You hit submit. Now what?

The waiting is the worst part of this whole process, and I say that as someone who did it. You refresh your email fifty times a day. You get an automated confirmation and your stomach drops. Somebody in a Facebook group posts that they got an interview at your top choice and you spiral.

Here's what I want you to do instead: use the time. Add patient care hours. Start interview prep now, not after you get an invite. Look at your application honestly and figure out what you'd fix if you had to reapply, then start fixing it. If you get in, great, none of that was wasted. If you don't, you're already ahead for next cycle.

What I cover:

• Why the waiting period feels so bad and what helps
• Building patient care hours while you wait
• Starting interview prep before you get an invite
• Handling rejections without letting them wreck you
• Staying off the comparison treadmill
• Getting a head start on a possible reapplication

Resources:

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

Mock interview: https://www.thepaplatform.com/services/mock-interview

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

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

Welcome to episode 62.

Today we are talking about the waiting game.

It is the worst.

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.

Alright guys, thank you so much for tuning in to today's episode, episode 62.

Today we're gonna jump into talking about one of the toughest parts of the PA school application process, which is the time after you submit your application.

Not fun.

Before we jump into that, if you're new to the podcast, thank you for listening.

My name is Savannah and I am a dermatology page and also the creator of the PA platform, which is a website that helps pre PA students and PA students and connects PAs to just spread the word about our profession and help people along their way with figuring out what you need to do to reach these goals you have.

So if you haven't checked out the PA platform, make sure you visit the website www.thepaplatform.com.

There's lots of great resources there.

It's got tons of blog posts, all the other podcast episodes which are also on itunes and I would love to connect with you on social media, on Instagram, Facebook.

I have a Facebook group called the Pre PA Club with my PA resource, so definitely check that out.

Great place to get questions answered.

And I want to thank the sponsor of today's podcast, which is PA School Prep.

Now, let's say your waiting period is over and you have been accepted to PA school.

There's always a question of what to do before you start.

So if you're looking for something to refresh yourself and help you stay a little bit in that school mode, make sure you check out paschoolprep.com this is an online anatomy, physiology and medical terminology course specifically tailored to incoming PA students.

It's made by PAs for future PAs and that's something that you'll definitely want to check out.

Typically, incoming students struggle with those first two semesters because there's a ton of information being thrown your way.

But also you have to relearn a lot of what you learned in undergrad when it pertains to these subjects.

So make sure you check that out and then there is a discount code.

You can use the code futurepa for $35 off.

If you have any questions about that, feel free to reach out towards me then.

I wanted to answer some questions.

I got an email this week specifically with some podcast topic suggestions which I'm really excited about and we'll do in some upcoming episodes.

But there were some questions that I didn't really want to let wait too long.

I figured let's go ahead and address those.

These come from Jared and the first one is what is the best undergrad majors?

Is a nursing degree or RN status a good entry into the PA profession?

When it comes to choosing a major for PA school, it really doesn't matter what your major is.

Schools only really want to see that you have completed the required prerequisites.

And so in my class we had tons of different majors.

I was a biology major, but if I had to go back and do it again, I probably would choose something different.

You know, I'm loving doing website design and podcasting and so I might would have done a marketing degree or something in design.

That would be so cool.

So choose something that you're interested in first of all, because you've got to have that bachelor's degree and then you can always get the coursework in other ways.

Now if you choose a science major, it will make it a little bit easier to obtain those things at the same time potentially.

So I was biology at uga.

What was strange about my program was that I had to take anatomy and physiology for PA school, but that was not considered part of my major.

And so number one, I couldn't even get into the classes at UGA because there were other majors like kinesiology and health promotions that had to have those courses, whereas my major did not.

So I had to take those elsewhere over the summer.

And then they counted as electives for me.

They didn't even count as science courses.

So in my case, I mean, all my other biologies and chemistries counted, but I also ended up taking extra classes.

So I had to take organic chemistry too, which is not technically or typically a requirement for a lot of schools.

So I had to take these classes that were kind of killing my GPA and weren't necessarily helping me because it was part of my major.

So you want to look at all of that as far as nursing.

Nursing experience is great for PA school when it comes to getting those patient care hours.

As far as the degree and the training, that's something you've got to look at with each school because a lot of these programs they want the upper level coursework and sometimes for that bsn, you're not required to take the upper level courses.

So you do want to check and look at the classes you would be taking and check with the schools to make sure those would count.

Want to Waste your time and money doing that.

And then with nursing and rn, you want to be able to explain why you are going the PA route.

So if you're choosing to be educated in the nursing model, the question would come up of, okay, well, why not nurse practitioner?

And so you really want to be able to speak to that and tell them why you want to do pa, and then you'll have to use that experience.

So plan on, after you get your BSN and your RN license, actually working as a nurse for a while to show that you didn't just do it for the heck of it anyway.

Okay, another question.

What can we be doing in undergrad years outside of taking courses to prepare for applying?

So when you're in your undergrad years, no matter what you do outside of that, make sure that your grades and coursework are your number one priority.

