deadline:
Approach 3 identified references
Write personal statement
Continue pursuing patient care hours and other activities
1 month before August CASPA deadline:
Submit CASPA (including references)
Order transcripts from all postsecondary institutions
Post-August deadline:
Continue pursuing patient care hours and other extracurriculars, in case of rejection and a need to reapply
Submit materials for later deadlines (at least one month in advance)
(Suggested reading: PA School Requirements: The Ultimate Guide)
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Part 3: PA school application components
What grades do I need for PA school?
To get into PA school, you’ll want a GPA of at least 3.58—the average GPA of accepted applicants in 2018–2019. While nearly every school lists a minimum GPA requirement of 3.0, the average GPA of those who were NOT accepted in 2018–2019 was actually higher than that at 3.28.
The mean accepted GRE score, meanwhile, was 306.2 (verbal and quantitative reasoning combined), and the mean analytical writing score was 4.1.
(Suggested reading: What Is a Good GRE Score? The Definitive Guide)
Keep in mind, also, that PAs are expected to perform many of the same activities as doctors with comparatively less education—so your schooling in the sciences will have enormous weight in the admissions committees’ decisions. A C in Russian lit will, for example, hurt you far less than one in biochemistry.
But that also means that you shouldn’t shy away from advanced science courses. First, because the average successful GPA in biology, chemistry and physics courses, at 3.49, was lower than the average successful GPA overall, there’s obviously some margin for error.
Second, a lot of your competitors probably took advanced science courses during college with the expectation that they would later apply to medical school, before switching over to the PA track. So, a record of tackling advanced material is necessary to prove your aptitude, interest, and dedication to the science of medicine, vis-à-vis those other applicants.
Our advice is to find a balance between ease and erudition to prove that you’re not just good at playing the school game but are a serious medical scholar as well.
How many patient care hours do I need for PA school?
Physician assistants have an enormous amount of responsibility, and the scope of their duties is growing. The burden on the healthcare system has increased, the number of physicians hasn’t risen to meet that demand, and PAs are being asked to take on even more of the tasks once reserved, legally, for MDs.
In rural and underserved communities, they’re often even required to act as primary care providers because physicians are only occasionally present, according to the Bureau of Labour Statistics.
So, PA programs need to be able to trust that their graduates will be able to meet the demands of medical practice—be they technical, such as dealing quickly with a major wound, or psychological, such as fluctuating hours, sudden emergencies, or the need to have difficult conversations with patients and their families.
As a result, the single most important aspect of your PA school application may be your number of patient care experience (PCE) hours because they’re the most reliable way for a school to know that you have the qualities needed to care comprehensively for your patients.
If you’re looking at CASPA right now, however, you may be confused because it asks you to list your PCE and healthcare experience hours in different sections.
The difference is this: PCE hours are time you’ve spent being directly responsible for a patient’s care. You were performing procedures or designing treatments, for example. On the other hand, healthcare experience hours are time you’ve spent in a healthcare setting without being directly responsible for a patient. Maybe you were cleaning rooms, taking vitals, scribing, or keeping records, but weren’t asked to direct a whole aspect of the patient’s treatment.
In 2018–2019, successful PA program applicants had, on average, 3,240 hours of patient care experience, which amounts to a little over 1.5 years of full-time work. Some schools explicitly require a minimum number of PCE hours, from 500 to 2,000 hours, in the case of Emory University.
You should make sure that your major sources of PCE hours are accepted by your preferred programs. Some schools, such as Northeastern, provide a list of activities that qualify as PCE. If your schools don’t, call them and ask what activities they’ll accept. In general, PCE activities include the following roles:
Registered nurse, licensed practical nurse, or certified nursing assistant
Physical or occupational therapist or aide
X-ray or radiologic technologist
Emergency room, EEG, or EKG technician
EMT or paramedic
Combat medic
Phlebotomist
PCE typically does not include the following:
Research
Shadowing
Clerical work at a hospital or medical office
First-aid responsibilities as, say, a soccer coach
Medical training, for example, as an EMT
Deciding which path you’re going to take to build your PCE hours depends on where you are in your life.
If you’ve completed your undergraduate degree and are already working in one of these professions, then you’re already well on your way to completing your PCE requirement.
But if you’re still in or have yet to finish college, with no PCE hours completed, then you have a major decision to make. Your first instinct might be to figure out which of the jobs above will get you the most PCE hours with the least amount of work. Avoid that.
Why?
For one thing, most of these jobs (such as working as a technician, EMT, or phlebotomist) require at least a year of training.
