Four thousand applications. Forty-five seats.

Jed Grant is the Admissions Director at the University of the Pacific in Sacramento, and those are his real numbers. He came on to explain how a committee gets from 4,000 down to 45, and what actually moves the needle.

His biggest point about personal statements: be sincere. Committees read thousands of these, and they can tell immediately when you're writing what you think they want to hear instead of what's true. He also wants to see both sides covered, meaning real healthcare experience and evidence you can handle the academics.

Interviews are about fit in a very literal sense. They're picking future colleagues, so the rapport you build in the room counts. We also talked about how the pandemic was reshaping applications and interviews for that cycle.

What we cover:

• How a program handles 4,000 applications for 45 seats
• What sincerity in a personal statement actually looks like
• Balancing healthcare experience with academic readiness
• Building rapport in an interview and why fit matters
• What admissions is really screening for
• How the pandemic changed the application and interview process

Resources:

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

PA School Interview Guide: https://www.thepaplatform.com/physician-assistant-school-interview-guide

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:

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We're getting down to the nitty gritty today of what is important for PA school admissions, and I am speaking with Jed Grant, who is the admissions director at University of the Pacific in Sacramento.

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.

Hey, guys, thanks for tuning in.

I know you probably get so sick of me saying this, but I am so excited about today's episode.

When I connected with University of the Pacific on Instagram, I had no idea that this would be probably.

I mean, I'm gonna go ahead and say, like, top 10 most helpful episodes we've ever done, because Mr. Jed Grant is amazing and awesome, and it made me want to go there.

Um, this is in no way sponsored by them.

We just.

They were willing to come on the podcast, and so we will get to that in just a minute.

And there are so many great tips, like you need paper and pen or something to take notes, because if you are a Pre PA student right now, this is an inside look at admissions.

Like, this is such a big deal.

I know right now, with all of the COVID 19 coronavirus stuff happening, things are a little bit up in the air.

Just.

I mean, we're talking about a lot in the Pre PA Club, on Facebook, on social media, and I'm sure the programs are kind of trying to figure that out right now.

So we'll hop in in just a second.

I'm Savannah, by the way.

I am a dermatology PA who is not working for the next few weeks because our office shut down trying to be as socially responsible as we can and stop this thing.

And I run the PA platform, which is a blog about pre PA stuff.

And this episode will also be on our YouTube channel.

But we'll get into our interview.

I do want to thank our sponsors, mypa Resource and PA School Prep.

You can use the code Future PA for a discount on either of those websites, as well as on the PA platform.

MyPA resource is an option for personal statement editing specific to PA school.

And we only use PAs for editors.

I am one of the editors, but if you need help with kind of getting that polished off, that's a great thing to be working on right now.

And then PA School Prep is an option to Help get you ready for those first couple semesters of PA school, which are kind of tough and a lot of stuff going on.

A lot of materials are trying to help you feel confident with the anatomy, physiology and med term portion.

All right, we'll get into our interview now and if you have any questions, comments, concerns, as always, you can feel free to reach out to me on Instagram or email.

I'm around trying to figure out exactly what's going to be helpful right now for you guys.

I think we're going to try to put together kind of a Pre PA club curriculum, so something that you can do weekly that we can all kind of talk about.

Since the Pre PA clubs aren't able to meet right now, I had a few meetings coming up and they have been canceled because no one's on campus.

All right, let's get into hearing from Jed Grant, the admissions director at University of the Pacific.

Okay, so my name is Jed Grant.

I'm a PA. Been a PA for 20 years.

Originally didn't know what I wanted to do.

I liked medicine.

I think a lot of us get into medicine that way.

I liked the science of it and that kind of stuff and didn't have money to go to school or pay for school.

So joined the army as a medic to sort of see if I liked medicine and get some exposure to treating patients.

And then was getting out of the army and had worked with some PAs in the army and they said, hey, you should go to PA school.

And I said, well, I don't have any money.

You know, I got this whole GI bill.

They said, well, military has a PA program where they'll pay you to go to PA school.

I thought, well, that sounds like awesome.

So applied and, you know, everybody said, you're never going to get in.

It's so hard.

Which is probably a common thing that PA applicants hear today.

But I didn't care.

All you do is tell me no.

And I got in.

Did one year of primary care out of PA school with a few shifts in the ER and then been full time in the ER for most of my career.

I got into education about four years after I graduated.

I started taking PA students with me in the ER and was given occasional lectures.