Schools put a lot of weight on gpa, and that's because it is the highest predictive factor of how a student will do in PA school.

It is very important that you keep your grades as high as possible, because once your GPA drops, it's very hard to bring it up.

It's a lot easier to drop a GPA than to raise it.

So you do want to make sure that you are putting priority on your coursework.

Now, beyond that, you want to look at the other things that are required for PA school, which include the patient care experience, volunteering, shadowing, and those types of things.

So you do want to do some of that.

So if you have the time and you're good at managing your time and can do some volunteering, can work part time and work on getting those other requirements, go for it.

But if it's gonna be too stressful for you and too taxing and make a detrimental effect on your gpa, don't do it.

Just wait.

Just take it one step at a time.

Focus on the grades in the school, and then move on and get your experience.

But don't sacrifice one area for trying to do it all too quickly or do it all at once.

And one last question here.

Do you see individuals in their mid-20s to early 30s applying to PA school who wanted a career change or decide to go back to college?

Absolutely.

All the time.

PA school or the PA profession was kind of designed to be a second career.

And so for a lot of people, I mean, I've worked with people who were teachers, who were engineers, accountants, all kinds of stuff, and they had an event or something happen that just made them want to pursue the PA profession and work in Medicine, really.

And so it is not uncommon to see older that's not old, see individuals who are not, let's say, not say, college age, going back to go to PA school.

Even my medical assistant at work is doing that, which makes me super sad.

But she was a public relations major, ended up working in a doctor's office, started in reception, ended up as a medical assistant, and now she's going back to school to become a pa, which I think is awesome.

And I also just think that she is awesome.

And actually, she was on an episode with me that you may want to check out.

Let me see if I can figure out which one it was, and y' all can go listen to Taylor.

Anyone who has followed me long enough knows that I talk about Taylor a lot because she is awesome and she definitely makes my life so much easier.

So that is episode number 15.

If you want to hear about her job as a medical assistant, what it's like to work with me and what she's doing and taking steps to do in order to pursue PA school as someone who is doing this as a second career, make sure you check out episode 15.

All right, let's get to today's subject matter.

You know, I get a lot of emails, a lot of messages, which I love.

And with part of that, I get a lot from people who are applying for the first time and a lot from people who are re applicants.

And all of those people tend to have some of the same concerns, which are, what do I do after I submit my application?

So you've worked really hard.

You've taken classes, done the volunteering, done the patient care experience, worked on your application, done your personal statement, put in all this time and effort and money to get to the point of applying to PA school.

So then you kind of hustle really hard to get your application submitted by the deadline that you've chosen or the school's deadlines.

And then after you push submit, you kind of just sit there and you don't know what to do.

And then you get really anxious and check your email 500 times a day because you're just waiting on those interview invites.

And then you get an email from a school and you get really excited and you open it and it's just a confirmation telling you they got your application with no information.

And then that's discouraging.

And then you wait some more, and then you may get another email that's a rejection and that stinks and hurts and makes you feel like all this effort is for nothing.

But then maybe that Same day you get an interview invite.

I just want you to realize that this process is so random, and I understand that it is so, so stressful and not really that much fun.

The day you get an interview is fun, but then right off that your nerves kick in and you have a whole, whole nother thing to worry about.

So today I just wanted to talk about that a little bit and go through some things that while you're in that waiting period that you can be doing to at least calm yourself down, but also feel like you're being proactive in that time period.

Now PA school has become very competitive, and because of that, my advice to anyone, whether it's your first time applying, whether you're reapplying, is to go into the cycle with the mindset of you're going to have to reapply.

Even if your application is stellar, you can't think of anything else you need to do better, and you feel very confident, think about having to reapply.

Because what you don't want to happen is, let's say you applied in May and then you kind of were like, okay, I've applied.

I'm just going to wait and hear back.

And.

And you decide to go, I don't know, travel the world for a year.

The next April, you haven't heard anything from any schools.

You've gotten a couple rejections, but you still want to go to PA school.

When you go to reapply, your application will be the same, and you can't expect any different or better result if you haven't improved your application.

And so at that point, you need to have improved.

You need to have things that you can say, you know what?

Over this past year, this is what I've been doing differently.

And then when those schools get your application for the second time, they need to be able to compare them and go, you know, this person really wants this.

And they've been working hard this past year to reach their goals.

That's a mistake that some people make.

And just to clarify, when it comes to reapplying, a school only knows that you're a RE applicant if you have applied there previously.

So if you submitted your application to a school and then you submit again the next year, they will know you're a reapplicant.

If you submitted to school A, and the next year you submit to school B, school B will not know that you have applied before unless you tell them.

So if you allude to it in your personal statement or tell them at an interview, then they may be able to submit that or understand that.

So anyway, so that's one thing to take into consideration.

One thing I would recommend is try to be patient.

Waiting is just, it's not fun.

And like I said, I totally get the anxiety and stress that comes with it.

But once you've turned everything in, there's really not that much that you can do.

