CASPA is open. Let's walk through it together.

This is the audio from my CASPA walkthrough webinar, where I go section by section - personal information, academic history, experiences, supporting documents - and point out where people get stuck.

A few things I hammer on. Keep your contact info current, because programs will email you and you will miss it. Request every transcript from every school you ever attended, including that one summer class you forgot about, because a missing transcript stalls your entire application. And expect CASPA to crash near deadlines. Build in buffer.

I also cover the COVID essay and how to answer it without writing a novel. Short, honest, specific. Move on.

The biggest mistake I see isn't a bad answer. It's an incomplete application sitting in verification while rolling admissions fills seats.

What I cover:

• A section-by-section pass through CASPA
• Transcripts, verification, and how long it really takes
• Logging experiences and hours correctly
• The COVID essay and how much to say
• Planning around CASPA slowdowns and crashes
• Why submitting early beats submitting perfect

Resources:

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

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

Supplemental Application Library: https://www.thepaplatform.com/supplemental-library

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

Mentioned in this episode:

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The podcast is back and it is CASPA season.

We have a lot to talk about today.

We'll be recapping from a CASPA webinar we did recently and I'll be filling you in on all the new stuff at the PA Platform.

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.

Well, hello again and welcome to the Prepa Club Podcast.

We have been on hiatus since about October and I'm excited to jump back in.

So to be honest, I had gotten a little burnt out on the podcast.

It was just I was.

If you've been following on social media, you would know that I'm very pregnant right now and I was kind of newly pregnant, not really feeling great, going to bed at 7 o' clock and trying to just survive with working and having a four year old.

So took a little break and now we are coming back.

I've had a lot of you guys message me saying that you missed the podcast and you missed listening to it on your way to work and in the car and as part of your routine.

So we just had to bring it back.

And so yeah, we're here.

And you know, the podcast, it's going to be very similar to what it has been.

We'll have a mix of just a lot of talks on different subjects and then also interviews.

CASPA opened this week, so we are just in time for the cycle opening and so we're kicking it off with a recap of a CASPA webinar that we did recently.

The one difference is all of these interviews and videos will be on YouTube.

So if you don't follow us on YouTube, make sure you do.

Or if you're more of like a video person, everything will be there as well.

Just to have that in case you want to follow along or you like, you know, the visual side of things a little bit.

But let me update you on some of the stuff going on at the PA platform and then we'll get into this episode.

So we have tons of new stuff on YouTube and we just came out this week with our Pre Pa Workbook, which is a 300 page guide.

It's your step by step guide to applying to PA school.

It breaks down every part of the application, every requirement from deciding you want to be a pa, learning about the profession, all the way through interviews and figuring out how you're going to pay for PA school.

It's just got a lot in there.

So that's on Amazon and we're doing a promotion through May 7 to help launch that, that if you purchase it, just send us a copy of your receipt from Amazon and we will send you access to the PA school interview course for free, which never expires, never goes away and would love your feedback on that.

So that's very exciting.

Alright, so let's get into this episode which is, like I said, a CASPA overview.

I would recommend checking this out on YouTube as well.

If you'd like to see some examples of what CASPA looks like and follow along.

We're so happy you're here and we're happy to be back.

So if there's any episodes or topics you want covered, please let me know.

Okay, so caspa, here it is.

So we're gonna first go through the application software what Casper looks like, and then we'll go through what a finalized finished application looks like.

Okay.

So you'll, you'll see both sides of it.

You will not see that finalized application until you submit through CASPA and then you get verified.

Okay, here we go.

So this is what Casper looks like.

Once you sign in.

If you go to Casper right now and try to sign in, it will.

There's not really much there.

If you don't have an account, it's not going to make let you make a new account.

So that's what Julianne just asked.

Casper is technically closed, so they are not letting you do much of anything.

If you send documents to Casper right now, they are not going to get them until they reopen on the 27th.

Is there a chance, if you've sent documents between April 7th and April 27th that they end up on your account?

There's a chance, but there's just as high of a chance that you're going to end up having to resubmit those documents.

And that is transcripts, that's test scores.

It if you had any letters of recommendation in there, they do not roll over.

So you will have to resubmit those.

So yeah, you can't make a new account right now.

Don't worry about it.

You'll have plenty of time to work on it and add everything in.

Also some disclaimers.

CASPA often crashes the first day, so don't be surprised if you're trying to set sign in on Thursday or Friday and it's just not working and it's crashing.

That happens almost every year.

Also, if you have made an application in the past, you will have the option to pull that application Forward and CASPA will call you a re applicant.

You are only viewed as a re applicant by a program if you have previously submitted an application there.

If you have not ever applied there before, even though CASPA is calling you a reapplicant, the program sees you as a first time applicant.

So don't worry about that terminology.

Just remember that CASPA is a universal application.

They have to put certain labels on things just to make it work for all these 300 different programs.

So don't worry about that.

If you do choose to pull your application forward, that can take 24 to 48 hours for you to even be able to work on it.

