Grades and GPA questions. All of them, in one place.

These came out of the Pre-PA Conference, and they're the questions that keep people up at night. Will more science classes actually move my GPA. Does it matter where I take my prereqs. Are my old courses still good.

On the GPA math: adding science courses moves your science GPA faster than your overall, and how much depends entirely on how many credits you already have. Run your own numbers before you sign up for another semester you can't afford.

On where you take them: community college versus four-year is a real question and the answer isn't universal. Some programs care, some don't, and the only way to know is to ask them directly. Same with coursework that's more than a few years old. Email the program. They will tell you.

What I answer:

• How additional science courses affect overall and science GPA
• Whether it matters where you take prerequisites
• Contacting programs about course acceptability
• How old coursework is treated
• Choosing where to retake classes
• Study approaches for tough prereqs

Resources:

CASPA GPA Calculator: https://www.thepaplatform.com/pa-school-caspa-gpa-calculator

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

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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Welcome to the podcast.

Today we're doing some Q and A.

We have a voicemail question and we're going to talk about some of the grades and GPA and study questions from the recent Prepa Conference.

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.

I want to thank mypa Resource and PA School Prep for sponsoring the Pre PA Club Podcast.

So my PA Resource is a personal statement editing service that edits only PA school essays, only edited by PAs and most of us have admissions experience so I am one of the editors.

Definitely check them out if you need help with your content, grammar, flow, making sure that you are on track for for turning in your application and you can use the code Future PA for a discount on any of their service options.

Hey guys, welcome to the podcast.

Savannah Perry here and today it's gonna be me and you because we're doing a little Q and A. I am a dermatology PA in Georgia and the creator of the PA platform.

If you are not familiar with that, it's a website, a blog where I share lots of tips, tricks and resources for helping you figure out if becoming a PA is the right path for you and how to do it.

So definitely check out the website thepaplatform.com and a quick little tip, especially for everything we're going to talk about today is that if there's something you feel like you need more information on, do a quick Google search of the PA platform GPA or the PA platform low gpa, the PA platform GRE and usually whatever we've done, which is most likely some blog posts, some podcast episodes and some videos will pop up and you can usually find whatever answers you're looking for pretty quickly.

To be honest, that's how I find things because I sometimes forget about what all we've talked about.

So if someone has a question, I'll usually also do a quick search and find exactly what is going to help them out the most.

Whether that's through, you know, when people message on Instagram or emails or whatever and my DMs, my emails are always open for questions and I'll try to point you in the right direction.

I'm at the PA platform on Instagram and my email is Savannah without an HPA platform dot com.

Alright, so before we jump into today's Q and A, I've got a voicemail question that we're gonna do and then From a couple weeks ago, we had a virtual pre PA conference that is now available on prepacourses.com if you were not able to attend and you want to watch the replays, they are posted now.

But from that conference I did a talk on basically academic success.

So gpa, grades, studying, study tips, prerequisites, coursework, all the kind of nitty gritty of that type of thing and how it has to do with PA school and applications.

And there were lots of questions that I could not get to because we were limited on time.

So I wanted to make sure that we addressed those in.

And I felt like people who didn't attend the conference probably had the same questions.

So we'll go through a bunch of those today.

After our voicemail question, which is in that same category, I did want to let y' all know again about the upcoming webinar.

So next Tuesday night at 8pm I have a webinar scheduled.

It's going to be completely free.

Just make sure you're registered.

And then I will try to get the replay posted.

But it's going to be about experience.

So we're talking patient care experience, healthcare experience, shadowing, volunteering, everything to do with experience for PA school.

Be on the lookout for some question boxes on Instagram as well.

But we'll go ahead and it's going to be a lot of, kind of similar probably to this episode.

A lot of Q and A.

There's going to be a chat where you'll be able to ask questions.

I've never used the raise hand feature before, but I think we're going to try that out to try to bring some of y' all to the stage to ask your questions and kind of talk through things a little bit more.

But that should be good.

So 8pm Eastern on January 19, if you're listening to this after the fact, head to YouTube.com thepaplatform and you should find that replay there.

Alright, let's get to some questions.

Let's start with our voicemail question from Jenna.

A question that I had was, will PA schools look at the science courses I took, even if they're not listed as a prerequisite?

