Rejected the first time. Accepted at her top choice the second.

Hanna Lewis had the clinical experience and the work ethic, and her first cycle still went nowhere because of her GPA. So she did something about it instead of resubmitting the same application and hoping.

She did a master's in clinical research. That fixed two things at once. It gave admissions committees recent graduate-level grades to look at, and it taught her how to read and think about evidence-based medicine, which she can talk about intelligently now.

The other thing she did was stop being anonymous. She reached out to programs, used applicant advising, and made sure the people reading her file had some idea who she was.

What we cover:

• Why her first application cycle didn't work
• Using a master's in clinical research to raise her academic profile
• What evidence-based medicine training added to her application
• Reaching out to programs and applicant advising
• Reapplying without repeating the same mistakes
• Getting into her top-choice program

Resources:

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

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

Pre-PA Essay Review: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/pre-pa-essay-review

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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If you're needing some hope throughout this whole process, you are in the right place today because we're hearing from Hannah and her story is very encouraging and I think it's going to make you feel better about this whole Pre PA thing.

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 Prepa 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.

Welcome to the Pre PA Club Podcast and thank you for listening.

If you are a longtime listener, welcome back.

If you're just finding the podcast, welcome here.

I think it's a fun place.

I'm Savannah, I'm a dermatology PA and I like to get straight into it.

So we're going to hear from Hannah today and she is awesome.

She is a North Carolinian.

Is that what you say?

And she is starting PA school in the fall.

She has really great advice from someone who was a re applicant.

So she had a low gpa which is what a lot of people struggle with.

Applied and just just didn't really feel like she was good enough.

But she started focusing on the other parts of her application and really took big steps to make sure she was prepared and you're going to hear all about that and how it worked out for her.

So very excited about that upcoming events to know about and put on your calendar.

So we have a couple things.

This month in February, if you're listening in real time.

If you're not in real time, these will most likely be on YouTube.

So if you go to YouTube.com thepaplatform you'll find all kinds of videos from past events on there.

But our personal statement webinar will be on February 18th.

That is a Thursday at 8:30pm if you go to the description, there's gonna be a link to register and make sure you're following on social media at the PA platform on Instagram and you'll be able to see all the information about that webinar there.

And then we are doing Another Day in the Life Air Quotes Virtual shadowing event on February 8th or sorry, February 23rd.

And that will be with one of our pre PA coaches, Archana, and she has been doing a lot of these events.

She will be talking about her job as an urgent care PA in Hawai.

So that's really fun.

She's worked in some other jobs as well, including sleep medicine, which is really interesting.

So we'll be hearing from her.

So those links, like I said, are in the description if you want to sign up and get the email reminders for those and we would love to see you there.

So.

All right, well let's jump in to hearing from Hannah and I think you're really going to enjoy this.

If you, you know, have any questions, feel free to reach out to me and I will try to connect you as well.

Hi everybody, my name is Hannah.

I am a born and raised North Carolinian.

I went to NC State for undergrad and majored in Human Biology, Pre PA track.

I went on to get my master's in clinical research at Campbell University and to get my clinical hours I did dermatology.

And right now I'm working in clinical research in the industry for rare disease.

Interesting.

Okay, so I already have some questions just off of that, but did you know going into college that you were pre PA or is that something you figured out while you're in school?

So I definitely figured that out while I was in school.

I took a medical science course when I was in high school and that kind of got the ball rolling, kind of sparked my interest, but I still at that point wasn't sure.

And my teacher was this super passionate nurse who really wanted to help foster the medical path for anyone who wanted to go into healthcare.

So she really encouraged me to do an ENT course.

So I got to do that during my senior year.

So kind of got my first inexperience on what's out there.

Kind of realized the emergency side of things was probably not for me, but it was so great.

Still great hands on experience.

Yeah.

So when I started undergrad I did pre help club and started shadowing.

So I, you know, I thought medical school at first and I kind of thought that for the first two years I didn't really ever consider nursing just because my school didn't offer that.

But I decided about junior senior year after doing a registering PA that that was the best fit for me.

Okay, interesting.

You mentioned that you're, you were on a pre PA track.

Is that something specific that Your school had.