So it may be that you have this big plan to work on your application Thursday and Friday and you go to pull things forward and you really can't work on it yet.

So don't fret.

Again, things just to be prepared for and note they are normal and happen every single year.

So, okay, so once you get into caspa, you'll see these four sections here.

And your personal information is just the basics, your biographic information, you know, this stuff's pretty straightforward.

Academic history, this is your coursework, where you went to high school, where you went to college, transcripts, all that stuff, supporting information, this is where a lot of the kind of meat of your application will be with experiences, letters, that kind of thing.

And then program materials is going to be stuff that is specific to where you are applying.

All right, so let's keep moving.

This is weird.

Okay?

It's looking kind of funky, but we'll go with it.

Okay, so personal information, this has listed out kind of what you have in here and what you have to do.

The release statement.

I would actually read through this just to make sure you understand the kind of rules that CASPA is governed by.

CASPA is owned by paea, which is the, the PA Education association, who is over all of education.

And so they put in this release kind of their code of ethics, what their expectations are of you.

One thing I've had to pull from this release a couple times this year has to do with program timing where I've seen some people who, or I've had them reach out to me where they were accepted and started at a program in January, but they were still being considered by other programs that didn't start until the spring or fall.

As they're in PA school, they're literally a PA student and then they get an interview, invite to a program that they would prefer and then come and ask me what, what to do.

And if they should go to that interview and what that means and all this stuff.

Well, if you read this release, technically after you enroll in a PA program, you are supposed to withdraw all open applications within five days of starting out a PA program.

So that brings up some kind of questionable, like ethical stuff that then you would have to deal with.

The program that you're in, the program you're thinking about interviewing at.

There's.

It's very complicated.

So if you are applying to schools with different cycles and different start dates, that's just something to keep in mind that could come up.

So biographic information, again, just stuff about you, where you live, contact information is extremely important.

You want to make sure this is up to date at all times, that it is your up to date address, phone number, email where they can reach you.

I do recommend having a separate email for PA school application purposes.

Specifically, if you can have a Gmail and use the Gmail app, that is a great way to get notifications.

You'll get a bunch that will get you excited and then aren't actually anything you need to know.

They'll be like, we got your application or thanks for your interest in our program.

But once interview invites start coming in, there will be times where those are time sensitive and they may give you a choice of dates or require a response by a certain amount of time.

So you want to make sure that you are getting those notifications.

We used that when my husband was applying to residency because things were very time sensitive.

So we set up a Gmail account and had the Gmail app to send us actual notifications whenever he got emails.

And I would actually get them too, so I could help him get registered for interviews.

That's like an extremely weird competitive situation, but same thing for, for interviews for PA school.

Like if you do have certain dates or something works better for you and you are given an option which doesn't always happen.

That may be something you want to consider.

Let me see.

Okay, so then we have citizenship information, race and ethnicity.

Again, these are very straightforward family information, environmental factors and other information.

There are some funny questions in here and I'll show y' all on the final application.

As far as describing your childhood residency, what your parents, jobs were, that kind of stuff.

And you don't necessarily have to answer.

But these aren't going to be make it or break it topics that would get you into or rejected from PA school.

So these are going to be things that schools are using more for demographics, trying to, you know, see where students are coming from that are interested in the PA profession and use for their outreach.

Okay, I see some of Yalls questions in the chat, and a lot of these we're going to get to.

So don't, don't worry.

We're going to get to a lot of these as we keep going.

All right, the COVID essay.

Will the COVID essay be part of the application this year?

We don't know.

We won't know until CASPA opens officially.

I think it will be probably for this year, maybe not next year.

But this is basically asking, how did the pandemic affect your PA school applications?

Okay.

We do edit these at the PA platform, and we've been editing some, so a few touch points on this.

We don't know how schools use these.

Some probably look at it, some probably don't.

There are schools that change their requirements based on the pandemic, and there are some that didn't.

Some said, you know, we don't care that you weren't able to shadow or you had to move classes online.

Like, we're still not accepting that.

Whereas some did, and then some would accept it for a certain amount of time.

It was just a lot of changes.

That's not very long.

It's a couple paragraphs.

Get really to the point.

People ask, like, do I have to answer this?

Should I answer this?

You know, I would think about how your application will look different if the pandemic never happened and try to touch on those things.

So that could be something as simple as your classes moved online.

You were given the option of pass fail.

Even if you didn't take it, you, you know, your living situation changed, your access to professors or resources changed academically, your hours at work changed, how your job was or your function, your roles, your responsibilities, all that changed.

Thinking about volunteering, shadowing, anything that you had lined up that didn't happen, you can explain.

You know, I expected to have 250 volunteer hours in the hospital, and I was unable to complete those.

Instead, I was able to do Covid screening and kind of, you know, pivot to something else.

But again, just showing how that application is different or because of COVID So this shouldn't be something you, like, stress about or spend a ton of time on.

