End of the year, which means it's time to get your act together for the 2020 cycle.

CASPA opens in April. That sounds far away and it isn't. Right now is when you should be pulling together your patient care hours, healthcare hours, and shadowing hours - with dates, supervisor names, and contact info. Doing that in June from memory is how people end up guessing.

Start your personal statement now too. First drafts are always bad. You want the bad draft out of the way in January so you have three months to make it good.

I also cover the PA-CAT, a new standardized test in its research phase that could show up as a requirement at some programs down the road. Worth knowing about now.

What I cover:

• What to do before CASPA opens in April
• Gathering hours, dates, and supervisor contacts
• Starting your personal statement early
• What the PA-CAT is and where it stands
• Setting up your program list for the new cycle
• Planning your year backwards from submission

Resources:

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

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

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

Mentioned in this episode:

CapYear Training

Get $200 Off CapYear Academy Looking to boost your clinical experience this summer? CapYear Academy offers a flexible, 100% online medical assistant training program with optional externships and CCMA certification included. 🎓 Use code PA200 for $200 off your tuition! 👉 Enroll now at capyear.co

If you're applying to PA school and what you should be doing now, depending on where you're at to get ready for it.

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 foreign.

Thank you for tuning into the podcast.

I can't believe this is our last episode of this year.

That's crazy.

But we're going to talk about some things that should help you prepare for next year, at least get you thinking about it.

And so I'm really excited about that.

And I'm Savannah, by the way, a PA prepa coach, blogger, whatever you want to call me.

But I wanted to say thank you to everyone who's left a review on itunes.

I don't actually know how to check reviews on the other places, but I'll figure it out.

But there are some really nice ones on there.

And actually I love hearing about you guys getting accepted.

And some people have said they got accepted on there, which I love.

And people tell me that on Instagram and an email all the time, and I just love it.

Everyone says they binge episodes.

I'm so sorry you have to listen to me for that long.

And I just.

I hope that this is a resource that provides good information to you.

I don't know if I would say it's necessarily enjoyable, and I hope it doesn't stress you out, but my goal is just to get more information out there about the PA profession and help pre pas to figure out what they need to do and navigate their way and hear from other people who have been in their shoes, who can help them to kind of, you know, get to where they are and make decisions along the way because there are a lot of decisions you have to make when it comes to applying to PA School.

I did want to mention something in a couple of the reviews just so that you guys know that I do know.

Sometimes I don't typically listen back to every episode because, number one, I hate listening to myself.

Number two, I honestly don't have time.

So I do realize that sometimes the audio is a little bit, maybe not the best quality on some of these.

But I also want you all to realize, like, I'm not a professional podcaster.

I am sitting in my basement with a laptop garageband and a microphone and a Lot of times the guests I'm talking to, they are in their work offices, they're in rural areas.

We do our best to connect, and sometimes that is very difficult over.

We try all different kinds of things to make it happen.

And they're not professionals either.

They've never done this.

Usually they're very nervous.

So.

So a lot of that goes into, I guess, the sound quality.

And if you can't, if you don't like it on an episode, just skip it, that's fine.

But I do the best I can to make the audio restore it to sound as good as it can be.

But sometimes there's only so much I can do, so.

I appreciate the comments.

There's honestly not much I can do about that much else I can do.

And as someone who's actually just a pa, I'm doing the best I can to be a podcaster, too.

So I hope that helps to clarify.

And if anyone has any major tips or just wants to, you know, process this for me, please let me know before we get into kind of today's the Nitty Gritty.

And we'll talk about, you know, definitely things you should be doing right now.

But I wanted to mention PA School Prep.

So if you are, you know, you've been accepted, you know, you're going to be starting school, let's say, in the spring or May or August, now is the time to kind of.

I mean, you don't want to do too much prep, but make sure that you are getting ready for school as much as you can.

And PA School Prep is an online course that offers anatomy, physiology and med term review, as those are usually the first classes and the most difficult ones starting PA school.

And so you can use the code futurepa there for a discount.

All right, so we're gonna start with a while back, there was this test that people were kind of buzzing about called the PA Cat P. A hyphen cat.

So kind of like the mcat, if you've heard of that.

But I did a video on YouTube about it in a blog post, which the blog post is linked in the description, but I'm gonna put that audio here.

And then since that video, I've been able to actually connect with the company and get a little bit more insight.

So.

So.