For another, not all PCE hours are equal. A nurse or even an EMT will have had far more and far more diverse interactions with patients than, say, an X-ray technologist. And if you pick a job that bores you because it seems easy, it’s going to be a lot harder to translate your experiences into an impressive reference letter or an inspiring personal statement.
So, research each of these jobs and find the one that strikes the right balance between personal interest, rigor, and ease of financing. Time should be a factor, but not the most important one.
What other experiences do I need for PA school?
In 2018–2019, the average matriculated PA student had 215 shadowing hours, 719 community service hours, 1,791 non-PCE healthcare hours, and 2,315 non-healthcare work experience hours.
However, keep in mind that many PA school applicants have worked in a healthcare profession for at least a few years, and some apply with as many as 25,000 PCE hours—that’s about 12 years of full-time work—which can skew averages somewhat. That’s why it’s helpful to also consider the median numbers of hours logged by successful applicants: 98 shadowing hours, 334 community service hours, 1,396 non-PCE healthcare hours, and 1,594 non-healthcare work experience hours.
Here’s what we recommend to be competitive, in addition to 2,000+ PCE hours:
Shadowing: 1–2 experiences, 200+ hours
Community service: 2 major activities, 250+ hours each
Non-PCE healthcare hours (research, scribing, etc): 1,500+ hours
Other work experience: Depends on where you are in your career
Overall, non-PCE experiences are also extremely important for your PA school application, because they further demonstrate you’ve developed the personal qualities necessary to provide comprehensive patient care.
An applicant with 3,500 patient care hours but very few other experiences is at a disadvantage because, while they probably got a lot of important PA qualities on the job, they got them from one place. An applicant with a better balance can point to a range of sources that prepared them to become a PA, each compounding or adding fresh angles to the lessons of the others.
The most impressive activities are the ones that touch upon your interpersonal qualities and mental discipline, rather than scholarship. Research is great, but being a PA is about treating people—and treatment requires more than scientific knowledge.
Thankfully there are all sorts of activities to prove you have those qualities, as long as they’re intense and involve working with other people. Working as a sexual health advisor at your college might have taught you about how to make a patient who is somewhat embarrassed comfortable and ready to communicate. Volunteering at a retirement home might have shown you how to deal with a patient’s distress.
And non-healthcare activities could do the job as well: one PA applicant described how her sailing team taught her how to collaborate with others, all while juggling a vast mental to-do list and dealing with enormous stress.
That doesn’t mean, however, that you should avoid activities that increase your medical knowledge, as long as that knowledge is somewhat rare within the applicant pool. Very few PA applicants, for example, understand the complex medical problems in American food deserts (areas where fresh produce is scarce), and a first-hand volunteer experience in such a place could set you apart from the pack.
You’ll have a better idea of what sorts of activities to pursue once we discuss the personal statement, and the particular qualities that PA schools want from an applicant.
How do I write my CASPA experience descriptions?
CASPA asks you to list and write a brief description of all the experiences that are relevant to your application under nine categories: patient care experience, healthcare experience, non-healthcare work, shadowing, research, extracurricular activities, teaching experience, and leadership experience.
Aside from the difference between patient care and healthcare experience, which we’ve already covered, most of these categories are self-explanatory (though you can find a description of each here). PCE and healthcare experience are by far the most important; the others only matter inasmuch as they can be spun to speak to some particular PA quality.
Keep that principle in mind when you’re deciding how many activities to list and how much to write about them. Yes, CASPA puts no limit on the number of activities you can add, and gives you 600 characters (around 100 words) to write about each. But spare a thought for the bored, tired admissions committees who have to go through all these applications, and will probably zone out if you add unnecessary information.
So, while you should probably mention the fact that you run marathons (since it demonstrates perseverance, mental discipline, etc.), you don’t also need to mention your CrossFit class, since both activities prove fairly similar things.
We’d also suggest that you use all 600 characters for your PCE and healthcare experiences and only around 300 for the others (though if you’re limiting yourself to around eight activities overall, you can afford to use the full 600 characters for each).
When writing each description, your style should be factual, since you don’t have much space and you need to make sure that the admissions committees know what you actually did in each activity.
Detail is especially important for your PCE activities, because if you don’t describe your responsibilities in detail, they might be reclassified under the healthcare category, and PCE are far more important. We recommend that you mark these PCE responsibilities out explicitly.
However, this does not mean that you can’t mention that an activity taught you about an important PA personal quality (i.e. empathy)—just that you have to do so without the narrative trappings that you’d include in the personal statement.
We’d also recommend that you:
Use bullet points
Avoid fancy diction and transition words (i.e. “but,” “furthermore”)
Use partial phrases instead of full sentences
Keep phrases active, so don’t write: “Gershwin Medical is a large hospital system.” Instead, write: “Worked as an EMT for Gershwin Medical Hospital System, the largest in the region.”
