PA school without moving. Let's talk about how that works.

I got both the program director and the admissions director of Yale's online PA program on at the same time, so this is about as direct a source as you can get. Jim Van Rhee and Jane McDaniel walk through how the program is built and who it's designed for.

The premise is that you stay in your own community for a big chunk of your education instead of relocating your whole life. They explain how the didactic side works online, how clinical placements happen, and what the tradeoffs are compared to a traditional in-person program.

We also spent real time on admissions. What they look for, what the process involves, and the expectations they have for applicants coming in.

What we cover:

• How Yale's online PA program is structured
• Staying in your home community while in school
• How the online didactic portion actually works
• Clinical placements in an online model
• What the admissions committee is looking for
• Expectations for applicants considering this format

Resources:

PA Program Map: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-platform-map

Free Application Timeline: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-application-timeline

Free Personal Statement Worksheet: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/free-personal-statement-worksheet-download

Pre-PA Counseling: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-counseling

Mentioned in this episode:

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All right, I have a treat for y' all because I am talking to the director of the program and the admissions director at Yale Online and I get so many questions about this program.

So let's just go to the source.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast.

If you want to learn how to become a physician assistant, you're in the right place.

I'm your host, Savannah Perry.

Let's get to it.

All right, before we get to our interview, we are welcoming a new sponsor on the podcast this month and I want to introduce you to Stride Funding.

Everyone always asks about how to pay for PA school and this is a very interesting, innovative alternative to traditional student loans.

Instead of being faced with ridiculous interest rates and paying for 10, 20, 30 years.

So stride Funding offers income share agreements, which means you would pay a small percent of income after you graduate over a shorter time frame than a traditional student loan.

So usually you're looking at about a five year plan at around 4 to 10% of your income.

No interest, no principal amount, and a grace period that will start before, well after graduation, but before payments begin.

And then there's also flexibility around some unexpected life events.

But you can go to stridefunding.com to learn more and we will have a link in the description as well that will get you straight there so that you can check it out, see if it's something that's going to work for you and maybe save you some money in the long run.

Alright, so this is a good one and I want to get straight to it.

Oh, I'm Savannah, by the way.

I am a dermatology PA and your host of the Pre PA Club podcast.

And if it's your first time joining us, welcome.

If you have been here for a while, welcome back.

And you know, I love getting to connect with you guys and I can't always do that with just if you listen to a podcast.

So if you want to connect, make sure you're following along on instagram at the PA platform or on TikTok physician assistant.

And if you like the podcast, leave us a review.

We really, really appreciate it and it helps other people to find us.

So we have our Pre PA Club community on Facebook.

It's a group, we're close to 11,000 members now and would love to have you as part of that as well.

All right, so before we jump into today's episode, I wanted to give you a couple quick updates on the PA platform.

Now there is a forum option, so if you have burning questions that you don't want to ask publicly you now have the option to ask them anonymously on the floor forum.

It's still kind of a work in progress, but definitely check that out.

I'll put the link in the description.

This episode is also on YouTube if you'd rather watch.

But before we jump in, next Monday, June 22 is an event you need to know about.

So we're doing live mock interviews.

It's for a five dollar donation that will go to the PA foundation to fund minority scholarships specifically for PA School.

But we will be doing two live mock interviews with students and it'll be really cool.

I think it'll be really helpful.

Myself and Brian Palm will be doing that, so check it out.

Go to prepaconference.com to sign up and there is a replay available if you cannot watch it on Monday night at 8pm before we jump into today's interview, I want to mention our sponsors of the podcast MYPA Resource and PA School Prep.

Both are resources that you need to know about for PA school.

So the first one being MYPA Resource, which is a personal statement editing service specifically for PA School.

I am one of the editors, but check them out.

If you're needing help with polishing your essay, you can use the code Future PA for a discount there and then also PA School Prep for once you get accepted.

If you're needing help on refreshing your anatomy, physiology, med terms, that's what you need.

So it's an online course that breaks all that down for you to give you a good refresher.

And you can also use that future PA code there as well and on the PA platform.

So interview season has begun, I think with interviews moving to online.

Some schools are doing interviews a little bit sooner than they normally would, which means that you got to be ready.

And if you need a mock interview, if you need the PA School interview guide, you can also use that future PA code there as well.

Alright, so let's get into today's interview, which I'm so excited about.

All right, so I am honored to be speaking with Yale Online today.