And another question I had is, will the grade I received in this course be factored into my science gpa?

All right, great questions.

And if you didn't know, you can always leave a voicemail for the podcast.

The link is in the description.

And I love to be able to answer exactly what what you feel like you need to know about.

So feel free to submit your questions at any time and we'll work them into some episodes.

But for this question.

So the first part, will PA schools look at my extra science courses even if they are not prereqs?

So a lot of this is going to be and you're probably going to hear me say this a lot in today's episode.

Program dependent.

There are some schools that really only care about their prereqs and may not look too much at anything else.

There will be other programs that do look at every class you've taken and do a little bit more of a deep dive into your transcripts.

I do think taking extra science courses in general is something that's helpful because it does show schools that you have an interest in different areas and that you're continuing to improve yourself and really try to Prepare yourself for PA school.

And will those courses go into your science GPAs?

If they are on CASPAS course subjects list under a science category, they will go into your science GPA.

So the main GPAs that schools look at are your overall GPA and your overall science gpa and any extra science classes you take will contribute to that science gpa.

And that's where if you have a lower science gpa, you may end up needing to take some extra classes.

And I highly encourage looking at that list because there are so many options on there that fall under science that you may not consider because sometimes people feel like they've run out of options.

But usually you can find something and it may be something really interesting or something that may really help you.

Neuroscience courses, public health, nutrition, nobody really wants to take it.

But physics, There are a lot of things that fall under science.

If your college or wherever you're attending offers an EMT course for credit that can count.

First aid bls.

There are just a lot more options than what you typically think of as biology, chemistry, biochemistry, you know the basics.

So something to consider if you're looking to increase your science gpa, but definitely worth having a diverse transcript and taking some extra classes if that's something you need to boost your GPAs or try to kind of make yourself more well rounded.

All right, next question.

So this one is regarding for students who already have a degree or need to get more prerequisites, do you recommend taking them through a community college or a four year university?

And let's say it again, this is probably going to be somewhat program dependent.

Most programs PA programs will be perfectly fine with community college coursework.

So double check on the website, there are a few that will specify that they don't accept those courses for prereqs or have kind of, you know, a preference that they note.

But in general, you're usually fine to take classes at a community college if you have the choice or an option.

I would try to take them at a four year university and here's why.

Even though a school technically says they accept prereqs through a community college, that doesn't necessarily mean that there's no bias around that.

And sometimes there is.

And I totally get that that's unfair because your class at your community college may be more difficult than your university class.

But there's no way for schools to know that.

And in general they are sometimes, or even maybe just some people going to assume that your community college classes are easier or not as rigorous.

So if you have a choice, probably going through a four year university would be preferred.

But if for your schedule or finances or location, a community college works best.

That's what you just do it.

That's what you have to do.

And so just, you know, there's only so much control you'll have over those situations and you can only do so much.

But people get into PA school every single day with community college courses without an issue.

So I wouldn't let that be the thing that holds you back from applying or moving forward with your plan if you are interested in becoming a page.

Okay, so this is just more of a general question, but one question that came up was do you advise contacting programs directly prior to applying with any questions?

And I 100% do.

You know schools, they usually are very supportive and have someone there to answer your questions, whether that's an admissions director or a support person or receptionist.

We had at Augusta University Ms. Peggy who, who recently retired, but she was fielding questions from applicants all day long and was an expert.

So she knew exactly what the program was looking for and what to tell people when they had specific questions.

But yes, you can definitely contact programs directly.

Don't I just feel like people are scared to ask questions or inconvenience people with programs or shadowing or anything and it's intimidating to do it.

But the worst thing that happens is someone says no or just doesn't respond.

The one thing to keep in mind when you're contacting programs is to try to not ask a question that's already been asked.

If they have addressed something previously or it's on their website that doesn't look good for you to continue to ask about it.

So definitely make sure that you are doing your research before you Ask any questions.

But if there's something specific that you have questions about, definitely.

I mean, I would ask before you sign up for a class or before you apply so that you're not wasting your time or money on something that's not going to quote, count.

Okay, we got a couple specific questions about courses.

So these I'm going to kind of lump together and then address them.

Could biochemistry be a survey course that does not have a lab?

And then which chemistry would they take?

One or two?

Does anyone know?

So these again are program dependent.