But, you know, I think in my mind, if you're given the opportunity to comment on something or explain something on your application, you should take that chance and explain it.

Yeah.

All right, let's get into academics.

So this part's important.

But again, Pretty straightforward.

You're essentially entering information from your transcripts.

So in academic history, we will have your high schools attended.

This is only the high school that you graduated from.

That's all you have to enter in.

You do not have to send any high school transcripts.

You just have to put in that information.

Colleges attended.

Let's talk about this.

So for caspa, you do have to enter any college, university, community college, technical college, any, any upper level education that you have attended.

You do not have the option or the choice to leave any of this out.

That's dual enrollment classes you took while you're in high school.

That's online courses.

Anything taken at an accredited university or school is included in this.

If you don't enter every program you've attended, then there's a chance that your application verification may be delayed and so that your application may not meet deadlines.

If you're not entering everything incorrectly when you enter these colleges, you also have to send an official transcript from each of those schools to caspa.

You cannot use transfer credits.

So even if a transcript shows all of your transfer credits you don't have, you can't use that.

It has to come from that original institution.

And you will indicate in there whether or not you completed a degree.

And you'll only enter the degrees completed at the ones where you got degrees.

So, yeah, so yes, this includes every college course ever taken.

This includes repeats.

This includes again, high school courses, post BAT courses, everything.

Every class is included.

So we'd enter our colleges and then we do transcript entry.

So you will not be able to access those official transcripts in caspa.

You can see that they are received, but you can't actually view them, which is really annoying.

It would be really helpful if you could.

So I would recommend getting an official copy for yourself.

You could use unofficial copies, but there are times where there are discrepancies between the grades on an unofficial transcript and an official transcript.

Sometimes an unofficial transcript will show that a repeated course is not included in their GPA calculations, but then an official course will show it.

And that does have to be entered into caspa.

So that's where people get into issues with their GPA calculations being different from, from what's on your transcript and what CASPA calculates.

Because a lot of those institutions will do grade forgiveness or leave out an initial attempt.

If you repeat a course, CASPA will only consider a course as a repeat.

If you take the exact same course at the exact same institution.

If you take another course as a repeat somewhere else, you will not mark that as a repeat.

This is also where you'll enter AP credit, IB credit, CLEP exams, anything you tested out of.

And typically that's going to go under your first semester, your freshman year.

And then Emily just put a link in the chat for the CASTA faq.

This is an extremely helpful resource.

Like, go through it, read the entire FAQ before you start putting anything in because it will answer a lot of your questions.

Or if you get the prepa workbook, it also goes through all of this and answers a lot of questions.

We also have a lot of YouTube videos on this specifically.

So you will have to enter your transcripts.

You can pay for CASPA to do it.

It's not something that I typically recommend.

I think I. I guess I'm a control freak.

I am.

But you like.

I like to be able to put everything in and see it myself because I've seen where they can make mistakes with that professional transcript entry.

And even when they make mistakes, they won't always change them.

So when you put in classes, and I'll show you all this, you have to assign each class a subject, and that's what determines whether it's science or non science for your GPAs.

So, yeah, there are.

So we'll talk about grades a little bit, but there are.

There's no averages, there's no dropped grades.

For how CASPA calculates GPAs.

We can put in the.

The chat, our link to our blog post.

If you look up the PA platform, what is my CASPA gpa?

It'll show you and go through all of that.

And so it's a little bit.

I just think of it as every class is counted the same, whether it was repeated or not.

They're all calculated the same.

And then your standardized test, which right now, so far, only the GRE and MCAT have been in caspa, the PA CAT and Casper test have to be submitted to the schools outside of Casper.

That could change for this cycle, but so far that's been in there.

So PASS is not included in your gpa, and withdrawals are not included in your gpa, but a withdrawal fail is included.

All right, so this just shows how these classes are entered.

And this is from a finalized caspa.

So, yeah, so you don't have to put a degree in here if you just attended to take some classes.

And then this shows kind of the standardized test for the gre what that looks like.

And then I'll show y' all in the final application more about what the courses look like.

We'll Go through some of that.

Okay, so then we get to supporting information.

And again, this is like a lot of the bulk of your application evaluations.

That's what CASPA calls letters.

And we'll go through those in a minute.

Experiences.

We'll go through those in a minute.

Achievements, licenses and certifications.

These should be pretty straightforward.

Same thing with memberships.

You have the option to add a description for these categories.

They don't need much, much describing.

Like you can just put, you know, if there's, like, if there's a scholarship, you could put why you got that scholarship.

If you got dean's list, you can list out the semesters that you got it.

But yeah, you really don't have to put too much here.

You can just list them out for licenses and certifications.

You can only put ones that are currently active.

You do not have to, like, if you've never used a certification or a license, I don't recommend putting it on there.

I think that it can add.

Lead to more questions than answers if that, you know, like, let's say you got your CNA license, but you haven't used it.

You may not want to put that in there.

That's just a question I kind of got recently this week.

And then you'll have your essay, which is your personal statement that will go in this section as well.