And then they asked me to come more and more until I was kind of part time in the er.

I mean, Part time teaching.

And then eventually after probably 10 years, 10 years ago, 11 years ago, I flipped to be full time in education and working a few days a week in the emergency department.

So been in PA education for 12 years, 13 years, and had done every job full time, at least in PA education that you can do, including program director.

And now currently I'm the admissions director at the University of the Pacific PA program, which is in Sacramento.

Been here about five years doing that.

Was a program director before coming here.

And I teach some skills courses and different.

I help in all kinds of other courses as well.

So I just kind of everything else but the admissions director job is kind of the fun part.

I like teaching too, but, you know, it's exciting to work with applicants and people that are getting ready to go to PA school.

It kind of reminds you why you do this job and why it's kind of fun, exciting.

I've been able to have a lot of people who are my scribe in the emergency department come to our program or go to other programs and kind of full circle things.

So I had a PA student a couple of them from years ago who now are my faculty colleagues.

And one of my PA students is a primary care provider for my mom and my brother.

So really the whole circle, and picked up some urgent care work here maybe six months ago.

And one of my former students was on the hiring panel.

So.

It's a small world as a PA, you know, you think it's.

There's 130,000 of us and you think that's a lot, but really it's not.

It's a pretty small world.

I always say that it's like a small community.

And I think about it because our admissions director would always say, I'm looking for people who are gonna be great classmates and great colleagues.

Because she said, in two years, you're who I'm gonna refer patients to.

And that was kind of cool.

When I first got my referrals from my people who had been teachers, like, it felt very weird and they.

But it was good.

It was like a good weird.

Especially in the specialty, right.

You look at their referral and you're like, I don't think so.

Yeah.

I'm like, oh, they must really trust me.

That's good.

But I did appreciate it.

Yeah.

We tell our applicants that on our interview day that, like, you know, the purpose is really to find people who we're going to trust with the care of our families or ourselves when they become our colleagues.

And that's in my case, it's literal.

I mean, that's absolutely what we do.

So you've seen that too?

Yes, definitely.

So can you tell us a little bit about the University of the Pacific's program?

Of course.

So we're a fairly new program.

We're just finishing up provisional accreditation.

We have our final site visit.

So your listeners probably know that all new PA programs in the first five years of their operation have provisional accreditation.

They should not confuse that with probationary accreditation, which is different.

So provisional accreditation means that the accrediting body, the arcpa, is going to come visit the program.

They come once before the first class starts, once when the first class is about halfway done, and then once after the first class graduates.

And then after those three site visits, the program is given continued accreditation.

So we're right at the end of that.

Our first class graduated about a year ago and they all have jobs, are doing well.

We're just going to start admissions here in a month or so.

A little over a month, six weeks for our fifth cohort we'll be starting.

So we are a 27 month master's degree program.

Wow.

Yeah.

Two years younger than the state of California.

So the main campus is in Stockton, which is about an hour south of Sacramento.

But the Sacramento campus is kind of a graduate campus.

There's a law school here and several health programs here on this campus in the Oak park neighborhood of Sacramento.

How big is the class?

I may have missed that class is 45 students.

So we're kind of contained all in one building.

We basically five years ago when the program started, the program director, I was a program director at the time, he was sort of spinning this up and my program was closing.

He said, hey, you want to come work with me and build a program?

And so almost all of the faculty came from other programs and had a lot of experience.

So it's kind of cool, you know, we can build whatever we want.

And the same thing happened with our facilities, our building, we said, you know, hey, we'd really like it to look this way.

So we had a lot of input on our facilities.

And so it's really was kind of a dream come true to if you could build a PA program, how would you make it?

And so we, we have the same faculty that we started with five years ago.

We haven't had any faculty changes except for one part time person.

But all the full time faculty are still here and very committed.

Our offices are right next to their facilities.

We have a virtual tour online if you want to see them, but that's a little bit about the program.

So class of 45, we start in January every year, which is a little bit different.

So our folks graduate in April, which kind of nice when you're trying to get a job.

Most people graduate in June, so a little bit helpful for that.

We have the first 13 months is didactic and then the rest of the time for the 27 month program is clinical.

So that 13th month of didactic is really a prep for clinical practice where we do a lot of testing and training to make sure that they're ready to go be trusted with patients.

And then the same thing at the end of the 27 months.

We have a month where we get them ready for boards and do a lot of summative testing with them to make sure that they're ready to be turned loose on the public.