But when you are choosing courses, there are a few things to keep in mind.

Usually programs are going to want your classes to be a science major level versus a survey or a class for non science majors.

Now, those classes will still count towards your gpa.

If they are non science or survey, they'll count towards both your overall and your science gpa.

But when you're looking to fulfill a prerequisite requirement, schools want to see those more difficult courses.

The prereqs that PA schools have put in place that they require of you before PA school are designed to help you be more ready for PA school and to prepare you for PA school.

And so that's why there's not really an easy way out when it comes to this stuff.

But you really have to complete all those requirements successfully if you're trying to prove yourself as someone who is ready for PA school.

So if you have the option between a survey biochem course or an upper level, I would go to the upper level.

And then most programs on their websites are going to either specify that a lab is needed, so they'll say we want biology one with lab, or you'll be able to tell based on the number of credits that they require.

So if they want three credits of biology, usually that's just going to be a class and not necessarily including the lab because usually for most programs a lab course will be four hours.

And so this is another way that the application process is confusing because some schools will lump that together and your bio with lab will be four hours.

And some you'll sign up separately and you'll have biology that's three hours and in the lab that's one hour.

But when you're looking at websites, they should say exactly how much credit they're looking for.

And so that will help you to plan out whether or not you need to have the lab.

When in doubt, take the lab.

It's going to count toward your science gpa.

And I would say more often than not it is required so if you're unsure or it's not clear, I would say go ahead and do it.

And then when it comes to a question like which chemistry should you take?

One or two?

Some schools you're going to see require both.

Or they'll say they want eight hours of general chemistry.

That means you need both parts, 1 and 2.

Or they'll say four hours of general chemistry.

In that case, you can you have some leeway to assign whichever one you got the better grade in or did better in when it's time to assign prereqs.

If your core, if your school requires that in caspa.

So some of the programs have it set up so that you can assign coursework to the prerequisites.

And so you wouldn't necessarily have to assign both of them if you if they only require four hours.

But if you did better in Gen Chem 2, you could assign that course if you got a better grade in it.

Because some of those programs are looking at prerequisite GPAs.

But prerequisite GPAs are not calculated by CASPA because they're program specific, because each program has different prereqs.

So you need to kind of do your own calculations.

We offer a GPA calculation service.

We have an Excel sheet that we put in all of your coursework in when you send your transcripts, that calculates an estimation of your overall and your overall science GPA.

I believe that's $35.

And then you have that Excel sheet that you can modify and add to or change to.

Kind of play with and see how your GPA would change.

I'll put a link to that in the description if that's something you think would be helpful.

We also have the free GPA calculator on the PA platform.

If you just go to the website, it's at the top.

And that's a great option if you just want to plug in your own grades and kind of play with it.

There are a few little caveats to that.

That it's not completely as accurate as I would like, but it's as accurate as I could get it with my minimal coding skills.

So that's an option too.

That's on the website.

Okay, let's move on.

So this is kind of expanding on that.

I will be taking an EMT course through my school.

Will that count towards my science gpa?

And then what if I did my EMT course but it wasn't a credit bearing course?

I actually just ran into this issue with doing a GPA calculation because someone had completed a Medical assistant course at their college where they.

And it was on their transcript, there just weren't any credits involved.

So.

So if there's no credits, it's not gonna go to your gpa, because there's no way to create, basically.

So caspa, when they do your GPA calculations, they take the number of hours in your grade and they do a little math calculation to come up with quality points.

And then your quality points are what are all added up and put together to create your GPAs, your average GPAs.

So if there's no credits involved, that calculation can't be done.

And so in that case, you.

Those wouldn't really count for anything.

Now, if you did get a grade and you had credits that would count towards your science gpa, in most cases, it.

When we get into assigning courses.

So in caspa, when you go to apply, you get all of your transcripts sent to caspa.

Ideally, you also get a copy sent to you because you'll need those to enter in your grades.

I recommend trying to get an official copy instead of an unofficial because there can be some differences in how they show, especially repeated or withdrawal courses.

But I would get an official copy and you go in to enter all your transcripts.

You can pay for this.

CASPA does have a service called Transcript Entry.

There are often issues with that, and it's not a completely reliable thing.

Like it's not.

If you pay for the service, your classes are all gonna be entered perfectly.