This is, this is not my application, by the way.

This is somebody who made this, who let me use it.

All right, so this is the CASPA evaluation request.

So you will put in the person's name and information.

Their email address is the most important part that this is accurate because that is how they will actually get their request.

You can put a due date in here, but it does not matter.

It is not something that they are held to.

It's more of a suggestion.

I would recommend kind of talking to your letter writers outside of CASPA and giving them a heads up about when you want that letter submitted and when you want to submit your application so that they know about that, you can add a little message to them just kind of saying like, hey, thank you.

If you want to send them a resume or anything to help with their letter, you would do that outside of caspa.

Down here where it says waive the right to view your app, your evaluation, it is recommended that you waive that right.

It looks a little fishy if you don't, like there's a red flag or you might be concerned about what they're putting in their letter.

So we do recommend waiving that evaluation with the Letters you can enter in up to five down here, you have to request at least three for your application to be considered complete, and then two have to be submitted for them to verify it.

So if you enter in your letters and you submit and you're waiting for those letters, once two are submitted, they will verify it.

This is something to kind of be aware of when you are planning your submission and to double check with the programs to make sure that you can have those letters maybe not submitted or in progress.

Because let's say you submit and you only have two letters in and they require a professor letter and they have rolling admissions and they go to look at your application and that professor letter isn't in yet, they may or may not come back to your application.

So when we talk about rolling admissions, which we really haven't yet at this webinar, but you know, that means that as soon as your application is considered complete, the school's going to look at it.

If they like what they see, they will go ahead and offer you an interview.

If they like what they see at the interview, they're going to accept you.

And so having.

You've got a way having a more complete application versus the timing of when you submit your application.

So I did see a question about do we upload the letters ourselves?

No, the letters have to be uploaded directly from your letter writer.

So like I've written letters before, so they would email me and then I would get a link go in and you have to actually enter some information about that person and do like a scale and then enter, like upload your letter as a document.

All right.

And we'll look at that in a minute.

Okay, so.

And then I'll show you all experiences.

Well, let's just talk about experiences for a minute which that person did not take out their like, contact info.

Okay, so this talks about aapa and I saw somebody ask a question about that.

I think joining AAPA is a great, like, extra thing to do.

I don't think it's something you have to do, but it does show that you support your, your profession.

Also maybe joining your state society, if there's a state that you feel strongly about living in or working in, you could look at joining your state society.

And joining your state society is a great way to actually get involved and make connections and meet PAs.

AAPA being national, they're.

There isn't quite as much opportunity for that.

But you know, it is an extra.

And you may be able to tell looking at a program, whether they are a program that focuses more on advocacy and puts more weight on getting involved with these organizations.

And if so, that may kind of impact whether you'd want to join them.

So the pre PA membership at AAPA, I believe, is $50.

And then they have some discounts.

Like they have a discount for the PA platform and other stuff, too.

So, yes, that one is a paid one.

Okay, let's talk about experience, then.

I'll show y' all on the finalized application that I have some stuff about experience.

I just want to note that experience.

You can put anything in any category that you want.

CASPA is going to make suggestions based on their definitions.

You can find those in the faq.

But you ultimately, it's up to you.

So you could say that you worked at Taco Bell and that was patient care experience.

You know, CASPA is not going to stop you.

You've got to choose the best category based on what your job was, what your role was, what your responsibility.

Disabilities were, not just what your title was.

So if you feel like you were involved in a patient's care and taking care of them, carrying out their care plan that was prescribed to them, that is patient care.

If you were just in a medical setting but not really involved with the patients, that's going to be healthcare.

And then you do have the option of, for each experience, assigning it to either paid unpaid, academic credit, or volunteer status.

So you can't double dip hours.

You can't count hours from multiple categories.

You can subtract them out, but that is one way to mark something as both patient care or healthcare and volunteer experience.

That can help.

So let's go down to personal statement.

Like I said, we'll get back to essays.

So this prompt is around the same thing every year.

Explain why you want to be a page.

Somebody says, it says to remove tabs.

Tabs do not transfer to caspa.

So you can't put tabs, you can't put italics, you can't put bold underline.

None of that.

And then you.

The best way to break up your paragraphs is to do this double enter in between them.

If you enter a big block of text, honestly, it's miserable to read.

It's pretty terrible.

So I highly recommend just putting a double enter to separate your paragraphs to make it easy on your reader.

Like, these people are reading hundreds and thousands of essays and applications.

Make it easy on them.

Okay.

All right.

And then in program details, we have more of these supplementals where.

This is where some schools will upload their supplementals.

Some.

Some will have them outside of CASPA on their, on their program websites.

These can be really annoying.

Number one, they cost money.

Number two, a lot of times you're entering the exact same information that you entered in caspa, so they just take a really long time.

So when you're finalizing your list of programs to apply to this week, just think about that.

Because if you say, hey, I'm going to apply to 20 programs and then you know, they have these supplementals, some of them will ask for like five one page essays.