Semi supervised sounds like a good idea.

Is there anything in particular that you feel like students just really love about the program?

Like anything they tend to comment on or kind of seem to really, really enjoy?

Yeah, we get a lot of feedback from them on a lot of the procedures that we teach.

So I'm the rpa.

It's a procedure heavy specialty.

We have a surgical PA that comes and helps teach.

So we fully integrated point of care ultrasound into our curriculum.

So in the second week the students start using ultrasound.

By the time they graduate, they're proficient at point of care ultrasound in multiple systems.

We have a ton of trainers.

The university was pretty generous at the setup.

It said, build me a list of trainers you want to basically buy.

And so I made a dream list and bought all that stuff.

So we have arthrocentesis, pretty good suturing trainers.

We have LP trainers, we have central line trainers, we have a couple of high fidelity mannequins that we use much mostly at the end of the program for sort of pulling it all together.

A lot of really good procedurally oriented stuff.

The feedback from the students has been when they go to clinical rotations, they're able to jump right into the OR because they've already been basically in an OR and you know, work with some of the equipment there.

Or when a procedure comes, they're already pretty familiar with the procedure because they've done it on a trainer.

So a watch one do one thing is a little more likely to happen because they're much more familiar with the procedure.

So we're pretty proud of the clinical skills that the students develop in the program.

We're proud of the curriculum.

The feedback from our Preceptors has been that they're very well prepared.

It's common to hear things like, can't believe this is their first rotation, things like that.

So we're proud of that.

And, you know, the students should be proud of that too.

They work really hard to get there.

No, that's awesome.

I've actually interacted with a few students from there and they all say good things, so that's always a good sign.

So your thing is admissions, and that is.

This is a lot of pre PA audience and they will probably send you a lot of questions afterwards.

But what, as far as Yalls admissions process, can you break down a little bit about kind of what that looks like for you, especially being a January program?

Because I get a lot of questions, questions about the timing and what that looks like for a program that starts in January.

Sure.

So we open as soon as the CASPA cycle opens in April.

We open and then we do our screening of one staff member that works with me, but it's her and I that screen all the applications.

So for 45 seats, we usually get around 4,000 applicants.

So it's a lot of.

A lot of application screening through caspa.

And then we have some internal measures that we use to sort of figure out who the most competitive applicants are.

And we try to every day during the admission season, I'm screening applications and she is screening applications.

We try to get back to people right away.

We send an email when we get the application, we send an email after we do the initial screening, and if they do good on the initial screening, we send an email that says that.

And then we invite people for interviews and we start interviewing a couple of weeks, maybe, maybe three weeks after the cycle opens in caspa and we do an interview a week.

So we interview about 200 people for our 45 seats, and we let people know right away for that.

We do not have a rolling admissions process, so we don't make any admission decisions until I should clarify.

So we make initial admissions decisions.

After the interview, whether the interview went well, we sort of hold them.

If it didn't go well, we let people know right away, like, hey, probably isn't going to work out.

And then at the very end, which for us is end of August, early September, we've interviewed everybody that we're going to interview.

We sort of go over everything again.

And then the admissions committee gets together, which is basically all of the faculty and staff to big committee, and we vote.

And most of the time it's unanimous.

It's unusual for Us not to have a unanimous vote on who are selecting.

And then we have a number of alternates that we select as well.

We let everybody know for that.

So that happens in September.

And then there's a couple of events before the class starts in January.

We have basically an alumni event where all the alumni come together and the current students, it's called Admitted Students Day.

And they spend three quarters of a day together kind of hanging out like, how did this go for you?

And get advice from people who just graduated and things like that, and current students in terms of what's working and what isn't.

And then we start January, like third or fourth something.

So it changes a little bit every year, but that way it gives the students some time to sort of get settled so you know what they're getting into.

They're four months out from the start when they get selected.

Inevitably we have last minute drops.

So people that you know, have very competitive applicants.

And we've seen this more and more as our applicants have been more and more competitive.

They've got, you know, 10 interviews and three offers.

And so, you know, it's a little bit frustrating for us when they don't make a decision early.

They'll wait until we're about to start and then we have to call an alternate.

Four days before, in the last, this current class, it wasn't quite that bad, but in the prior class we called someone on our alternate list a week before we started who lived in Florida because we had a last minute drop like that and she dropped everything.

She was here, she started on time and she is a superstar.