And we have Jane McDaniel and Jim Van Re, who are very well established in the PA world and they are going to tell us all about their program.

But I'll let y' all do a little introduction on yourselves first.

Okay?

I guess.

Okay, thanks.

Thanks, Jim.

So I am Janie McDaniel.

I am.

I've been a PA educator for 25 years.

My background is in laboratory medicine, so I was a med tech for quite a few years before I went into PA education and have Taught the diagnostic studies course.

Now at Yale, I'm teaching diagnostic studies.

I teach evidence based medicine and I teach the medical ethics course.

In addition to my experience in PA education, I've also been pretty involved in PA admissions.

I was the director of admissions at another PA program before I came to Yale, and I've also been chair of the CASPA Advisory committee for about six years before that.

And for the last six years, I've been on the PAEA Board of directors.

So I'm very involved in PA education.

Jim.

Okay, well, thank you for having me.

My name is Jim Van Re.

I'm the program director for the Yale Online program.

I've been a PA for 30 years.

I hate saying that out loud because it makes me feel so old.

I've been in education for about 20 now.

I think maybe just over 20.

I've been at.

Been the program director at, I think it was five different programs.

As my daughter says, dad can't hold a job.

I tend to think of it more as career advancements.

But I've been at Yale now for about six years, but I've been running the online program for about three, now almost four.

This idea was my monstrosity that I came up with to go online.

I graduated from the University of Iowa many years ago.

I worked clinically for a number of years as a hospitalist and in oncology, and I served nine years on the ARC PA Accreditation Commission.

Two years I was the vice chair, and two years I was the chair of the commission.

So a lot of experience and accreditation and running programs.

Oh, man, thanks for having us.

Yeah, I would imagine y' all can't fit all that on a one page resume.

It's one and a half pages.

Yeah.

Okay.

There you go.

His is one and a half.

Yeah.

Well, I want to ask, I want y' all to tell me about your program.

But Jim, you said this was your monstrosity of an idea.

And being in PA education for so long, what made you think, like, we can take this online?

Where did.

What kind of need did you see for that?

Or, you know, how did that kind of develop?

Because I imagine you maybe got some pushback, but obviously it's going very well.

Yeah, I got a lot of pushback, but I first thought about the idea about 10 years ago, actually, if not a little bit longer.

I was running years ago.

I ran a program at Western Michigan University.

And my background is in problem based learning.

That's my big thing.

Small group learning, problem based learning.

And even back then I thought, why couldn't you do this online, why do they all have to be in the same room?

But the technology wasn't available.

You know, it was there, but it really wasn't great bandwidth.

You were still using dial up modems for some stuff.

So I just kind of kept in the back of my mind.

And then about four years ago or so, five years ago, I was fortunate enough to meet with a company out of Maryland that does online graduate education.

And they were able to show me how the technology now is advanced enough to be able to do the didactic year.

My big concern was how do you do the clinical year with students all over the country.

And actually with their assistance, we've been also able to place our students.

So they're able to stay home.

They're able to.

You know, studies have shown that if you train them in their home communities, they're going to stay in their home communities to work.

So we train them in the didactic year in their home community, we let them do their clinicals in their home community, and we hope that they stay in their home community.

And we're hoping that because of this we can recruit a group of students who are maybe rural, underserved areas living in areas where there's not a PA program.

Many of our students don't have the opportunity to pack up and move to go to PA school.

And so we're giving them an opportunity to be able to do what they wanted to do for a long time and not have to uproot their family, their kids, their spouse and move.

So it's been fantastic.

There was a lot of pushback early because people didn't think you could do this.

I'm not getting so much pushback anymore.

Matter of fact, recently with the COVID crisis and a lot of programs having to go online, let's just say we got a number of phone calls from programs going, how are you doing that?

Could you give us some tips, give us some pointers?

And so we've been helping out a lot of programs around the country, trying to help them make their transition to having to do some things online much easier.

That's interesting.

And I'll be perfectly honest, I was kind of a skeptic until I spoke with one of your students, Macy.

I believe she just graduated.

Just hearing her experience was awesome and just how she explained the program and how great it was.

So that was helpful to hear because, yeah, it is hard to imagine how can you learn all this online.

But I'm interested too to see how Covid will change the landscape of PA school.

Now that people are being forced to explore the online space.

But for Yale's online program, can you give us just kind of a breakdown of the logistics, the length of the program, what kind of how it works?

Janie, you want to answer that one?

Sure.

So it's a 28 month program.