So I wouldn't.

I don't know.

I. I'm a fan of just doing it yourself, but that's an option if you want to do it.

But you get your transcripts, you start entering them, and you have to enter everything exactly the way it is on your transcript.

So when you have courses, I have a YouTube video on this that actually, like, walks through examples and shows you.

I'll also put a link to that in the description.

And I probably talked about it on a podcast at some point in the past.

But it's important that you're assigning courses based on the title and not the subject.

So I'm going to try to explain this.

I am a visual person, so this is difficult for me, but you may get it.

On caspa, that is a science course, it will count.

And so you would include that under EMT.

That would count as science.

I don't think that's a real course, but if you.

The main subject there is psychology.

And so that would.

Public health classes get very touchy with this because there's a lot of crossover and they don't all fall under science.

So that's something you have to look at.

And this is also something to keep in mind.

If you're planning out your coursework and you do have any of those like seminar research, TA type courses, those things are not listed as course subjects on, on caspa, so you would have to go by the subject of the class.

So if you have the option of doing a research course under bio 200 versus psych 200, go with the bio option because then it's going to go under your science gpa.

The other thing that trips people up with this is that just because a course was highly science based based does not mean that you can choose to put it under science.

So for an example, if you had psych 200 that was biopsychology or psychology of something, it's still a psych class.

Even if you're like we were straight up learning biology, we were learning so much science.

It doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter what's in the syllabus to caspa.

On a program side, there may be times when you can talk to them about whether a certain class fulfills a requirement and send in a syllabus and description and try to get things kind of cleared in a sense.

But ultimately you've got to go by the title and the course subject.

So that's something just to look at if you are planning out your courses and your grades.

All right, let's move on.

Any advice on how to explain a bad semester or grade?

So on caspa, really your only opportunity to do this is going to be in your personal statement statement or your supplemental applications.

And sometimes you'll have that opportunity and sometimes you won't.

For your personal statement.

A good rule of thumb is that if you feel like whatever it is would prevent you from possibly getting an interview, whatever semester or grade, then it's worth addressing in your personal statement.

If you think it's Just a small blip and you've shown improvement and you don't think it would actually prevent you from getting an interview.

Save that explanation for your supplemental applications or your interview.

You can read my personal statement online.

And I don't think I addressed any of that.

I think I focused more on my strengths and my grades that were good versus the C I got in Organic chemistry too.

But then at my interview, I definitely brought that up because I wanted to make sure that when they went to the table to discuss me, they didn't feel like that was something I ignored or brushed over and that it would be something that would prevent me from doing well in PA school.

So in your supplementals.

I edit a lot of supplementals and they're often prompts that are like, is there anything on your application you feel needs further explanation?

Or do you have any academic discrepancies you would like to expand on?

Blah, blah, blah.

My advice for that is always to be very direct.

Explain exactly what happened and tell me when it was and what caused you to not do as well as you wanted to and then what you learned from that situation and how you improve moving forward and then connect that to how you'll improve as a PA student.

Like how it won't affect you.

So, for example, saying, you know, during junior year, during spring semester of my junior year, I received a C in organic chemistry too.

Like, say exactly when it was, what the grade was.

I just see a lot of essays that beat around the bush and that's annoying because that makes me have to go back to your application and try to figure things out.

And then I might come across something else that I hadn't even noticed before.

But you just want to be very direct.

So instead of saying yes, I struggled at times or something like that.

Be direct with what happened and explain, you know.

I had struggled through Organic Chemistry one and was relying mainly on memorization versus application and actually learning the concepts.

And once I got to Organic Chemistry two, I did not have the foundation that was needed to successfully complete the course.

And while I'm not proud of my C, I did learn how to go about learning the material and making changes.

When I found I was struggling, I started going to office hours with my professors, extra study sessions, asking the TAs for help, and using online resources that helped me to really understand and solidify that knowledge.

And while I wish I applied those concepts sooner, I do feel like the lessons I learned will help me to recognize when I'm struggling in PA school and pivot my study skills and Ask for help as needed.

So something along those lines where you're explaining exactly what happened.

Okay, I hope that's clear.

But if you need help with your personal statement, by the way, like now is the time to be working on it.