Right.

So very committed.

She wasn't.

The alternate scene definitely will be there if you, if you call me.

And she, she was.

So anyway, that's one thing I might give some advice I might give to very competitive applicants is be mindful that when you have all of these offers of admission, somebody else is waiting for whatever seat you're not taking.

So the sooner you make that decision, the better.

Not only for the program that you're going to be attending and for the programs that you're not going to be attending, but especially for others who are applicants who are waiting on your decision so that they can get in.

No, that's great advice.

So I hope that answered your question.

I feel like that I'm probably going to ask you more questions.

Okay, so that is very helpful.

And so I'm assuming the people who apply to your program, since there's such a quick turnaround, they have a very complete application.

You're Looking for someone who has everything completed, nothing in progress, really.

They're kind of good to go.

Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up.

So that's a question we get a lot is, oh, you know, I graduated in June.

I'm almost done.

Can I apply now?

The answer is no, please don't.

So we did try one year.

We took in progress work, and, like, this gray hair wasn't there before that.

It almost killed me.

It was very difficult.

So we changed our sort of process.

So the questions that came up about that were, you know, people graduate in June, and maybe they're working in school, and so they've got just their number of hours and they're worried about having a gap year.

But I will tell you, like, the gap year makes for such a stronger applicant.

It really is not something to be afraid of.

Most of the people we accept tend to have a gap year.

Not always, but we just find that it makes them so much stronger as an applicant, having spent that year just working, kind of getting it together.

But, you know, some people are very prepared right out of undergrad.

They graduate in June.

We just ask that our cycle actually closes in Caspa on August 1st.

So that's the last day.

So all we're looking for for people, they need to have all of their prerequisite coursework, all of their coursework done, and their degree showing on a transcript when they apply, which we found can be a little bit challenging trying to get by July, but most people can get that done in August.

Just have to work with the registrar's office and say, I need this right away so they can get their application in.

If they've been working throughout undergrad, they've already accrued.

If they've accrued that while they were in undergrad, then they can graduate in June or, you know, May or June and apply by August to our program and start in January.

So it felt like it was kind of a good time frame.

If you're.

If you've been planning ahead, you can, you know, get into PA school right away, or you can wait for a year and apply and get, you know, that whole year of experience under your belt.

Okay, so that, I mean, sounds reasonable to me.

Do y' all require any standardized testing?

We don't.

I'm glad you asked about that.

It's really kind of interesting with the PA of CAT coming around and people starting to use that and stuff.

When you look at medical school, they're kind of going the opposite direction now, right A lot of medical schools are getting away from the mcat.

So what we found is, in looking at the usefulness of some of those tests, whether it's the PA Cat or the green, is that they do predict the ability to take a standardized test pretty well.

Which, you know, as a PA student, you have to be pretty good at taking standardized tests, but they don't tell the whole picture.

And some people just don't do very well in high pressure testing situations.

And so we have a holistic admissions process where we're looking not just at the gpa, but we look to see, you know, have you done volunteer work, were you working in school, you know, what kind of life experiences have you had, challenges have you had to overcome?

And so when looking at all of those pieces together, we felt like the standardized testing might give us a different picture than we're trying to get.

Not quite as a holistic a picture.

And there's so many hoops to jump to already as a PA applicant.

We just felt like we don't want to give them a test they have to take.

We don't want to give them a supplemental application.

Just take your time, get your CASPA done right, and we're just going to use that.

We do re evaluate our admissions policies every year, depending on sort of how the cycle goes.

But right now we currently do not require the GRE or the PA cat, and I'm hopeful that we'll keep it that way.

We are doing an experimental thing this year where we're using Casper.

So everybody who we invite to interview, we're going to ask them to get onto Casper and fill that out.

And what we're doing is comparing Casper to the part of our interview process that looks at the same things as Casper to see if we get the same results.

And if we do, what that means is we'll use Casper instead of that second part of our interview process, which will mean we can interview a few more people per day.

Nice.

Our interview day is we get a lot of positive feedback from applicants on our interview day because we have a holistic process.

We spend basically all day.

We don't use an MMI or anything else.

There's a panel interview, which is kind of the standard.

You sit around with the faculty and they ask you questions.

And there's also a group interview, which is also kind of standard.

There's some frustration inducing activities and then some group work together to see how people work in groups.

And we eat breakfast and lunch with the applicants.

And that is unstructured.

We, we just Kind of hang out for an hour and eat and get to know people.