And there have been some kind of announcements around it that we'll discuss in just a minute.

Hey, guys, how you doing today?

I want to talk about the PA Cat.

Sound familiar?

Maybe sound like the mcat.

This is a new test that PA programs are testing out to See if it will be a better gauge of a student's readiness to take on PA school and then the pants or the boards for PA school.

So this is something relatively new that has come up this year and I wanted to go ahead and address it head on.

There's a blog post on the PA platform all about this today as well.

And you can get our application timeline download to kind of figure out where testing fits into your plan in the link in the description.

So what is the PA cat?

First of all, it's a test.

And it's a test that was developed by a company called Exam Master.

And they've developed a lot of tests.

There are some PAs involved in the research with this test specifically at the University of Tampa, and they are one of the schools who's been trying it out.

Now, before you get alarmed, before you go, add it to your to do list.

This is not a test that you can currently sign up to take.

This is something that schools are testing to see if in the future it will be a requirement.

And I kind of think it will be for a lot of schools.

Talk about why.

So the PA cat is different than say the GRE because it actually tests knowledge.

It's a three hour, 180 question test.

Let's see if I can get all these covering anatomy, physiology, biology, microbiology, biochemistry, general chemistry, organic chemistry, psychology, sociology, statistics, medical terminology, and, oh, gosh, I gotta cheat ethics.

Yeah, so it covers a little bit of everything and most of what is considered prereqs for a lot of PA programs.

Now this is different because the GRE is just a strategy test.

It tests your basic math skills, your vocabulary, but that doesn't really say anything about how you're going to perform in PA school.

I see the PA CAT as an option for schools to try to standardize applicants a little bit more because everyone has different education levels.

You may go to a university that's extremely difficult and have a lower GPA or lower grades, but you know the material and you had really, really great education and that would show up on the PA cat.

Hypothetically.

On the flip side, maybe you had great grades, but you went to a school that wasn't really that difficult.

And, and that knowledge you got may not translate into being able to apply it to PA school the way you need to.

So this would help to kind of standardize things.

At the end of the day, it's a test.

There will be study materials available to help you to do well.

Now, with the PA cat, as of right now, like I said, it's only in testing.

So right now it's being offered at some interview sessions with no decision potential.

So it doesn't make a difference whether applicants get in or not.

It's strictly a test.

And then at some orientations of PA programs where students have been accepted and, you know, it's in its research phase.

I read through the whole research proposal and they're starting with, you know, these preliminary tests.

They're going to test again after the students have been in school for a year and then after graduation and looking at page rates and seeing how things correlate.

So there's a lot that goes into this before this test becomes standardized.

It's not something you'll have to worry about for the next at least one to two years, probably a little bit more.

But it is something to be aware of.

If it comes up in your interview or at an orientation session, just know the purpose behind it.

It is different from the gre.

It is also different from the Casper test.

The Casper test is more focused on.

On testing your decision making and empathy skills, which they've incorporated a little bit into the PA cat.

So I almost see the goal as replacing the GRE and the Casper test and making something that is just specific to PA school.

And a lot of other graduate programs have this.

The MCAT for med school, the PCAT for pharmacy school.

So it's not uncommon.

And I'm actually a little surprised it took them this long to get here.

But I think one of the problems is there's so many varieties and in what schools are looking for, so in prereqs and what they require.

And so I think that makes it difficult to come up with a test that's going to be considered fair and going to be adopted by a majority of programs if they aren't necessarily offering or asking for the same prereqs.

So do you need to worry about this?

Not right now.

Again, just something to be aware of and just kind of be on the lookout if you see something popping up about the PA catch.

That's what people are talking about.

We have a blog post if you want to get more in depth, get some links to figure out more about it.

And yeah, I would love to hear your experience in the comments.

I actually went to Instagram and asked some people who had taken the test what they thought.

And you know, overall everyone said they thought it was a better judge of what you know than the GRE and more appropriate for PA school.

There were a couple people who had been out of school for a while and they said it was was difficult, but one person said theirs was very chemistry heavy.

Another person said very A and P heavy anatomy and physiology and very specific anatomy questions.

Application questions like if you injured your ankle in this way, what tendon would be injured?

Which I don't think I could answer these days.

But they did, you know, feel like it was something that could potentially be helpful in the future.

So I hope that gives you a little insight into the PA Cat.

Check out the description for a link to that application timeline where we talk about when you need to think about these tests, including the gre.