It's crazy.

That's a lot more that you're gonna have to write and do.

So you want to make sure that you actually have the, the time and capacity to get that done.

I'll show y' all more of this.

So, yeah, this, however, I put this in Google messed me up.

But there are fee waivers available.

So these are based on your tax returns or if you're a dependent on your parents tax returns, you can look on the CAST FAQ to see if this is something that you would qualify for.

You.

Once you receive the fee waiver, you have two weeks or 14 days to submit your application.

So these are first come, first serve.

Last year they still had them at the end of July, which was longer than they ever did.

So I don't know what this year will look like.

But that is something that you can look into.

And a lot of times if you, if you qualify for a fee waiver through caspa, the GRE and the PA CAT also have fee waiver options.

So at least you know something to look into and consider.

All right, let's look at a finalized application.

I'll answer some questions too.

So fee waivers are not based on fafsa.

I don't believe.

I think it's just based on tax returns.

And yeah, I mean, it just depends on if you entered your own or not.

Can you put the tabs in after you put into CAST window, your only option would be to do a bunch of spaces, but that's going to take up a ton of characters, so I would not do that.

What's considered early for applying?

I would say May to early.

June is still considered early, but you want to make sure that your application is complete.

It's very important.

Oh, no, it made it look weird.

Hold on.

We're gonna, we're gonna do this differently.

Let's see if this works.

There we go.

Okay.

Can y' all see that?

I don't know if I can make it any smaller.

Okay, so this is a finalized CASPA application.

See if this helps.

There we go and we'll kind of walk through this one.

So this one's 22 pages.

That's a little bit short.

This one didn't really have any supplemental stuff in it.

Most finalized CASP applications are going to be anywhere between 25 and 35 pages long.

There's a lot here.

So this is our biographic information.

If you have been married or anything, this is where you'll put kind of alternate names to make sure that all of your materials get connected to your account.

Birth information, contact information.

Again, this part is very important.

Citizenship.

Let's see.

This is what I want to talk about.

So native language.

If you do not put English as your native language, there is a chance for some programs that you will have to take the.

I say toefl.

I don't think that's right, but TOEFL exam, which is like an English competency exam.

And so I've seen a couple people in past cycles who have grown up here in English as their first language, but they put a different native language that I guess was like, spoken in their home growing up, and then they didn't take that test and were knocked out of the application cycle because of it.

And they even, like, reached out to the programs and tried to explain, and the programs were like, sorry, like you didn't have what you needed when you applied.

So just be cautious with that and make sure you're checking the school requirements.

See?

So some of this may have changed a little bit, but same kind of stuff.

So answering some questions, family information.

And then this is what I was talking about with the childhood residency description, where you just basically do a sentence about your family, and it's very random, not really sure why that was added, but not anything crazy.

So for these questions about any academic issues, misdemeanors, felonies, that kind of stuff, if you answer yes, you are given the opportunity to explain that.

It's not a very large area to explain it.

You get about, you know, two to three sentences.

You have to be very straightforward, very upfront.

You may have more of an opportunity on your supplementals to explain that a little bit further, but you will have a chance here if.

If that comes up.

All right, so.

So then we get into academic history.

So high school you graduated from is here the gre, which in the past you had to submit every GRE attempt.

Now you can pick and choose which attempts you send.

Some schools will still request that you send all attempts.

So I'd just be very cautious with picking and choosing to make sure that you are fulfilling the school's requirements, like what they're asking for.

Most schools, whether they say it or not, will super score your gre.

So if you do better on one test in verbal and the next one you do better on quantitative, they will put those scores together to give you a higher score.

If you ever have any questions about a school's requirements, whether your stuff, you know, fits or you know you're on the right track, whatever, reach out to the programs.

I mean, do your due diligence, make sure you've checked their website and stuff, but they have someone there to help you in admissions or somewhere in the program.

So reach out to them directly and ask them just to be clear so that you're not wasting time, wasting money if something does not line up with a program.

All right, so then we get into college as attended.

So, so if you have a degree, you'll define that.

If you don't, it'll just say no degree defined.

And then we get into coursework.

So this is what the coursework looks like.

And let's just talk about this for a second.

CASPA will only verify your coursework the first time you submit your application.

So if you have transcripts that do not show completed courses yet, they will, they will be unverified, they will not be included in your GPAs.

If you submit to later, later to other programs or add more transcripts, they will still not be verified and they will still not be in your GPAs.

They are only going to verify and calculate GPAs on your first submission.

Okay, so that means that if you are still in classes right now for the spring and you want those to be included in your GPAs and verified and your degree to be verified, if you're graduating, you need to wait until they're complete on your transcripts.

Your registrar's office should be able to let you know kind of timeline wise when that can happen.

But there's like no way around that.

So that's kind of how that works.

If you have AP credit, it's listed under your very first semester.

If it is on your transcript, if you just have AP credit but it was never accepted or given to your university, then it is not included or put on your application.