And the feedback that we've gotten from applicants is that they felt like, you know, I spent enough time there and talked to the faculty enough that I felt like I got to know them pretty well.

And that really is our goal in admissions because the outcome is that we want people that we know are going to be good providers that have good clinical skills with patients who might, you know, be our family members and that are going to be good classmates and they're going to be good colleagues when they graduate.

And someday they might have great scores and a great GRE score and stuff, but we feel like it's hard to get a feel for what kind of person they are without just spending some time.

So it is a faculty intensive day.

It takes all day, wipes out a whole day for the faculty.

And so, you know, it represents a large sort of cost to the program.

It's not an actual cost, but it's a time cost and things that faculty are doing.

But we feel like it's an investment that's really paid off.

We're really happy with the folks that we've chosen.

And really, you know, when you think about interview, it's about fit.

Right?

You're getting ready to spend a lot of money on education and you want to know that the program you're going to you are well aligned with them.

Right.

And they are well aligned with you.

So it's a good fit on both ends of that.

And so I think important advice to give to applicants is to make sure they know the program mission and they feel like it's a good bi directional fit.

You don't want it to fit one way and not the other.

I completely agree.

And we'll come back to interviews more in a second.

I mean, how many applications are you actually that are competitive?

Yeah, yeah, that's a good way to put it.

Yeah.

Probably a third don't even meet our basic requirements.

So the initial screening is, do you have a baccalaureate degree?

We don't care if it's a science background or an arts background.

Any baccalaureate degree is fine as long as it's from an accredited institution.

Is your GPA above 3 for science and overall, and do you have the prerequisite courses?

So we look at Those things first off, and we eliminate about a third just on those.

Okay, that takes it out a little bit.

Not that much.

Okay.

So you have seen a lot of applications.

You've read probably a lot of personal statements.

What stands out to you?

What?

Because, I mean, I've seen a lot of applications, too, and after a while, they kind of look very similar.

So what makes you kind of stop and go, oh, okay, this person.

I want to meet them.

Yeah.

In terms of personal statement, I think what shines through really is sincerity.

Right.

So if someone is just really sincere, and I really feel like I'm getting a good feel for who they are as a person and their motivation for wanting to go to PA School, that shines through.

We get a lot of creative writing essays.

Right.

So that's like, it was a stormy Tuesday night.

You know, the ambulance was squealing around the corner, my heart rate was beating, and I'm like, okay, that's entertaining, but that's not very sincere.

Right.

Like, I want you to tell me, like, from your heart why you want to do this or how you came to this decision, or if you don't have some crazy experience about that, that's totally fine.

But you had to come to the decision a certain way, and there has to be something about the profession that speaks to you, because most competitive applicants would be a competitive med school applicant.

They'd be a competitive nursing school applicant.

Lots of different reason, you know, ways that they could go, what's the reason you want to be a pa and if you're very sincere about that and you share that thought process and why you want to do that, I think that shines through.

The ones that are problematic are the ones that really don't answer the question about why you want to be a pain or that are insincere, maybe, that are like a sales pitch.

That usually kind of bothers me.

It doesn't.

It's not enough to disqualify your application, but the sales pitch, like, I can read your whole application.

I don't need you to sell me on it.

I really want to know just why you want to do this.

And then, of course, don't submit a personal statement that's full of grammatical errors.

And the apostrophe, I don't know if you've heard about that.

The apostrophe is kind of a no, no.

Right.

You want to be careful with that.

So those are some suggestions.

And take some time.

Like, that personal statement is so important.

That's what we're judging you by.

So you want that to represent you as honestly and sincerely as possible.

Great advice.

I completely agree with you.

Okay, so then moving on to interviews.

And I would imagine the same kind of things make someone stand out, someone who's very passionate and sincere.

If there's anything else that makes someone stand out, that would be helpful.

But also, what about red flags?

Like something you may see at an interview or even on an application that just kind of shuts you off completely and puts that person on the back burner?

Yeah, I think lying.

So any kind of lying, dishonesty is pretty much not good insincerity.

So sort of being fake.

That's one of the reasons we do a whole day interview.

Because you can fake it for an hour, it's really hard to fake it for a whole day.

Right.

And you know, we involve our whole staff and everything, so we want to see how you interact with the faculty, but also the staff and other volunteers that are here with the alumni.

Like, how are you in any kind of given setting?

So if you're not being yourself, it shows at the interview.