And if you have any comments or questions, feel free to leave them below.

See you guys next time.

All right, so there's your basics since then.

So what I talk about in that is how this is kind of a trial thing.

But the company has announced that students will be able to sign up for the PA Cat starting this year.

So I think they said around March.

Now, this isn't something that you need to go jump and sign up right away.

And this has been coming up a lot in our Pre PA Club Facebook group, which if you're not in that, it is awesome.

And we have over 8,000 pre pas now.

There are so many questions, so many answers.

It's amazing.

But look for that on Facebook.

But there have been, I mean, almost every day I'm seeing a discussion, what is the PA Cat?

Do I need to be signing up for this or studying or taking it or testing?

And don't go do that yet.

Wait and see what the schools are going to require because I don't honestly know at this point how many schools are going to jump on board with this or when they're going to tell you they want you to take it the way it's been done so far.

A lot of the schools are using it only once you've gotten an interview or even accepted or started school.

So I'm not sure that it's going to be something required of every applicant.

And honestly, I hope you don't have to take it because this sounds miserable to me and I would not have wanted to take it.

But, you know, it's just, it's how things go.

And in the long run, you know, I've been thinking more and more about this.

I see the benefits that that could come from having a more specialized test.

I just also think there's going to be a ton of kinks to work out with making sure it's fair and making sure it's actually an indicator of someone's ability to do well, in PA school, because that's the ultimate goal.

PA schools don't want students who are going to fail out because of their inability to comprehend and keep up with the material.

And so I think that's why why schools continually change their interview process and application process to make sure that they're trying to get students who are going to be the best fits for their program and ultimately the best PAs that they can produce.

So don't stress about the PA Cat.

Make sure you follow along on Instagram, the PA platform.

We'll keep you updated with all kinds of information and try to make sure that we are letting you know if we find out something, if we can.

So that is everything I think I have to say about the PA cap.

What I also wanted to talk about was just kind of, I guess, the timeline.

We have an application timeline download on the PA platform.

If you just Google that, it'll pop right up.

But I think even with that, it can get overwhelming.

So I kind of wanted to talk about right now.

So it is December.

What can you be doing right now to prepare for an application cycle in April?

So anyone, whether you're a new applicant or reapplicant, you can be working on gathering all of your information.

So that includes making sure that you've recorded your patient care and healthcare experience hours, your shadowing hours.

CASPA has very strict requirements about.

Not strict, but it's just how it's set up, requirements on how that's entered, and it's a little funny.

So we do have the log download the patient care log on the PA platform if that's something that you need.

But you have to enter it in the amount of hours you had by week, which is kind of weird.

And then if it wasn't regular hours, that can get a little bit confusing.

And we've talked about that in some prior podcast episodes.

But go ahead and record that stuff.

If you wait until April, you can, but that's when you may be scrambling to collect everything.

As far as transcripts, I do recommend having an official copy for yourself, but if you're still in progress with your coursework, you'd want to wait until that's complete to order that transcript to make sure it's correct.

And some of these things you can't do necessarily until April.

A lot of people have questions about when to start your CASPA application and when to open it up.

But with that, my personal recommendation is if you aren't applying this cycle, yes, you can technically go ahead and open an account and start, you know, Just looking around, but I wouldn't necessarily put too much in there.

Caspa, while it is, you know, great software and website, there are times where they lose information or they have to reset something and everything is lost.

So I wouldn't put all your time and effort into putting everything there right now if you haven't applied yet or you're not applying this cycle.

One little caveat to that is if you're taking the GRE and what your scores sent in.

And I've was on Instagram kind of doing some stories about CASPA this week and I heard both ways.

So Caspa's official answer would be that for your GRE score to connect to your account, you have to actually have an account.

If you just send a GRE score to Caspa without having an account set up, it would get thrown out.

That's what CASPA is going to tell you.

And I've had people who said, yes, that happened to me and people who said, actually my scores did show up.

Those are things to keep in mind.

If you haven't taken the GRE yet and you're planning on it, I would recommend going ahead and studying over the next couple months and trying to take it by February or March, just in case you have to retake it.

That's something else you can start doing ahead of time.

Then we get to your personal statement, which that is part of your application that you can have ready to go by April.

And I would not recommend waiting until April to work on that because it tends to stress people out, it tends to take a while.

You want to edit it forever.

So go ahead and start that process.

And so with your personal statement, if you are a reapplicant, you don't necessarily have to rewrite your complete essay.