So it was more, I guess it was more pre med.

Okay.

But I did, you know, about, about the time that I was going to pre help club and learning about all the different, you know, subgroups that we had because they did have, you know, the pre med group, a pre PA group.

So I kind of started to dabble in all of that.

But once I figured out I wanted to do pa, I started to make sure that I was going to get all the prereqs and graduate with everything that I needed.

Okay, interesting.

I always am interested to see how other schools did it because when I was in college, we had a pre PA club, but my advisor did not know anything about pre PA stuff or PA school.

And so when schools have like a dedicated, like pre pa, you know, tracker, like are kind of more educated on it, I always think that's super interesting.

So which did your school have a PA program or no, like attached to it?

Yeah, born a vet school, but that was pretty much only.

The only medical type thing that they had.

It was mainly like STEM science and engineering.

Okay, cool.

So once you decided PA and kind of made that switch and started getting all the prereqs and it sounds like you're getting, you know, hours and all of that as well, what else were you doing throughout undergrad to work on your application or get your get ready to apply?

I don't know.

So I knew that.

So I didn't get a chance to get a ton of hours beforehand.

So I knew that I was going to take a gap year.

But I was.

I know I did a lot of volunteering.

I was really involved on campus in different organizations.

We had like a pre help honor society that I was a part of.

So they were really, really helpful and kind of, you know, gearing us up for what we were going to be applying for later.

But I really just tried to be as involved as possible and get ready to have my gap year.

Okay, see, that's kind of part of your plan, which I think gap years are extremely valuable.

Going into your gap year, at what point did you, or I guess, okay, back up.

What did you feel like was strong about your application and what did you feel like were weak areas?

So I thought my campus involvement was really strong.

I knew that I had pretty strong recommenders just based on my professors.

I still didn't really have that good clinical letter yet, but I think the, you know, involvement and all of that was really my biggest strength.

But towards the end of undergrad, things got a little rocky.

You know, I Had some mental health stuff come up.

And so things just kind of.

They started out really strong, freshman and sophomore year.

And then when junior and senior year came about, things got a lot harder.

There was a lot of life stuff going on.

It did not end exactly the way that I wanted it to.

So I definitely found myself stuck in a place where my GPA was not strong and not competitive.

Okay, so going into your gap year, you're working on those things, and then did you, I guess, then apply during your gap year?

Yes.

So that was right after about a year after I graduated.

And so I had the minimum thousand hours administration, and I waited a little bit longer in the cycle just because I wanted to get more hours, because I knew that my GPU was not the strongest part of my application.

So I wanted to bolster it up as much as possible, but I think I waited a little too long.

And I applied to 10 schools, I think, and call rejections.

Not a single interview.

And I was pretty devastated.

And I, you know, I reached out to some of the schools and did some applicant advising, and I just sat down with them and I said, look, I know that my grades are not strong and I'm trying to bolster these other parts of my application, but what is your opinion?

What do you think that I need to do?

And they said that the grades were a pretty big deal, of course.

Okay.

But I, you know, I had several, several choices of what I could have done.

I tried to do some, like, post BAC courses, but then I ultimately decided that if I'm going to be taking a bunch of extra courses after undergrad, I might as well put it towards a master's.

So I decided to go and get a master's.

It was online, so I was able to continue to get hours while I was working or like while I was working in school.

So that was really great and really convenient.

And I chose clinical research because I knew that it was something that I was passionate about and I knew that it would be somewhat applicable to my career as a PA later and, you know, kind of understanding clinical research as the foundation of what drives evidence based medicine and all of that.

So I knew that that would be something that would aid me in the future.

So that was pretty much what I did until I graduated and applied again.

Okay, so when it's great that they were able to give you some feedback when you're talking like grade issues and GPAs, I mean, what were those or what ranges Were you kind of looking at there?

So I was about to.

So my science GPA was in pretty bad shape.

It was well under a 3.0.

And I know that a lot of schools have that minimum science gpa, so I wanted to take the science courses.

But my overall gpa, it looked better on paper because my school had a great exclusion where they could exclude it from your GPA to make it look a little better when you graduate, but not nice for Caspa.

So I was looking.