Here are two examples—one healthcare related and one not.
Emergency Medical Technician (EMT)
Patient care activities include: cardiopulmonary resuscitation incl. using defibrillator; treatment of shock; hemorrhage control; bandaging; immobilization of painful, swollen, or deformed neck, spine or extremities.
Listening to and managing patient’s medical complaints such as psychological crises, respiratory, cardiac, diabetic, allergic reactions, seizures.
Calming down and reassuring distressed patients and family members.
Working closely in high-stress situations with ambulance team; taking direction from paramedics and medical experts.
Captain of sailing team
Juggling diverse, physically demanding tasks in high-stress environment.
Communicating with and directing team members clearly and respectfully.
Maintained motivation and commitment to excellence among self and team mates.
Finally, if one of your schools does not accept as PCE an activity that others do, we’d suggest that you put it under PCE anyway and let that individual school itself decide whether they want to move it into the healthcare bin.
Who should I ask to write my PA school reference letters?
CASPA allows you to invite three to five people to write your references, though most schools ask for and will accept only three. Obviously, all of your references should have a thorough knowledge of your personal characteristics and aptitudes, and should be connected to the medical profession or sciences.
But the pressure placed on admissions committees to sign-on stellar future PAs means that many have specific demands for who your references are. Boston University, for example, asks that one reference be written by a professor in the sciences, one by a physician or PA for whom you’ve worked, and one from another employer, preferably in a medical sitting.
Other schools may have their own requirements, so we recommend that you check your preferred schools’ individual websites. If they don’t list specific reference letter requirements, don’t fret—the pattern listed by Boston will satisfy just about any institution.
As we mentioned in the timeline section, start identifying your references at least a year in advance, and approach them at least three months in advance. That way you won’t be caught out if a candidate declines to write your reference, or is too busy to finish your letter promptly.
Remember that, overall, they need to speak to the same qualities as your personal statement: that you understand the day-to-day tasks of being a PA and that you’re responsible enough to handle them.
How do I prepare for PA school interviews?
Most PA schools require interviews, sending invites to promising applicants a few months after the initial application deadline. Every school does things a bit differently, but most use some combination of one-on-one and group interviews.
If you’re invited for an interview, your school will probably give you a brief description of what you can expect. If they don’t, call; you need to know at least the length and general format of the interviews so that you can practice.
And don’t forget that the main goal of your answers is the same as that of the general PA app: to prove that you have the qualities of a fantastic physician assistant.
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Part 4: PA school personal statement
How do I pick my PA school personal statement topic?
At first glance, the CASPA personal statement prompt might seem like a breeze: in 5,000 characters (~750 words), “write a brief statement expressing your motivation or desire to become a physician assistant.” And without a doubt, thousands of aspiring PA students, every year, will send in essays talking about how working in medicine has been their dream since birth; how they’re ever inspired, even after the longest day of work, by the prospect of helping other people.
Don’t do this.
Instead, look at the prompt again. It asks why you want to “become a physician assistant,” specifically. Adcoms want to know why this job, and not all the others inside and outside healthcare that involve helping other people, is the one that suits you.
In other words, the prompt is trying to assess whether you understand the roles of a physician assistant and whether your personal qualities and motivations set you up to ace them.
The reason is clear. PAs, as we’ve stressed throughout this guide, have a huge set of responsibilities and often have to substitute for doctors. On any particular night, they might find themselves understaffed and inundated, or have a patient who’s in a conflict with their family, or need to help a patient who, coming from a marginalized background, might not trust the healthcare system or its practitioners.
They’ll do this for less pay and less social credit than doctors, which means your ego can’t be an issue. Plus, dealing with such complex situations requires interpersonal skills, mental discipline, and a sensitivity to the diverse backgrounds of patients—stuff that PA schools cannot teach out of a book. So, to make sure that their graduates don’t crumble when they enter practice, they look for students who already have those traits.
One useful reference for the qualities of a successful PA school applicant is Johns Hopkins Physician Assistant guide, which cites
Understanding of the role of a PA from direct personal contact
Care for fellow human beings and their welfare
Personal traits such as maturity, stability, integrity, responsibility, trustworthiness, leadership, enthusiasm, etc.
Ability to communicate with varied populations
Ability to deal effectively with those of other cultural backgrounds
Your personal statement should prove you have these attributes by describing a personal experience. Experiences prove more than philosophizing can, because you were in a real situation, actually being empathetic, stable, responsible, etc. They also give admissions committees a story to remember you by as they sift through a mass of apps.