If you have AP credits that are for prerequisite courses, double and triple check that those are going to be accepted by the programs you're applying to.

Most programs are not going to accept AP credits for prereqs.

They want to see a grade for those.

So you'll have to potentially retake those courses.

All right, so let's look at this a little bit more, a little bit closer.

So you enter all of your coursework on your application exactly the same way as it's entered on your transcript.

So whatever they list as the title, if it's like a weird abbreviated title thing, you enter it like that.

If they, you know, have a bunch of weird numbers here, you enter it like that.

You enter it exactly the same.

Okay.

And then you'll enter your credits.

You indicate whether it's a semester, quarter, trimester, that kind of thing.

There are some kind of funky transcripts out there, some that do, like, unit credits.

Those you have to translate.

And it's a little bit different.

The cast FAQ goes through that a little bit.

And then I talk about it in the workbook, too.

But for this, you are entering every.

Every course ever taken.

So I'm trying to find one that would be kind of weird.

So these seminar classes, they're hard to find a thing for.

You do special topics.

CASPA assigns courses, and we have a YouTube video on this, first by the title and then by the subject.

So.

So first by the title, then by the subject.

So that's why this one that's biodiversity is classified as biodiversity and not just biology.

You cannot choose a category, a subject based on what the class was about.

That's another question I've been getting a lot recently.

Is like, I took this class called neuropsychology, but it was really neuroscience and biology.

Can I put it as that?

So it counts as science, because psychology classes never count as science.

And the answer is no.

If these are not accurate, it's going to hold up your verification and cause problems.

There are some cases where you may have a little bit of leeway in which category you choose.

And there's some gray area there just depending on the title of the class.

But those are not going to be the norm.

Like, if you go to the CASPA course subject list, that's what I do, and search for the term in the title.

Start there.

If you can't find it, go to the subject.

If you can't find it, then you've got to get creative and kind of find the next best thing.

Sometimes it's just like other science or something like that to fit in there.

So, like, this one is probably wrong.

Honestly, English composition, that should probably not be Communication science disorders.

Like, I think that was a mistake there.

Statistics is never science.

I'll just kind of go through some of these and look quickly, See if there's any weird ones in here.

Grades look good.

Okay, cool.

So I wanted to show you here.

So then this person took other classes that were quarter classes.

So you'll indicate that at the program.

And then the credits are counted a little bit differently.

And so with these again, like we're looking at signing.

Medical terminology is not ever a science class.

So even though that was a biology class, it's count as med terms and it is medical terminology and it will not be considered in science classes.

And some of these were, you know, obviously kind of shortened on the transcripts.

That's why they're entered like that.

So I see a question.

Do you offer one on one?

So yeah.

So we have prepaid counseling to kind of walk you through some of this to do application review, help you, you know, figure all this out.

My schedule is currently booked.

There could be cancellations, but I wouldn't count on those.

But all of our coaches are great and can definitely help you out and will, you know, point you in the right direction to make sure that you are doing good.

You can have them enter your transcripts for you.

I mean, it's completely up to you.

I just wouldn't.

Okay.

So all of these were verified.

Great.

Cool.

So these are all the GPAs that CASPA calculates.

It is a lot.

The main ones we need to look at here are this overall and this overall science.

When you see a program's requirements, those are the main ones they are talking about.

If a school school calculates a prereq GPA or a last 30, last 60 hour GPA, those are going to be done separately outside of Caspa, they you won't ever see those unless the school happens to share them with you.

So someone put in.

We don't put in W's.

You do enter in withdrawals.

I guess this person didn't have any.

And they are entered in again exactly how they are in your transcript.

But yes, withdrawals are entered in your application or in your transcripts.

All right, so this gets into the experience and what I was talking about here.

So here you enter in your experience type.

There's healthcare, non healthcare, patient care, leadership, teaching, research, extracurriculars, shadowing and volunteer.

A note on extracurriculars, that is not just like a hobby.

Like we're not really entering hobbies on here.

It needs to have something that you have a supervisor you can list or someone who can vouch for you for that experience.

So sometimes people are like, I run marathons, where can I put that?

You really can't.

But you can talk about in your essays or your supplementals if you wanted to.

Clubs can't.

Clubs typically are going to go under extracurriculars more so than memberships, unless it's like a national society type membership.

So here you enter in your title, your employer, contact information for your supervisor, whether they can contact them.

And then the way you enter this in is kind of weird.

And also getting a lot of questions about these.

Normally for experiences, we're talking college and forward.

The only time high school would be related, if it's something that you did in high school and continued through college, or if it was healthcare or medically related, then I think that would be relevant and you could potentially add it.

You enter your start date and your end date and your hours per week and the total weeks.

This is never going to work out perfectly, ever.

So you have to kind of estimate if anything round down, not up.

And it may in some cases be that you kind of just have to figure out your total number of hours and then your total number of weeks to figure out your hours per week and just make those numbers work the best you can.

For these experience details, I'm looking for context of your experience.