So trying to be someone you're not, I think is a big mistake that we see people make occasionally.

Certainly being rude to anybody is a bad thing.

So.

And that includes other applicants.

I mean, these, you're competing with people for a seat, but these are people who are going to be your colleagues.

So we have lots of people who met on their interview day here.

Now they're classmates and they're really glad they were nice to each other.

And generally that, you know, we're looking, you know, our philosophy is to have a student centered, compassionate healthcare provider, that kind of stuff.

And so we're looking for people that kind of are that way.

And so if you're not demonstrating those qualities in the interview for us, that's bad.

And then on the application as well, if there's things that just don't add up, like how do you have 25,000 hours of healthcare experience and you're 21 years old and you just got out of undergrad?

Like, come on.

You know, or double counting things.

Like, you know, I, I was an ma so I counted all of my hours as an MA in healthcare experience and in.

Well, I didn't get paid for as much as I worked, so I count the whole thing in volunteer work too.

And that pretty much is like, you know, not gonna work well for us here.

Okay, Those are all such great tips.

Any last imparting words of wisdom?

Oh, one last question that I almost forgot because I didn't Write down.

But coronavirus, it's a hot topic.

It's on everyone's minds.

It has people kind of worried about their PA school applications.

With all these undergrad programs going to online, having their support semester shut down.

Do you see that affecting this upcoming PA school application cycle at all or may?

We don't know.

I mean, what are your thoughts on that so far?

Well, I think if you look at the kind of velocity of the illness and what's happened in Italy, we're about two weeks behind them.

Right.

So if you look at where Italy was two weeks ago, that's kind of us today and where they've gone.

So I think that we are likely to see more impact from coronavirus and COVID 19 in the next two to three weeks.

We just closed our campus today, just before we got on here and transitioned everything to online.

We are working with our clinical sites, but likely there's going to be some impact there as well.

So I think the cycle starts the 29th of April.

So for schools that are later in the CASPA cycle, maybe they start looking at applications and interviewing in the fall.

Probably not going to impact them at all.

For schools like us that we start right away as soon as the cycle opens, I'm hopeful that it doesn't impact anything.

But if it does, I think a lot of the work we'll be doing from home and CASPA screening, we do that at home, unfortunately during the application cycle all the time, always doing those screens at home.

But I think with our interview days we would just rework our schedule to move them back to whenever the campus is open and then have more interview days.

So I don't think from the end of the cycle perspective like when we select the class and notify folks, there will be a change.

Although there might on our end be some change in scheduling for how we get those interviews done.

I anticipate that the dates will not change for us.

Everything will sort of stay the same.

And from the applicant perspective, there probably won't be a difference at our program.

But I think other programs, it may impact them especially if they interview very early in the CASPA cycle.

Yeah, well, kind of wait and see.

But yeah, thank you so much for taking the time to do this and you have a tough job, so just thank you for doing that.

That's what I always remember like when I was in PA school and we actually got to help with interviews a lot.

But I think people don't realize that admissions is a pretty much a full time thing because it happens so quickly.

You're constantly.

I mean, as soon as you get done, another cycle opens.

So there's a lot that goes into it, I think people don't see until you're in PA school, maybe, and get to kind of be a part of.

That, get to help visit with applicants and that kind of thing.

Yeah, I think that's true.

It is fun, though.

I really enjoy it.

And what I think one thing I really like about my job is that we have a policy where we answer every email, we answer every phone call.

You know, when I applied through the military, I sent my stuff off.

There was nobody to ask.

It was like, well, you send it off to this black hole and maybe you get something back, you know?

But for us, we try to have lots of feedback with applicants and make sure that they figure things out.

One other red flag is when people ask a lot of questions that are on the website, we always answer them.

But you do kind of think in the back of your mind, like, how to use the web, right?

Google.

So, yeah, check the website.

Can't figure it out.

Then call or email.

Okay, so calling or emailing is the best way to get in touch with y'?

All?

Probably.

Email is the best.

But if the email doesn't work, then, yeah, call.

We return every phone call and every email.

Of course, phone calls for the next month for us are going to be difficult.

Our campus just closed until April 17, so email is probably to be the only way to go until then.

Although we will be checking our voicemail every few days.

There's a way for us to log on the Internet and get our voicemail, but we do answer every email and every phone call.

Awesome.

Well, I will link to all of that in the description of this and we'll share on social media and all that.

But thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you for having me.

It.