If you're planning on applying in April and we have our free two week email course that gets you a draft done if you commit like 15 to 30 minutes a day of working on it for a couple weeks and you could obviously spread that out if you wanted to.

But if you go to the PA platform.com personal statement, you will find that and just put in your email and you'll get those emails where you can get everything sent to you.

All right, let's see.

Okay, so this is interesting.

If the school is normally semester based, but you took say histology over the winter session, which was only four weeks long, then does that count as quarter or semester for caspa?

If a school is on the semester system, they will adjust their winter or summer sessions to still be on the semester system.

Like they're not going to do both or switch back and forth.

And so you would still for that school, enter it as a semester school.

You do get into some conversion issues.

If you go to a quarter a school on the quarter system, make sure you're taking that into account when you're planning things out because you may end up having to take an extra course to fulfill the hour requirements if there is not, if it's not clear or the conversion makes your hours less.

Sorry, that was super confusing.

If you go to the CASPA faq, they explain it a lot better than me and they have the conversion there that you need for switching quarter hours to semesters.

Or if you search what is my CASPA gpa?

We have a blog post that comes up and it is, it explains it and shows you all of that.

It's just hard to explain through podcasting.

Okay, we also got some questions about old courses and expired courses.

So first old courses.

I am a PTA, a physical therapy aide or assistant with classes from 15 years ago.

I retook all my science classes required.

Will they consider my GPA for the PTA program I took 15 years ago?

So Caspa, will you have to submit transcripts and grades from every class or course you've ever taken at a college level, even if it was a lot of years ago and that will go into your GPA calculations?

Schools are a little different.

They do still look at that overall in science gpa, but there may be some schools that put more weight on your More recent coursework versus what you did in the past.

And I know this is something that can be very difficult because if you maybe didn't know you wanted to be a PA a long time ago, your focus may not have been as good and your grades may not have been as good.

And that may come back to kind of bite you.

But that's where having a strong application in other areas and continuing to show improvement is so important.

And I also think using different techniques when it comes to choosing schools based on requirements can be very helpful.

So let's say a school has more requirements.

They are going to be, you're gonna have a smaller pool of applicants, if that makes any sense.

So you can kind of make decisions and decide things based on that.

The next question is if a school state's prereqs have to be done within 10 years and one class is expired says Gen Chem 1.

I've taken Organic Chem 1 and 2 within the past year, is it worth reaching out to the school to ask if I need to retake gen chem1 or should I just retake?

So this is a good question because it's about specific prereqs and this is a case where it may be helpful to reach out.

And it also depends on how they have things specified.

If they just say that you need to take two chemistry classes, your organic classes would likely fill those requirements.

If they specifically say that you need Gen Chem and Ochem, then you'll likely have to retake that class.

Schools are not often willing to bend their requirements because the standards set by the ARCPA are what drives who they accept and how they accept and how they have everything set up.

And so they can't change that because they risk then losing accreditation.

So some other instances of this that I see causing issues are biostats versus statistics classes, certain psych classes.

If they want general psych and you've taken abnormal or another psych class or medical terminology credits.

So a lot of schools, some schools will specify that they want a three hour course and you've only taken a one or a two hour course.

If you don't fulfill those requirements, it's likely that your application will never be considered considered and that is a waste of your time and money.

So it's better if you just take the time to go ahead and retake those classes.

If that program is really one that you want to apply to or take it off your list.

So that's, that's definitely kind of a hard thing as far as expiring courses as well, just to touch on, because I got an email question about this the other day.

The courses expire from when you took them, not from when you graduated.

So that when you're planning out coursework, if there's something that you took freshman year or if you have the chance to take a certain class freshman year, but you know you're not applying for probably five or six years, it may be better to put it off towards the until the end of your college education if you aren't going to be ready to apply within the certain time frame.

And the schools that you want to apply to have expiration dates on their prereqs.

Okay, I think that's enough questions for today.

I hope that was not too confusing.

I feel like I just threw a lot of information at you.

But we'll have some more of these Q and A question session or question episodes.

We had a lot of questions come up in our standardized test session as well as our CASPA session, as well as our experience section.

And since application season is getting close, we will definitely need to talk about these things a little bit more.

But yeah, so everything I talked about will be linked in the description.

I know it was a lot.

And let me know if there's something you want to hear about coming up.

Bye, guys.