But if you applied and didn't get the results you wanted, but feel like you are a strong applicant when it comes to your hours and grades, you may want to rewrite it or really have a lot of people look at it.

So people you know, we do recommend the personal statement editing service MyPA resource, and you can use the code futurepa for a discount there just to have a PA who knows what they're looking for look at it and tell you if you're on the right track.

Which if I ever edit your essay, it's probably going to come back with a lot of read writing because I tend to add a lot of comments.

But with your personal statement, like I said, you don't necessarily have to rewrite it.

Your reason for wanting to become a PA will not have changed as a reapplicant, but you need to reevaluate.

So if it didn't work the first time, it may not work the second time and you may need to make some changes.

And if it's your first time writing a personal statement, you may feel like you don't really know where to start, you don't really know what to say and that's completely normal.

But what you can do is you can actually download the personal statement brainstorming worksheets from, from the PA platform and I'll try to link to all this if I can remember everything I mentioned.

But what those do is they help to kind of guide you by giving you some just kind of prompts of things that when I edit an essay and when I read an essay, what I'm looking for it to have.

And so that's something else.

You know, right now you can be doing your personal statement, getting all of your information together as far as healthcare experience.

Think about if you are going to take the gre, when you're going to take the gre, we can even throw the PA cat in there.

Be researching the schools that you want to apply to.

I hope you've already done that, but it should not be something that you do when you go to apply.

You should have your list ready to go of the schools that you have double, triple checked their requirements, made sure they haven't changed since the last time you looked to make sure you can check all those boxes.

I hate it when people just waste their time and money applying somewhere where they don't meet the requirements at all or they have one thing that just whether it's a prereq or a grade or a gpa, something that doesn't match what the school wants because those apps get thrown out.

I don't want that to happen to you.

If you can help it, just double triple check those things.

Schools change their requirements a lot.

That's why you, you know, we get questions, you know, why don't you have a list of every school that does or doesn't require the GRE or a list of school like or a database where, you know, I can plug everything in and see what schools I match.

The problem is these schools, they change things so much and sometimes it's very subtle and so it makes it very difficult.

And that's why my recommendation and what I did when I was going through it was I would checked programs, websites, obsessively, like I probably had them memorized.

So if there was a change, I knew it right away.

And so I don't think you need to be obsessive like I was.

But it is something, you know, just check in every couple months because like I said in the beginning, schools are always working on their application process and changing things.

And so that may be they used to require a certain class and now they don't, or they do, or they used to allow in progress classwork and now they don't.

And a lot of times if a school does make a change, they'll note it and they'll say, you know, in the next cycle this is changing because even as a re applicant things can change from cycle to cycle.

But that's not always the case.

And that's where the responsibility is on you to just make sure that you're kind of doing your due diligence to get everything as complete as possible.

And even just doing that gives you such a better shot because the people who don't do that get weeded out almost immediately by CASPA in most schools processes.

So I'm doing a little bit differently.

Alright, so let's recap again.

You can start working on your personal statement, gather all of your hours, you can plan the gre, look into schools, start your list, refine your list, double check your list and see if those schools coming up are going to require the PA cap.

Now we're in a little bit of a time crunch if you're applying in April.

But one thing that I also recommend doing is taking a very hard look at your application.

Be harsh on yourself for just a minute and I don't want you to do that all the time, but just a minute.

Look at your application and try to determine what is going to be your weakest link, what is the weakest part of your application that could potentially raise a red flag for a school?

And then ask yourself, is this something I can work on and fix or is it not?

Is this something that I just have to prove myself in other areas or, or can I do more?

So let's say that your weakest area is grades.

If you know that you have some weaker grades or a lower gpa, you should be continually taking classes to show that you recognize that and it's something you're working on.

If the lowest part of your application is no volunteer hours, that's something else you can work on.

So you get out there.

It doesn't have to be healthcare related.

Great if it is, great if it isn't.

It should actually just be something you enjoy.

But get out there and try to find some Volunteer hours, you can do that before April.

Yes, it'll be a shorter period of time, but that's okay.

And if you can find something you can do weekly or monthly that still gives you an opportunity to put that on your application and to talk about it, to show your commitment to the underserved and to your community.

So you just.

Especially as I'm going to talk to the RE applicants for a minute, you know, if you're a RE applicant, one other thing that you can do right now is reach out to programs that you applied to.