The first year, the first 12 months is the didactic year.

And that's done totally from the students home community.

They stay in their home community and they have asynchronous lectures that they get.

So the curriculum is released.

It's a 12 month curriculum.

It's released one week at a time.

And we do that purposely because we really don't want them to jump ahead to week 15.

And then they've kind of missed all of the nuances of the other weeks that tie into week 15.

So we release it one week at a time.

But when we release it, they get asynchronous lectures and they get some specialized learning tools that give feedback, faculty feedback, and so we're able to give them that.

But they can do those at any time of the day.

So if they're morning people, they can work on it in the morning.

If they're like me and they're a night person, you know, they can do it at, you know, 10 o' clock at night or whatever.

And they just really, they seem to love that.

Now we do have, part of our curriculum is the problem based learning component that Jim mentioned.

And that is a synchronous part.

And that's where the students work together in small groups of 12 to 15 students with a faculty facilitator.

And we present one case a week and they spend six hours during that week.

It's two hours typically on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.

They spend those six hours working on that case, going through the logistics of it, starting out with the history of present illness.

The patient presents, here's what's going on.

You walk in the room and what questions are you going to ask?

The facilitator is there to guide the discussion, but not to give answers.

So I say, why?

And how come so many times in PBL that, you know, they'll ask a question or they'll ask about something and I'll go, well, why do you think that you know?

Or they may, you know, by the end of the week they're starting to talk about medications and they'll talk about a medication that they want to prescribe for this patient.

I'll go, well, so how much of it are you going to give them?

Do you know how much you Know, what's the dosage going to be?

So we get into all the nuances of that.

So that's the synchronous part and that's the really cool part where we get to meet with the students and be with them and talk to them three times a week.

The curriculum is also set up on an organ system basis.

So we start out with, you know, we start with Derm and then hain and then, you know, go from there into the different organ systems throughout the year.

The other cool thing about our program is we do have three campus immersions.

So the students come to campus for an on campus immersion in March, which is about 10 weeks into the curriculum.

We start.

We're a January start program.

So they come in March.

And during that time they get to do anatomy.

They'll have specialized sessions of anatomy.

They'll also have physical exam.

So we teach them how to do physical exam and they get to practice it on each other.

There's lots of other activities that they have during that week, but that's.

And then we also have our white coat ceremony that week, which is kind of a cool thing, as, you know, Savannah.

And so they, they're there for that one week.

And the cool thing about it, you would think that students coming into the curriculum wouldn't be, you know, they, they wouldn't have bonded.

You know, they haven't seen each other, they don't know each other.

I can promise you when they arrive on campus, they know each other better than my on campus students used to know each other.

They have bonded, they know each other well.

It's just an amazing thing to me that they do that.

So they come back in December for a second immersion.

That second immersion is when they learn how to do certain procedures.

They actually get checked off, if you will, on their physical exam and they do a little more anatomy back at that point in time too.

And then in January, the second year, they start on their clinical rotations.

And clinical rotations are 16 months long.

They are one month each.

And we have all of the essential ones.

I think there's what, Jim?

Eight.

I believe it's eight or nine required rotations.

Some of them have two or three months each.

And then we have three electives.

So they have 15 months of rotations and they have a capstone project, which is like their research project that they do in that final year graduation.

And their final immersion is the last, is in May.

April, May of two years later.

So like I say, it's a 28 month program.

And during that week that they're there, they have a summative exam and then they have graduation.

So it's a great curriculum.

I probably left out a million things that I could think of, but I could talk all night about it, but I won't.

No.

That's great.

How many students are currently in the program?

There are currently.

We have.

Oh, gosh, 60 students in our.

Around 60 in our first year class.

Now.

We just graduated.

The students just graduated.

There's about 41 in the graduating class.

We had 60 in the class, the first year class now and then in the.

I'm sorry, 60 in the second year class and 7 68, I believe, in the second year class.

Wow.

Are you looking to accept about that many moving forward or that's the plan?

Yeah, we're going to try to keep it right around that number.

We still have provisional accreditation for another couple of years.

That doesn't mean.

I mean, we're totally accredited.

It just means we have to be.

You know, they'll be back to visit us again after our first class graduates and takes the pants.

And at that point we may think of.

I mean, we may increase.

We don't know.

We'll see what happens.

Nice.

Okay, so I mean, that sounds basically like my program just online and I didn't have to sit in a classroom for eight hours a day for five days a week.

But what is.

How does the admissions process work for this online program?