I'm looking for what your role was, what you did, and I'm also looking for what you learned and what you took away from that experience and why it was important or relevant to you and why it's relevant to your PA school applications.

So we, we do edit experience details as well.

And that's kind of the stuff that I'm looking for when we do that.

So again, it's a leadership example experience.

We have a patient care experience.

And so if you don't have a supervisor's information, I would not just leave that.

Well, you can't leave it blank.

But I would explain that here in the description and say, like, I'm no longer in contact with the supervisor.

My supervisor is no longer there.

Something to clarify.

You also cannot project hours.

You can put that something is current and it'll calculate the hours up until when you actually submit, but you can't put a year from now in there.

The only way that you can do that is if you put in your experience details.

Kind of the same thing.

We have shadowing, which with shadowing, I'm pretty picky about descriptions and I really want to see what you learned about the PA profession.

In these experiences, CASPA is not going to verify all of your experiences or the schools are not going to verify all of your experiences.

I mean, look, there's like 10 here.

If they did that for all 1,000 applications that, I mean, it's just not possible.

The only time they're going to try to clarify is if there's a discrepancy or they have a question about an experience, they may reach out.

So that's why you want to have that contact information if possible.

Someone says, does CASPA contact our letter writers?

I've asked them separately.

Yeah.

So the email comes from Casper, from liaison for the letters.

All right, so lots of volunteering scholarships.

And then we get into the essay.

So again, double enter in between paragraphs, no special characters or anything like that.

We have licenses and certifications.

And then this shows kind of evaluations, the request date, response date or the, the due date.

And then when it was actually completed.

And then so I wanted to show y' all here.

So like this is one that they never entered.

Like this person just never submitted their letter and the person already submitted by then.

So it expired and it was not completed.

So there's some little questions here and then we get into some supplementals that are pretty straightforward here.

Like no major essays or anything in the program materials.

Some schools will have you assign prerequisite courses.

So with prereqs and assigning prereqs, unless a school states otherwise, you just need to assign your best or most recent attempt that best fits that prereq course.

So if you have repeated a course, you don't have to necessarily enter all of them in unless a school specifies that they want you to do that.

So like for here we have anatomy and physiology.

Their minimum credits are eight semester credits.

This person had six quarter semester credits.

So it specifies that you need 12 quarter hours for that to work.

And it, it works out, I guess it's up there, but same thing.

And then it has like the minimum grade.

Ignore this minimum grade.

That's confusing to everyone.

And yeah, it's fine.

Okay, so biology, they want English, they want advanced math, They want humanities, all that stuff.

All right, that's pretty much it.

So this application I think is pretty straightforward.

How are you feeling?

I hear, I see some questions.

Same question as Anna.

Anna has a good question.

Okay.

For volunteering, would you suggest not including them if they're less than a certain number of hours, one time experiences, for example.

So this gets into the gray area of your application and looking at it as a whole, like if you have a bunch of other volunteer experiences, then you may want to be a little bit more picky and not list out a bunch of one hour random things you did because that is going to distract and take away from those experiences that you spent more time in.

And so you want to make sure that those kind of shine a little bit more.

Same thing with shadowing.

So if you've done a bunch of virtual shadowing, I would not list those out separately as like one hour things.

I would clump them all together so that your in person shadowing is a little bit more prominent on your application too.

All right, we'll try to try to get some questions in here a little bit.

Can you do experience details in bullet point form?

So yes, you can do bullet points.

You would have to actually put like a hyphen space.

And then whatever you're saying, it's fine to do either bullet points or paragraphs.

Just whatever you do, keep it consistent throughout your entire application.

Just keep it very consistent.

And I would encourage you not to plan to submit on day one.

So not the first day CASPA opens.

Even if you get everything in, you feel ready to go.

Take a day off, take a step back and then go back to it.

Make sure you don't have any errors or typos or placeholders that you forgot to switch out and just double check everything one last time before you go to submit.

Rushing and making small mistakes can be detrimental to your application.

These at this point, you know, everyone is so qualified and there's so many great applicants that small details can make a big difference.

And we want to make sure that your application is as polished as it can be.

Your personal statement is very important.

Your essays are very important, your supplementals.

Making sure those programs are a good fit and that you fulfilled all their requirements.

It's gonna be very, very important when you go to actually submit that application.

Physician Assistant versus Physician Associate Right now, until Physician Associate is adopted by either all the programs you're applying to or the state states that you're applying to, stick with Physician Assistant.

They're estimating it'll take five to 10 years for that to happen.

I don't think any states have officially accepted Physician Associate.

It's just such a huge endeavor for that to switch over.

And so until that happens, stick with Physician assistant until you.

Until all that's done.

So somebody said, I read that we shouldn't include volunteer experiences from being involved in a sorority or fraternity.

Is that true?

No, that's not true.

You should definitely include those same Thing with religious organizations, people ask about that all the time.

Like, should I include my hours from working at a church or ministry?

Yeah, I mean, if it's something that you did and you're involved with and you enjoyed and it was important to you, then you then include it.