I was probably at the 3.0 range, might even have been a little bit below 3.0.

So for the schools that didn't have a minimum, you know, a minimum grade requirement, it was fine.

But a lot of schools actually came back and told me.

And, you know, the hard thing about CASPA is that sometimes you don't know what you're looking at until they come in.

So I didn't know that I was under a 3.0 right after I.

Yes, that happens to so many people where.

Because it is like your school, the way your school calculates it is so much different than how CASPA does a lot of times because they, like you said, exclude anything repeated or, you know, we'll take out certain stuff.

And it can be very shocking once those CASPA GPA calculations come back for sure.

So after.

So you applied, didn't get in, decided you needed to work on grades, go do this master's program where.

How did you go about finding a master's program?

Because that's something that I get questions about a lot that I don't have any experience with because I never did it.

But what.

What did you look for?

What was kind of your process in figuring out.

Because there's a lot of them out there.

Like, this is going to be the one for me.

Yes.

So I definitely wanted one that was going to be flexible.

So whether that meant I was going to be online, whether that meant that it was going to, you know, I was going to have classes in the morning and I could work in the afternoon, I knew that I couldn't just completely stop working.

I needed to stop, still work towards getting my hours.

And you know that, because that side is really, really important, too.

So, honestly, I did, you know, I looked in at schools in North Carolina.

I was pretty familiar with Campbell at that point, just because I had a lot of friends that went there.

So I was visiting there constantly, and I kind of started there.

I knew that they had clinical research in undergrad, and.

But then they mentioned that they had a master's and I thought that was really unique.

Not a lot of schools have that.

And when I looked it up, I did look into public health and all that too, which I know a lot of people do that.

But once I saw that the clinical research program was online, I said, that's it, I'm gonna do it.

That's awesome.

Is it one that's like self paced or.

You kind of have to be online at certain times.

So it's pretty self paced.

There's some, I think a couple of professors every once in a while would have a time that they wanted us to be on in the evenings when most people were available.

But they also, it was designed for working professionals, so they were completely understanding of the fact that people have families, people have after work activities that they needed to do.

So if you couldn't make it, it wasn't the biggest scale in the world, but it was pretty much self paced.

Nice.

Okay.

Really?

That's really cool.

So when you started your master's program, what, what exactly does that look like?

Like what is.

Like the classes you're taking and then were most of those ones that counted towards your science gpa.

So luckily they were, and I wasn't sure if they would at first just because every school codes them differently.

You never know how you can code it.

So luckily it did have a lot of weight on my science, which is great.

But it's, you know, I really didn't have a lot of free time, which, you know, I was expecting that.

So I would work all day, come home and do work until I went to bed for the most part, which going to be great experience with.

It will.

It will.

But it did have a lot of weight and it was great too because one of the classes was physical and clinical assessment and one of the PA instructors taught it.

So I thought that was really cool.

Yeah.

So that, you know, helped me get my foot in the door there and meet some of the faculty for.

Nice.

Okay.

How.

And it was a year long, so.

It ended up being.

So most people take about two to three years.

Mine was about two and a half just because the last year is a clinical research project, which was super cool.

So.

And you know, in clinical research there's different things that can slow things down, whether you gotta have ethics committee sign off on things.

So that was.

Definitely gave me a taste of the real world in terms of research just because, you know, you can plan everything out and sometimes it's just not gonna, not gonna go as quickly as you want it to, which is kind of how my journey To PA school went as well.

There you go.

It ended up being about two and a half years.

Okay, so how long was your total gap between, I guess, undergrad and gain in the PA school?

Four years.

Okay.

Is that longer than you expected?

Definitely.

Definitely.

But now you feel ready?

Yeah.

I would have liked it to be a lot shorter, but I think that, you know, everyone.

Everyone's journey is different, everyone's time is different.

And that's also something that I kind of had to come to terms with, that, you know, someone else's journey is not mine, and as long as I get there, that's all that matters.

So definitely longer than I wanted it to be, but I'm thankful for it for sure.

Well, and I commend you for sticking with it because I think that, I mean, in like, the grand scheme of things, four years isn't that long, but when you're in it, it feels very long.