Are y' all on Casper, caspa and kind of.

I've heard there's something about an early deadline.

Can you explain that a little bit?

Okay, well, I should.

I was going to hand it back to Jim for this question.

That's probably all you.

I think I get to answer that question.

So, yeah, there is an early.

So our admissions.

We are in Caspa.

We are fully in Caspa and we.

The admission cycle opened what I think April 30th.

We've had an.

In my mind.

And maybe it's because we're.

We're of the COVID crisis.

We haven't have had an unprecedented number of applications this year, which we're very excited about, but keeps us busy, keeps us on our toes.

But the.

We do have an early deadline, but it's already passed.

It was June 1, but our final deadline is September 1.

So there's plenty of time.

We have a rolling admissions process.

So it's not really a big deal that if you missed the priority deadline.

It's just, you know, like I say, we have this rolling admissions cycle that we take.

We accept students throughout the whole cycle.

And we do not fill our class until we have reviewed every application that comes in by September 1st.

What else do you want to know about it?

Well, okay, so is there anything as far as, you know, with PA schools, requirements are across the board.

Is there anything specific about what y' all require or don't require that you think is important for students to know?

I mean, a lot of times with like testing requirements or courses or experience, what are you looking for?

So we decided this year we were going to drop the gre.

We've seen so many research papers that felt like it just wasn't beneficial to success in PA school.

So we do not require the GRE this year.

The things that we do require, we have five prerequisite courses.

We require anatomy, we require physiology, we require biochemistry, microbiology and statistics.

Those are our five prerequisite courses that we require.

So there's no limit to how long ago you could have taken them.

You could have taken them 20 years ago.

I do tell people that if you took them 20 years ago and you feel like you're not very fresh, you might want to take a refresher.

But we don't make you do that.

That's up to you if you want to do that.

So we do.

Those are, those are the requirements.

As far as healthcare experience, we require 500 hours of patient care experience, paid patient care experience.

But I encourage people, when they talk about, when they fill out their CASPA application, I see so many applications that people, you know, apply and they, I want you to tell me, tell me, and I know this is tedious, tell me all about yourself.

Tell me everything you've done, you know, if you have healthcare experience, tell me all that, your healthcare experience.

Tell me all your health related experience.

Sometimes it's like, you know, you, I don't know, you worked in the front office, but you really didn't, you know, talk work with patients that much.

Still, tell me about it.

If you've done medical volunteer work, tell me about it.

If you've done community volunteer work, tell me about it.

You know, if you have any kind of leadership and all of these are different categories on the CASPA application.

And shadowing too.

We do like to see that you've shadowed a pa just so you have a sense of what a PA does and that you're okay with that.

You know, we want you to come to PA school knowing that you want to be a pa, not knowing.

I don't even know what a PA is.

So, you know, so that's kind of where that goes.

So I think that's covered all of our, all of our prereqs and everything.

Have I missed anything, Jim?

I don't think so.

Okay.

Yeah.

Okay.

So, Jim, what are you looking for when you see an application come across your desk or I guess your computer?

Yeah, we don't print things out anymore, I guess.

I mean, what, what often gets asked is, you know, do I have to have previous online experience?

And I usually tell people, no, it's not required.

But I want you to understand what it means to be an online student because it is different.

While we call ourselves an online program, we're more of a blended curriculum.

You know, we have the face to face hours with a problem based learning every week.

And we do have the videos that we recorded.

These are not recorded videos in the back of a classroom where There's a camera 50, 100ft back recording the front of the room.

These were all recorded in a student studio.

We get all gussied up and makeup and there's a green screen behind us and a lot of pre and post production work is done and videos incorporated and questions are incorporated.

So, you know, normally maybe in a lecture an instructor will ask a question of the class.

We do the same thing in our videos and the video stops and you answer.

Then when the video starts, it gives you the answer to the question.

So there's still that kind of Socratic method.

I even used online asynchronous to do small group reviewing labs.

I did a course where we went through how to interpret CBC results.

I'm a med tech before I went to PA school as well.

And I filmed it with two students, with the current student being the camera.

And we were able to have this Socratic back and forth discussion.

The student listens to the questions, they have to respond on the computer, the video stops, they have to put an answer in and then they hear the rest of the discussion.

So a lot of those same types of things that you experience in PA school, the technology is able to deliver.

So I want students to have experienced online one so that I can see when I ask them that question is to see where they're coming from.

I took an online course and it was watching nothing but videos.