Whether you got a rejection, a wait list, never heard anything, Go ahead and reach out.

You may not get very far.

They may not be willing to share information or that type of personalized feedback.

But ask them if there's anything you could do better, if there's anything that they saw on your application that they feel like you could improve on to make them make you a better candidate for their program.

And this is such valuable information.

Like, even if you get a little bit of feedback, take it and run with it and just know that if they tell you something, they expect you to do it before you reapply.

But don't, don't just accept a rejection as that's what it is.

You know, because while you may not get information, I have had people who have had schools tell them, you know, we really wanted to see a higher GRE score or we wanted to see more volunteer hours.

If you remember my.

One of my best friends, Taylor, who used to work with me as my ma she is in PA school now.

She actually just finished her first semester recorder.

And when she went to her interview, they told her, we would like to see a 300 on the GRE, which was interesting because that wasn't a set requirement for them.

So if you looked at the website, it didn't say that, but that's actually what they were looking for.

And so she retook the GRE, got something like a 310, sent in her score and got an acceptance.

So if a school, because she was on a waitlist, she wasn't a reapplicant.

So if a school asks you to do something, they mean it.

That means they want you.

There's just something that is a little bit off that's holding them back from being able to accept you.

So that is kind of for RE applicants, I mean, something you can also be doing right now.

And just looking at.

And we have, like I said, the application timeline, which probably has this in a much more succinct way on the website But I just wanted to give you a little short and sweet episode to help you kind of navigate the path, hopefully of what you need to be doing before CASPA opens in April.

I don't think we have a set date yet, but here's what I know.

I have some things that I can't necessarily, necessarily talk about yet, but what I can't tell you is I am going to AAPA in May and I think there will be some big like social media events again and hopefully some other fun stuff.

So that is in Nashville.

And so if that's something you're interested in, put it on your calendar and I'll be sharing more about that coming up in the next few few weeks.

In January we have a webinar with aapa.

So if you are a pre PA member or thinking about joining, make sure you do that.

We are doing a webinar on January 26th.

That is a Sunday night at 8pm and we'll be talking about personal statements.

Myself and Brian Palm from MYPA Resource, we are just going to deep dive into every part of the personal statement.

If you've listened to my episode with him, you, you'll know that we can talk about personal statements for a very long time, but we'll keep it to about an hour and have a lot of Q and A with that as well.

So once I have a link for that, I will post it here, but also we'll send it out to the newsletter mailing list.

So if you're not on that, go to the PA platform.com newsletter just so you don't miss out on any of kind of the upcoming things.

The most recent information and what we hope are going to be some exclusive events this year that we're working on.

So I would love to see you at the webinar in January and if you have any questions about that, feel free to email me or can't figure out how to sign up.

I'll be posting the link probably everywhere.

But that's gonna be great.

And then we're already planning out some webinars for the rest of the year just to talk about different topics and give you guys kind of some, some insights.

So that's kind of where we're at with that and you know, the PA platform.

We have a few new coaches.

We have Julia who interviewed at eight programs.

She went to so many interviews and she reached out wanting to help others.

So she is now doing mock interviews and she's awesome.

And then Brittany is an emergency medicine PA in Florida and she is friends with one of our other coaches, Erin, and just watched Erin do an interview and loved it and wanted to help as well.

So they both are coaching now and we just have such a great team.

It's really awesome.

So if you need help with anything, we are there to help.

But yeah, so we are, I guess, growing our little PA platform family and just here to help you guys.

So we're going to keep putting out podcast episodes.

We're going to keep doing blog posts.

I thought about for a little bit stopping the accepted blog post, but I think it's really cool to see you guys get accepted and to hear your story.

So I think we're going to keep doing those.

If you have a strong opinion about that, please let me know because I'd love to know either way whether that's something that you want to keep seeing or not.

We're just going to keep answering questions, whether that is sending an email or letting us know if there's a certain blog or interview you'd like to hear.

We would love to hear that.

And then also just if there's a way that we could be helping you out throughout this process, please, please let us know.

Instagram, email, whatever.

We're really trying to just be there for you guys in any way possible.

So I think that's all I have for today.

Everyone have a great, great and safe New Year.

I am the most boring New Year's person ever.

Now having a one year old and I guess a working husband.

I think he's working.

Then I will be probably staying at home and going to bed at 9 o'.

Clock.

That is crazy.

All right, guys, till next time, bye.