And so, I mean, I'm sure there were times where you maybe questioned whether it was all worth it or this was exactly what you wanted to.

And I mean, that, to me shows your passion for wanting to be a PA because you kept going and kept pushing towards it, which is really great.

And I'm sure that the school saw that too.

So when it came time to.

Did you reapply at all during that time or you had just reapplied, you applied the first time and then waited.

I thought about applying like, maybe.

Maybe a year after I started my master's just to see if the timing would kind of line up.

But yeah, I even got my letters ready and all that stuff.

I was ready to go.

And I think at that point I still.

I kind of wanted to focus on one thing at the time just because I wanted to, because I was, you know, a big part of doing this master's was to get my grades up.

And I didn't want to.

To throw something else in the mix on top of working in school.

So I wanted to just focus on one thing at the time and reapply when I was ready.

Okay.

And that's wise.

When it came time to reapply, did you apply again to those same 10 schools or did you apply to different schools?

What were you kind of looking for in programs at that point?

So I actually.

That had to cut that down to five.

Okay.

Just because I.

A lot of the schools have the five or seven year requirement for courses.

Yeah.

And a lot of these courses were starting to age out, so I didn't.

I had to kind of make that call, too.

And I thought about, well, you know, I could go to the community college and retake some of those.

And I said, no, I'll start with these five.

I'm, you know, confident and know that these are soft goals that I want to go to.

So I had to come to terms with that, but that's okay.

And how much did.

Well, did the Masters bring up your GPAs?

It did.

And one.

Another hard pill that I had to follow was the more courses you have, the less everything is.

So I kind of had this expectation that they were.

It was going to be just substantially better.

And they.

I mean, they were definitely better.

For sure.

They were where I needed them to be.

But one thing I also looked at in terms of applying to schools was the schools that look at your last.

So, you know, my last 60 is obviously much, much, much better than my girl.

So that was really helpful because I was looking at some of them and I'm like, well, I don't know if I even qualify for them.

And then I saw that they had the last 60 option as well, so that was really helpful.

So that kind of was helpful in choosing school to apply to.

Okay, so those are good things to kind of look for.

Well, what were the outcomes of those five applications?

So still kind of in the midst right now, but I did.

So far, I've had two interviews and one acceptance, which makes up was my top notes.

So there you go.

If more interviews come, I'm gonna take them, of course, but I'm pretty.

I'm pretty much 99% on my top choice, for sure.

Nice.

When.

When you went to your interviews, were there any questions about GPA or grade stuff or your Masters or any of that come up at all?

Well, I guess I don't even know if you went to interview since the.

Everything's virtual now, but everything.

They were all virtual.

And it was something that they brought up.

But I think it definitely helped that I had the upward trend.

That was something that, you know, going in, I was really, really concerned.

I knew they were going to bring up the great thing because that is the weakest spot on my application for sure.

Wow.

And more volunteering.

There were all these areas that were bolstered and, you know, but I can't change the Past in terms of grades.

So I knew it was going to come up, but I was able to, you know, put that positive spin on it, talk about the upper trends and just really how doing the masters has changed my study habits and how it's just improved my time management overall.

And they really seem to like that.

So good.

Obviously you got accepted, so.

Yeah, how is.

And just.

You don't have to go into specifics, but how was your virtual interview experience?

Did that go smoothly or did you like it?

Not like it really did.

Okay, good.

They did a good job of making us feel really comfortable.

And something that I had to think about was, you know, this is not their ideal platform either.

So, you know, they are.

They're rolling with the punches.

This is much as we are.

So it went fairly well.

I panicked a little bit during the first one because at the very beginning, they gave us time, like an hour before to log on to make sure everything was working okay.

And my Internet was so slow, and I don't know what it was, but everything was pixely.

Everyone sounded like robots, and it was really stressful.

So they did offer a caveat, and they said, you can pull out your phone if you need to and do it that way.

So I just plugged my phone up to power and had my little popsocket and stuck it on my laptop and just did it like that.

And it was a little bit awkward, but it worked.

I had no more issues.

So for the most part, everything was great.

And it was a great experience for sure.

Yeah, you made a good point.

Like, they are definitely.

I feel like learning too, and trying to figure everything out and figure out how to make it.