I never got to talk to the instructor.

It took them days to get back to me with an email.

I want to be able to correct them and say, that's not what we do.

Okay.

So I tell them that you have a lot of interaction with faculty and there's, you know, a lot of give and take.

Going back and forth.

So I asked them about the unique experience and online just so that I can correct some misconceptions.

The other thing I look for in an applicant is you have to be self directed because there's nobody telling you to come to class at 9 in the morning or 8 in the morning and somebody comes and parades in front of you in lectures and then you take a lunch break and then you come back to class.

There's nobody telling you to come to class.

You have to be self directed, you have to be self motivated.

And if you're a passive learner, if you would rather have somebody lecture to you and then you regurgitate back the information, please don't come to our program.

You're going to be miserable and then you're going to make me miserable and I want to be miserable.

We don't want.

He's miserable.

Yeah.

I want students who want to engage with the stuff, the curriculum, our problem based learning.

Because it's problem solving and because we don't give you the answer, students will flounder at times.

Gee, that's just like clinical year.

That's just like clinical practice.

So we're trying to give you not only the information on what it means, what are the signs and symptoms and the pathophys of congestive heart failure, but now we're going to have you apply that to somebody who comes in short of breath where maybe they have heart failure or maybe they have COPD or gosh forbid, they have both at the same time and they're diabetic and they're hypertensive and they got gout.

I mean, our cases are messy.

They're meant to be messy because real medicine is messy.

So that's kind of what I look for though.

Get an understanding of what their online experience is to kind of correct that or to give them some background.

But more, I'm looking for that self directed, self motivated learner, the adult learner.

We treat them like adult learners.

We expect them to act like adult learners.

Okay, going back to prereqs, do you have a GPA requirement?

We do.

Our requirement.

We have a, we require an undergraduate GPA of 2.8 and a science undergraduate GPA of 3.0.

Got it.

Okay.

That is a minimum.

We'll take any, anything above that.

We will take your application.

Look at it.

We have a very low number of prerequisites.

You do, because I, I don't see the sense in jumping through hoops.

Like Janie said, if you took your prerequisite course with Watson and Crick 50 years ago.

And you think you can maintain that information and you can update yourself.

Why should you have to retake something within the last number of years?

Because you're an adult learner.

That should be your responsibility to have to review that material.

And if you didn't and you get into our program and it's all foreign, guess you're going to have some more work while you're in the program because that's just the way it is.

And I was one of those second career PAs, you know, went back to school to become a PA and I would have hated the thought of having to redo all that stuff I had taken in undergrad and all that clinical experience I had as a med tech.

I'd have hated to have to redo that.

I would not have applied to a program if I'd had to have done.

And so I kind of, when I created this program, I kind of felt the same way with admission for this program.

No, I know that's appreciated by, by the applicants because some of these requirements get a little, little picky.

So.

And it's, and it's hard to keep up with them all between the programs too.

Yeah.

That's why we did away with the gre.

As Janie said, it's not.

We, we couldn't find anything that said it was predictive of every.

Anything some programs find within their program.

It's predictive of certain things.

We haven't found anything.

So why have students jump through a hoop for the sake of going, taking a standard?

You're going to take enough standardized exams as a pa. You've taken enough multiple choice exams as an undergrad.

I don't see the sense of.

Do you know your antonyms and synonyms?

I just don't get it.

So do you think the PA CAT could play a role at some point or have any feelings on that exam?

You don't want to get me started on that.

Okay.

I think I'll just speak briefly.

Just not to that.

But just a general standardized test.

I think any standardized tests like that, like the PA CAT or the, the GRE or any of those tests, I just, I feel like they all have that.

They bring that same bias, in my opinion, to, to the PA admissions process.

If it, if it works for your program, that's great.

It doesn't work for what we're looking for.

Exactly.

It tends to favor the younger student, the ones fresh out of undergrad, the science heavy undergrad student.

And that's not what we're Looking for.

Okay, is that a great applicant?

You betcha.

I don't want all.

I don't want my entire class to be that.

Yeah, I want that other background.

Because of our small group work, if everybody looks the same, if everybody has the same degree, if everybody has the same background, small group sessions would be incredibly boring.

And that's the beauty of our program because we do have, I mean, we'll have medical assistants, we'll have physical therapists, we have pharmacists.

We have all of these different healthcare, you know, workers that are coming, want to be a PA So they get in a small group together and it's just a phenomenal experience.