Now, that doesn’t mean that the most successful apps are all about some crazy anecdote in which a student’s shining character came to the fore—because the truth is that the most shocking experiences don’t necessarily prove the most. They suggest that a person has some quality, but they don’t show, stage-by-stage, how an applicant developed that quality over time—and real evidence exists in detail and progression.
So we’d suggest that you try to figure out, not which of your experiences were the most exciting, but which taught you the most about:
Why PAs are important, and what makes a good one
Problems in the medical system which good PAs can remedy
How to deal with stress and juggling tasks
How to empathize and communicate with patients
You’ll want to do this, of course, while answering the prompt and explaining why you want to be a PA.
You could discuss, for example, how you shadowed a PA who was able to lead a team of nurses and medical professionals, because she was respectful of each of their abilities and insights.
Or you could talk about how, as a nurse, you often worked with a negligent PA, who didn’t take a patient’s discomfort seriously and therefore never relayed it to the doctor—motivating you to make a difference.
Or you could talk about how as a therapist, you realized that you were great at interacting with patients one-on-one—keeping them comfortable and earning their trust—which you knew would serve you well as a PA.
Generally, we’d suggest avoiding stories about a family or personal illness in which a PA did or did not save the day—it’s too common. But if you’ve had an experience in your non-professional life which shows that you have somewhat more rare knowledge, then go ahead and use it.
For example, you could talk about how, coming from a rural area, you realized that there was a pressing need for PAs willing to stay in one place and help those communities—as doctors are forced to bounce around from town to town.
Finally, if you have more experiences or accomplishments—other than your obvious achievements on your resumé—that you really want to include in your essay, try to weave them in subtly. But make sure it doesn’t distract from your main goal: to prove that you know why PAs matter and that you would make a really good one.
How do I write my PA school personal statement?
Aside from proving that you’d make a fantastic PA, your personal statement also has to keep your committees engaged. Admissions season is, frankly, a bore—and when officers pick up yet another application which is clunky, hyper-formal, and clichéd, they zone out and forget what makes that applicant different from all the others.
You’ll avoid that, as we’ve discussed, by clearly highlighting one experience and really developing it—but also by writing well. And that means writing:
Clearly and concisely
With smooth transitions, either by making the first line of each paragraph respond to the last line of the paragraph before it, or beginning paragraphs with a conjunction (i.e. “but,” “yet,” “nevertheless,” “however”)
With a thesis statement that explains explicitly why you think PAs are important, what attributes you think make a great PA, and how your experience developed those values—making you want to become PA
With a clear, stage-by-stage account of your thought process as the experience you’ve chosen taught you about the above
The structure below will help you do all of those things effectively. Below it you’ll find a personal statement example demonstrating what these ideas look like in practice.
PA personal statement structure
Introductory paragraph
Write an opening sentence to make us wonder what’s to come. “I entered the office” is boring because it has no mystery. “I shouldn’t have been there,” by contrast, engages because it makes us ask questions. Where are you? Why shouldn’t you have been there? What happened to you afterwards?
Summarize, in general, what happened: who was there, what happened, and why did it matter. In magazine lingo, this kind of paragraph is called the “billboard paragraph” because it blasts the key information without diving into the nuance yet; save the details for the body paragraphs.
Add your thesis statement.
Body paragraph(s)
Explain your goals and viewpoint prior to this experience—because to prove that an experience changed you, you have to explain how you were different before.
Explain the bare-bone details of the experience.
Explain the insight latent in the experience—that is, the lesson about patient care that the story already spells out, because of the chain of events that led to the good or bad treatment outcome. And remind us how this insight was different from what you thought before the experience—that is, how you changed.
Add any other experiences or accomplishments which you think are relevant—either here, to show how the experience changed your future, or at step 1, to add color to your description of who you were in the past.
Concluding paragraph (if necessary)
Tieback to thesis statement (what the experience taught you about importance of PAs, their ideal attributes, your qualities).
PA school personal statement example
The essay below, written by a student named Joseph, responds to the CASPA prompt asking why a student wants to become a physician assistant. We’ll analyze each section as we go along.
The patient was back in the hospital a week later—and I knew that it was our fault. As a Licensed Practical Nurse, I had always trusted all my colleagues—but seeing that old woman’s body break down all because her PA hadn’t taken her warnings seriously made me want to shoulder some of those responsibilities myself. Every patient needs a PA who is willing to listen to them, as the liaison between the doctor and their disease—and I believe that I can fulfill that role.