Like, I can't even imagine the logistics of all that.

Like, it.

I don't know.

It's a lot.

And they had different breakout rooms.

So, you know, we had one big session, and this was something I was not prepared for.

So obviously I was prepared for the tell me about yourself question.

I was not prepared to do that in front of everyone.

So.

So when we were introducing ourselves, it was this big opening session and everyone was in there.

So however many.

I don't know, I think There were maybe 50 interviewees and the faculty.

So you had to listen to everybody's all 50.

Yep, yep.

That's a lot.

Oh, my gosh.

For sure.

Okay, well, hey, if you could stand out among 50 people, then go you.

The rest of it.

Yeah, that's.

That's intense.

Well, so potentially, you're starting PA school when?

July.

July.

Okay, cool.

What are your plans?

So Then are you still in the master's program or is that done?

That's done.

Which is great.

So now just working, just working.

And I am working in the research field right now.

So luckily I, you know, have had a job during COVID which is great.

We've been able to work from home, so pretty much just hang out until then.

Nice, nice.

Well, what do you think that you'll use your research experience in the future as a PA or where do you kind of see yourself as a PA in the future?

That five year question.

So you have a couple of specialties in mind.

But I'm trying, I'm trying not to.

Trying not to put myself in a box there.

Trying to keep an open mind.

But I do.

I would like to do research, whether it's just, you know, doing outcomes research as a practice just to improve outcomes or whether it more large scale and doing drug trials and things like that.

I think that that is definitely something I'm interested in and is a big.

There's lots of growth there.

So I think I definitely like to do that too.

Yeah, that would be really interesting to be able to, I think, have your background and then also work in medicine.

My office doesn't do any clinical trials, neither ones I've worked at.

But I've known some that do.

And it sounds really interesting and really cool.

So I'm sure that will help you a ton.

All right, we're good.

Okay.

Is there any advice you have to anyone who is, you know, applying and not sure what they're doing or reapplying?

Anything that you feel like would make the process easier?

Definitely.

I think my saving grace in the whole process was networking.

So I.

And one thing I looked for in schools was if they had, you know, applicant advising, if they had, you know, schools that really wanted to invest in their future students.

So I reached out to schools about application.

Application advising.

I also took advantage of any preparatory programs that any schools have.

So for instance, the school that I got into has what's called hprep, which stands for Health Professions Readiness and Enrichment Program.

I hope I got that right.

It's like a week long program and you do have to apply for it, but you get to go for a week, you get to kind of see their facilities, kind of learn how all the programs work.

So.

And you get to meet all the faculty.

So.

And I even had, in my interview, I had someone who remembered me from that.

And that was four years ago.

Wow.

So getting to know the people who are going to be looking at your application and you know, getting your name out there sometimes you never know who will remember you.

Interesting.

So how did Juju's find that stuff on the, on the.

I almost said the interweb on the Internet.

Is that where you kind of found those opportunities or how did you find out about them?

Just checking program websites for the most part.

Then I do remember at my school for undergrad we had a big pre health club and a professions advising center too and so they would often advertise for these programs.

So for the program that I went to I remember seeing you know a bit email go out about it and so I thought about it a couple years later.

But definitely just searching Google searching is.

Can do wonders.

Yes, for sure.

Okay, awesome.

Well definitely I definitely recommend that as well.

That's not.

Not something I did and I think people are scared sometimes to reach out to perms because they're scared they're going to say no but that's really the worst that'll happen.

They may just say no, but that's okay.

I mean no big deal.

Well where can anyone like find you and kind of follow along with your journey and story and see where you end up?

Yes.

So I am starting to instrument to kind of document the journey and that is Hannah Pas I think I hope.

Yeah.

But that should be.

I'm you know I've just created the account so trying to get things up and running there.

My brother's a photographer so I'm helping him or he's helping me with that together.

But yeah.

Awesome.

Well everyone can go go follow you and and see about all of your PA school journeys.

But thank you so much for being willing to come on here and share your story and this is all things that I think will be extremely helpful to people in similar shoes, you know, who may not know really what they need to do to get their GPAs up or maybe feel in the struggles of reapplying.

So I appreciate your insights.

Sam.