Experience to work with them and they all have something different to contribute.

So it's really great.

We even accept scribe hours.

People who are scribe.

We do.

I think scribing is great experience.

I don't understand it.

It's like you're standing with the doc all the time experiencing exactly what they are or what the PA is or what the nurse practitioner is.

You're seeing the labs, you're talking with them.

I don't know why that wouldn't be a wonderful experience.

Yeah, I agree.

Yeah.

And I mean in my PA program, I went to Augusta University and they, I mean, I just remember constantly, almost probably every day, us talking about how important documentation is.

You know, your documentation, your notes, everything has to be, you know, done very well.

Which coming into PA school with that would have been such a great advantage versus, you know, it's great.

In my small groups, I usually.

The first week of class, when they have to, somebody has to take notes.

I usually assign it to the scribe because they're the one that can, you know, can kind of give the others in the group the advantage.

You know, they're kind of show them how to do it.

Really?

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's awesome.

We all kind of answered my next question a little bit.

But if you wanted to expand just on how your program encourages diversity in your class, it sounds like you really do try to look at different backgrounds to have a well rounded class.

Yeah, we, we don't really, I mean, it's, we don't really define diversity.

I think everybody kind of knows what diversity means, but we're looking for the best group of applicants that will provide each other the best experience.

And like I said, a bunch of, you know, biology and nothing wrong with biology majors.

That's just an example.

So the biology majors don't get, you know, don't get excited.

But a bunch of biology mates.

Okay, I'll pick my degree.

A bunch of med techs in a PA program.

If I had 40 med techs in the PA program, I would go nuts because they all have the same background.

Who's gonna.

Who's gonna provide some other experiences?

Where's the paramedic?

Where's the rn?

Where's the school prescribed?

Where's the respiratory therapist?

Where's the occupational therapist?

Where's the different backgrounds?

We've had dental hygienists in our program, so that's what you need for these small group sessions.

And so we're looking for diversity in a whole bunch of different areas.

We also take an older student population.

Our average age is in the early 30s.

We take different economic backgrounds, different locations in the country.

I have students in Idaho, I have them in North Dakota, but I also have them in Los Angeles and Miami.

And so we're looking because they all bring something different to the group.

Their experience in their healthcare system, in their community brings something different.

The person in Idaho doesn't know what the person in Los Angeles is experiencing trying to provide health care.

And they can learn from each other.

So we really.

It's kind of a subconscious thing that we do.

I think we look at all of these things.

You know, you don't get extra points for this or that or the other thing.

But we're trying to just make it a well rounded, diverse background.

You know, yes, there's ethnicity, yes, there's gender, yes, there's sexual orientation.

There's all sorts of different things.

But most of that you don't know until they come to school.

That's right.

So.

But once again, that adds a nice rich flavor to the program.

When you look at our class photo and you just look at it and think, wow, that doesn't look very diverse.

But if you dig deeper into who those people are and where their backgrounds and where they grew up and a lot of other things, you'll see that it's actually a very diverse group.

And I would just to piggyback on what Jim said, I totally agree with that, because I think that the outreach that we have and the ability that we have to take students from rural areas of the country and medically underserved communities is huge.

And my best example of that is one of my advisees in the first year class, the first.

The class that just graduated was from a town in Montana of like a thousand people.

She had four kids.

She didn't want to leave home.

She wanted to go to PA school.

So by coming to our program, she was able to do her didactic curriculum, you know, right from home.

Then she stayed in her community and she was able to network and do.

She did a lot of her rotations with people in.

With the providers in her area, so she was able to network with those.

So when she graduated, she's already got that laid out for her.

She's got that background and that experience with those other providers.

So she knows who they are.

So there's.

I mean, to me there's volumes to be spoken for that.

Yeah, that's very valuable, for sure.

Okay, let's talk a little bit about any red flags on an application.

What are like your biggest no no's that will get somebody.

We probably would need a whole other hour, but just a couple.

I want people to be themselves.

Don't try to.

I mean, your stories are probably true, but don't try to impress me with all this fluff.

I want to know.

I'm about as laid back a guy as you can get.

Okay.

You actually got me dressed up for this.

I have a shirt that has buttons.

Okay, thank you.

I mean, the T shirt I have underneath this says, trust me me, I watch medical TV shows.

That's the kind of guy I am.

I'm really laid back.

It is so true.

I will vouch for that.

I want to know who the real person is.

I don't.