A lot of my volunteer hours were from working with Wesley foundation at uga and I. I wouldn't want to go to a program that didn't want me because of that.

You know, that's kind of weird.

So, yeah, I think sorority fraternity hours are.

Are perfectly fine.

Talk about them.

Let's.

Oh, man.

Questions are rolling in.

Oh, I like this one.

Is waiting until July to apply bad in order to get more hours or when an early application be better than more hours and experiences included?

Okay, so that's a good question.

My rule of thumb with that is if you meet the requirements that a school is asking for, I think getting an application in earlier is better.

If you're waiting to get past a certain threshold, like a thousand hours and that's what the school require, then wait.

But otherwise, if you're just waiting to add, you know, 100 hours, I don't think that's going to make a huge deal in your overall application if it's not pushing you past a minimum that a school is looking for.

Do you recommend using Mapped before we submit courses on Casper?

Yeah.

So Mapped is a great tool.

That is super helpful.

It is the most accurate GPA calculator that I've found.

We can find my link and add it where you'll actually get access to the advisor chat.

So they have a Maps Pro where you can talk to advisors.

Let me see if I can find my link real quick.

Where you can talk to advisors and ask questions.

And I actually help out with kind of answering some of those.

So, yeah, if you like, now's the perfect time to sign up for that because I think you get two months free and that should get you through the application cycle with being able to ask questions.

But the GPA calculator is free.

Oh, I can't even put it in here.

I'm gonna have to send that to Emily Michelle because my thing's freaking out.

But yeah, so put that in.

Y' all can add it.

Yeah, so the GPA calculator is.

It's free to use and it's very accurate and you can enter everything in.

So if you want to estimate your GPAs, you can also keep track of experiences there.

So, yeah, highly recommend McKenzie's question.

Let's see.

Can I apply to different schools at different times.

For example, one in May that requires a minimum of 500 hours, and then another in August that requires 1,000.

Yes.

So you can submit your application to some programs and then submit to others later.

You will not be able to edit a lot of your application, but you can add to it.

You can add new experiences.

So if you are still in an experience and you want to add more hours, you would just have to add a new entry and just kind of say refer to previous entry or something along those lines.

But yes, you can add in experiences to show that you've completed those hours once.

Once you've reached a different deadline.

I don't know anything about MYPA box.

I've heard lots of issues with it, and it's part of why I don't recommend it is because math does the same thing better and is free.

So, yeah, Elena's question.

I like when y' all like, refer to other people's questions.

When should we send our official GRE scores to the programs?

Not until CASPA opens.

So don't.

Do not right now, this week.

Send transcripts or test scores or anything until Casper opens on Thursday.

Once CASPA opens, the very first things you can do are send your transcripts, send your test scores, request your letters, and then you're good to go.

Does it matter that new hours you add will be verified?

No, because hours aren't.

Aren't verified the same way that GPAs are.

I answer that one, Somebody.

We put the Maps link.

I know this is going crazy, so we can try to put it in again.

Do transcripts roll over?

So, yeah, so if you pull your application forward, hypothetically, and you should be able to get to choose.

Everything should pull over except for letters, recommendation and personal statement.

There are always potential issues, things get lost.

It can happen, but hypothetically, everything should roll over outside of the letters and personal statement.

You can submit your application before you've taken the gre.

You just need to double check that schools are okay with that, having your test in progress, courses in progress, that kind of thing before you submit.

Thanks, Mom.

My mom said you asking so many questions.

She's right.

All right, let's see if any come in that feel like we need to.

Michael's question.

Oh, my gosh, I'm so fast.

We'll be answering so many questions on Instagram this week too, so make sure you're following the PA platform.

We'll have a question box, like every day.

I'll be answering as many as I can or pointing in the right direction.

And also, a lot of the questions are in my book, so that may help you out, too.

If you have that prime shipping.

Should get it pretty quick.

Michael's question was, should I wait to apply until my last prereq is done?

See, that's a gray area.

It just depends on your application, where you're applying, the strength of your application.

Like, there's so much that goes into that decision.

So part of that's like, what we kind of do with our counseling is work through that.

But, yeah, you have to look at everything and.

And decide, you know, way applying early versus how much the application.

That course could help your application, or if it's required, then you would have to do that.

So.

And then what else was gonna say?

Oh, for editing.

Just for a frame of reference, too, for personal statement editing.

Our turnaround time right now is like three to four days that we, like, really try very hard to stick to that and get it to asap.

And so we'll, you know, do our best.

But if you want to get your essay in and get it edited, that is the turnaround time.

So if you want to factor in the time that you would need to work on it, just so you know.

All right, I think we're going to wrap up, but again, I'll be answering tons of questions tomorrow on Instagram, and then we'll send out an email with the replay with all the information that we talked about, links.

And as always, there's so much stuff on YouTube, on the blog, on the website, to try to point in their direction.

So, yeah.

All right, guys, see y' all next time.

Hopefully in May.