Joseph’s first line is engaging because of all the questions it raises. Which patient? Why was she back? And how did they cause it? He then sets out the actors involved—himself, the patient, and a PA who wouldn’t listen—and goes straight to his thesis statement, which checks all three boxes that we’d outlined prior. He explains what the role of PAs is (liaising between doctor and patient); what attribute is necessary for that (listening); and that he learned this trait through his experience.
My team at the hospital was fantastic, and what made us that way was mutual respect. If I felt a patient was in serious discomfort, I knew I’d be listened to; and if a doctor or a PA thought that, for whatever reason, I was mistaken, I would accept their decision and they would explain it to me later on. We took each other’s ideas seriously and the patients benefitted from that. Problems only emerged when patients weren’t treated with the same level of respect.
Joseph neatly describes the way he was before this experience—a member of a solid team which, at times, thought more highly of itself than of the people it treated. Notice that he doesn’t overly demonize himself or his colleagues. There’s no reason to do that! He just suggests that they were good practitioners who, like everyone else, had some room to mature.
She was not an easy patient to deal with. Sixty years old with a limp, an aggressive tone of voice, and a thick accent that none of us were used to, she had a kidney infection and we had to deal with her endless demands for a week. After the first day, she called our PA an idiot for not attending to her fast enough.
Nevertheless, she knew her body. Repeatedly she told us that she had barely responded to antibiotics before, when she was in Armenia, and that she was worried about the effect that taking too many pills might have on her. I was concerned and I told the PA, who took on most of the responsibilities for her care while the doctor was juggling emergencies elsewhere.
She told me not to worry, that the patient was just a difficult person and that she had spent too much time on Google, reading about her condition. It was true that the patient was harsh. But she had been left alone at the hospital by her family, had been subject to an unending range of tests, and had hardly eaten. She was a vegetarian, and the kitchen kept sending her meat, despite my constant protestations. The fact that she was grouchy didn’t mean her judgement was always misplaced.
We stuck with the doctor’s original prescriptions. A week after she was released, she came back with a new, antibiotic-resistant kidney infection along with sepsis, which can be fatal to the elderly. Fortunately, the patient survived. But it’s possible that her awful condition was a direct result of our treatment—and could have been avoided had our team actually discussed the patient’s reservations.
He lists the bare-bones details of the case, in chronological order, remembering not to get into any analysis of his own emotions or ideas just yet. Doing so would only muddle the narrative. (Though, in describing all the factors that could be bringing down the patient’s mood, he does find some space to prove his ability to empathize with the ill and listen carefully to them.)
Then as now, I had no desire to be a physician, because I knew that my interpersonal skills were well suited to developing a trusting, one-on-on relationship with a patient. Volunteering at a hospice and a suicide helpline had trained me to listen closely and speak gently without being overly credulous of a patient. And my Lebanese family’s constant complaints about the U.S. healthcare system have made me aware of the suspicions non-majority people often have of our hospitals.
Here Joseph manages to weave a bunch of other experiences and accomplishments into the essay. The key is that he made sure that they all still proved, rather than distract from, the basic theme of his essay—that he has the listening skills necessary to be a great PA.
But the experience made me understand that stellar listening within a medical team means nothing if a every member of the medical team isn’t willing to listen to a patient—and that the PA is often the link that holds it all together. I wanted to take on more responsibility, to sit in that position where attentive communication matters. My skills can make a far greater difference in patients’ lives if I become a PA myself. I’m ecstatic to take this next step in my career.
Finally, Joseph explicitly writes out the lesson that narrative already implies: that having a team who failed to listen led to a patient getting sicker. He also reminds us how this was different from what he thought before (that listening within a medical team was the most important thing), making it more believable that he has this quality by showing us how he developed it, stage-by-stage. And, since this paragraph clearly recalls his thesis statement, there’s no need for him to end the essay with a tieback.
Looking at the essay as a whole, it keeps us engaged not only because Joseph sticks to a simple narrative tied to a simple PA quality, but because he writes clearly and concisely, avoiding decorative or complex words when easy ones will do.
His paragraphs also transition smoothly because he begins them with conjunctions (“but,” “nevertheless,”), or makes the first line of his paragraphs respond to the last line of the paragraph right before them (“I told the PA … She responded that”).
Final thoughts
The PA school application process is complex and requires at least a few years’ worth of healthcare experiences in order to be a competitive applicant. On top of this, it’s competitive—the national matriculation rate in 2018–2019 was 32.3 percent, lower even than medical school, while the average program’s matriculation rate was a mere 7 percent.
These sobering statistics underscore why it’s necessary to put your best foot forward when it comes time to apply to PA school. By starting early in order to rack up experience and taking care to excel academically and in all other aspects of your application, you’ll be well on your way to earning a coveted PA school acceptance.