You know, it always amazes me when I read applicant's essays and it says, I decided to be a PA as I was holding my dying grandmother's hand.

If that's what you were thinking the moment your mother grandmother was dying, I really have some concerns about you because at that moment you should be thinking about your family and your grandmother, not, gee, I can get into PA school now.

Okay.

I like the people you know.

I know PA for me was a one year thing.

I had never heard of the profession and within a year I knew this is what I wanted to do.

So I get that it can happen quickly, but, you know, I can't remember what the moment was in my life where I went, okay, now I want to be a pa.

I sort of do, but I can't really mention that story.

So it was, you know, so I want them to be themselves.

I want to know who they are.

I want to know that, you know, our mission is primary care.

I want to know that there's really a drive for primary care.

I know PAs are going into specialty practice.

I get it.

Even our graduates do.

But I have no chance of increasing the numbers in primary care if you don't Even if I don't even look at that to begin with.

But I'm looking for people to be themselves.

To me, the interview is the most important thing because I always tell people I can teach anybody the medicine, but I can't give you a personality.

You gotta come with that.

So you don't come with that personal skill set, that ability to communicate, to talk to people, to comfort people, to have empathy, to be caring.

I can't teach you that in PA school, okay?

I can teach you all the drugs, I can teach you all the antibiotics, I can teach you all diseases, but I can't teach you that skill set.

So that's what I'm looking for.

And sometimes that comes through in essays loud and clear, and sometimes it's like I'm not sure it exists at all.

So that's, that's sort of what I look for.

You know, students who get this far and they apply to PA school usually have fantastic grades.

They wouldn't have gotten this far.

Okay?

So that's the thing to me that separates the next, the applicant out that I want in my program is that, that, that personal side.

And I would say, I think we have the ability obviously to assess that personal side a little bit better if they make it to interview.

Which is.

And that's why I tell people when they come to interview, be yourself.

You know, don't, don't try to, to sell me something that you're not.

I want to know who you are, and I want you to talk about your itself.

The other comment I would have about the application, and this is something that is that I notice, I would say we have a supplemental application that has three questions.

And those questions, when you answer those, I want as well thought out an answer on those as you have as you get had on your big CASPA essay as well.

So, you know, don't just give me some fluff that, you know.

Well, you know, I already answered that in my, in my CASPA essay.

Well, so maybe you want to answer it again, you know, that sort of thing.

Yeah, fill it out completely.

Are Yalls interviews online?

Oh, yeah, of course.

I think I figured.

Okay, so I want.

So this is interesting because a lot of programs are doing online interviews this year for the first time.

What advice would you have to applicants who are doing online interviews?

I think some people are even more nervous about an online interview than an in person one.

But what are some kind of tips there to have a better experience?

I give you three things.

Okay.

Okay.

Lighting, background, and be yourself again.

Okay.

Understand that Technology, sometimes, whether it's on our end or your end is going to come, sometimes not work there.

You can have a storm, you can have a surge.

A lot of things happen.

Be flexible with it.

I mean, I've had students who can't get the mic to work on their computer.

They don't know the button to hit to turn it on, and they get all flustered, and I go, just relax.

I'm not marking you down because you couldn't find the mic button on your computer.

It's okay.

I want to know who you are.

But the lighting and the background I like.

Sometimes, you know, it's okay that your cat jumps across your computer.

You're at home, I get it.

But the background, you know, just be careful what's in the background.

Like, don't be in your bed.

Isn't a good idea.

Even if you got your suit on.

Putting laundry on the chair behind you is not a good idea.

The row of empty beer bottles behind you is always not a good idea.

Make sure you're in a room.

If you're in a room, make sure the door is closed.

I've seen some things walk down hallways, past open doors that I kind of go, okay, that was interesting.

So it's.

It's really the things that you take for granted when you go to campus, because you don't worry about those things because you're in a different environment.

Remember, this is your environment.

You should actually be more relaxed in your environment.

But you need to set your environment up so that it's comfortable to you, but you're.

You hit.

My favorite one is the ones who interview while they're sitting in bed.

That's one of my favorite happen.

We have had that happen.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, I've had my first taste of telemedicine over the past couple months, and that's been interesting to see what people are willing to share over video chat.

So, yeah, and we don't record.

We don't.

You know, some students have asked, you know, are you recording my interview?

We do not record the interview there.

You know, we use Zoom.

So there's a little button, but the button is never red.

We turn all the recordings off.

These are not recorded to be watched again later for people to critique or to get multiple people to look at.

None of this is recorded.

So.

And I would tell students just.

Or applicants rather, just to practice.

You know, maybe if they've never used Zoom before, don't let this be their first time practice with somebody before they do it.

Just so.

Just to.

Just to make themselves feel better, just to give themselves a little more, you know.

Okay, I can do this, you know.

Yeah.

The real unique thing is we ask the same questions online as we would ask if we were face to face with you in an office.

So none of that is any different.

Yeah, I feel like.

I mean, I've done these so much that this doesn't feel weird to me, but I know for a lot of people it's a little strange.

And for a lot of applicants, this is a big savings because they don't have.

Our program is in New Haven, Connecticut.

You cannot get to New Haven, Connecticut, directly from anywhere.

Okay.

It is a train, it is a transfer, it is a long car ride from a local air from the nearest big airport.

It can cost you a couple of thousand dollars to do an interview here.

Hotels and airplanes, we have none of that.

So we have the CASPA fee and we have our supplemental fee, and that's it.

Yeah, I mean, that's huge.

I mean, I think applicants this year in general, should be very thankful for the savings they'll have with.

I'm hoping programs continue.

See how it works, and I hope they continue to use this to some degree, because we do a lot of talk about student debt.

Everybody talks about student debt.

You know, students go to school, they can get money and loans and scholarships to go to school.

You can't get a scholarship or a school loan to apply to school.

So all of that is out of your own pocket.

So if you applied to 10 programs and interviewed at 8 and didn't get in, you just spent thousands of dollars.

Yes.

Yeah.

So we're very cognizant of that.

It's why we did away with things like the gre.

It's why we did some other changes that we made.

So we're trying to keep that cost down, I think.

Sounds good.

I mean, I would apply there if I was applying again, which I'm very thankful I'm not.

Me too.

Trust me, I feel the same way you do.

There's no way I want to go through that.

I mean, I wouldn't mind going through school again.

I don't want to do the application.

Right.

Same.

I would even.

There's some undergrad classes I would kind of like to retake and just kind of refresh and see how I did.

But.

Yeah, my caveat with going back to school is I want to know what I know now.

Right.

I don't want to be dumb like I was when I went to PA school.

I want to Know what?

I know now, so it might be a little more fun.

So agreed.

All right.

Well, how's this way for people to find more information?

Just the website.

Do I do any info sessions?

Oh, yeah, we do.

As a matter of fact, we have one next Wednesday night.

I believe it's at seven.

Seven o', clock, I think.

Six.

Six.

Check our website.

I can't remember the exact time, but.

What date is it that we're doing it?

Because if they watch this after that date, I don't want them thinking they're having another one.

You're right.

It's June 24th.

So, but then just, but check our website because we always have those on the, the, the most recent, the next.

Whatever the next one is.

So we do application workshops.

We do something called a program overview.

And we do.

We kind of alternate those between.

We do one to two a month.

Also, the PAEA Virtual Fair is coming up in July, so check that we will be available there.

We'll have three sessions during the day and then the evening session will include a session with faculty and also a session with current students that they can ask questions as well.

So that's another opportunity.

Our website is paonline yale.edu.

Everything you could possibly want to know about our program, I think is there.

It's got admission requirements, it's got the length of the program.

It talks about how the program works.

We talk about, like I said, just about anything else you want to know.

There's a class profile that talks about what was, you know, what did the middle 60% of the class of the last class, what was the gre.

Not gre, sorry, what was the gpa?

What was the amount of clinical experience, things like that.

So we all, I would say check out our website, check out our webinars that we have available that are online, and we'd love to have you join us.

Perfect.

Well, I'm sure a lot of people will check that out.

But yes, thank you all so much for your time.

I truly appreciate it.

For sure.

Our pleasure.

Anytime anybody has any questions or, you know, I know a lot of people talked to Macy, our recent grad.

She, I mean, I swear I talked to more applicants.

And I always like to break the ice by, you know, how did you find out about our program?

And if I hear Macy's name one more time.

Time, I'm probably going to scream.

I think half the people I interviewed in the last round had talked to Macy at some point in time, which is great.

Don't get me wrong, she's awesome.

She's a great advocate for the program, so couldn't ask for a better advocate.

But yeah, just reach out.

We do have an amazing admissions team that will answer your questions.

They're really great to respond, so you can access them as well through the website.

So please do so.

Awesome.

Well, I'm sure many people will will continue reaching out.

I'm.