You can't change your application, so you can't go back in and edit things.

Let's say you go back in and you're pouring over your application and you realize there's a typo, you can't change it.

So at that point you might as well just let it go.

Don't go back into your application and double, triple check it after you've submitted because you're not going to be able to change any mistakes.

Now, if you noticed, let's say you notice a huge mistake, let's say you accidentally entered your hours completely wrong.

At that point, you still can't fix it through caspa, but you may need to contact the school schools individually to give them an update on that.

And whether they take that into account or not is up to them because some schools will only really consider what is on your application.

So each school has a different process and a different timeline.

And so if you hear from one and haven't heard from another, that doesn't necessarily mean anything.

They just do things differently.

One thing I like to tell people to do, and this is something I did, is check the PA forums.

So.

So physicianassistantforum.com is a great community where people are always chatting and each school has a different thread and you can see for that application cycle and you can look at it and see if people are getting interviews or rejections and that can help you a little bit.

Now I want to say something about that because I do not want you to obsess over it.

And it can be easy to do that.

When you get on the forums, you just start checking them and you're, oh my gosh, Suzy got an interview and I haven't heard back and her stats are so good and mine are so terrible.

And you know, try not to compare yourself.

It is a small subset of people who are on the forums.

It is not everyone who's applying.

It is not everyone who's going to be accepted.

So don't let them be discouraging to you, but just use them as kind of a timeline check to make sure that, let's say that you applied a month ago and everyone's gotten confirmations and you've heard nothing.

You haven't even gotten a confirmation that they have your application.

At that point, it may be worth reaching out and just saying, hey, I applied, I submitted my fees, I submitted my application.

Have y' all looked at it?

Have you received it?

Just wanted to check in.

And so that can help you if you want to make sure that you're at least on the same page as everyone else.

So something to keep in mind there, you know, with working towards reapplying, even though that's not what any of us want to do, you want to look at your application very critically, and that's what we do in our pre PA assessments and try to figure out what you can do better and what you can improve on to make yourself stand out and show that you've improved for next cycle when you potentially have to apply again.

Look at every part of your application.

Look at your coursework.

Do you have B's or better in all of your prerequisite courses?

How are your GPAs?

Are they competitive?

Or do you need to keep working towards classes?

How many patient care hours do you have?

What kind of variety do you have?

What's the quality of your patient care experience?

What about volunteering?

Have you done some volunteering in your community to show your commitment to your area and your commitment to the underserved?

And it doesn't even necessarily have to be something medical, but you need to show that you have a passion for helping people.

You can't go to an interview and say, yeah, I want to help people if you've never done it.

So you need to be showing that.

Shadowing.

Have you gotten shadowing hours in multiple areas to show that you really understand the PA profession and know what you're getting yourself into?

All of these things are important.

Do you have strong letters of recommendation?

Is your personal statement statement really good?

It should be, because that's what's going to get you the interview.

Once you've checked all the boxes, these are all things that you want to look at and think about while you're in the process of making sure your application is ready for PA school.

For if you do have to reapply, and again, we hope you don't, but if you do, you want to show that improvement.

Other things, find some distractions and relax.

If you do get into PA school once you start, it is full steam ahead.

And so you really want to take that time, even though you're probably working and working towards getting improvements on your application.

But spend time with your family, spend time with your friends, enjoy Yourself, you may have to move for PA school, who knows?

But try to distract yourself.

Start working out, pick up a skill, cooking, whatever, but do something so that you're not just constantly commiserating on your application status.

I know, easier said than done.

But do your best.

Please do your best.

You can update programs periodically.

And so I talked about earlier, checking in with programs if you feel like you maybe should have heard something, which is fine.

But also let's say that you do something.

Let's say you go on a medical mission trip or you have gained a substantial more amount of hours or you do some more shadowing.

You finish a course, you get a good grade, you update a prerequisite, whatever.

At that point you can update the programs.

Now you can update these things in CASPA and they will send out an update to the programs, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the programs look at it.

So what I would recommend is no more than once a month, send in an email to whoever is the head of the admissions or the general admissions email and just say, hey, I just wanted to let you know that I've gotten 400 more hours.

Will you please update my file?

Thank you.

Short and sweet.

Not begging for anything, but that does a couple things.

It shows them you're still working towards this goal.

It also shows them you're still available and still interested.

And so it's kind of a way to let that square know that you would like to hear back from them and you really are interested in their program.

So don't do it too much, don't bother them, don't become an annoyance, but you can periodically give them some updates.

Now another thing is go ahead and start preparing for interviews.

If you've submitted your application, you have no idea when that interview invite may come in.

And this can be very frustrating because you may get very little notice.

I've gotten emails from people who have been asked to come to an interview the next day if they were near a local program.

I mean, for me, I think I had for one interview about a month's notice and for 12 weeks.

But it is not uncommon for there to be a very short period of time for you to prepare.

And so you want to go ahead and start working on that and with preparing for interviews.

I've done a lot of podcast episodes about interviews.

You can definitely check out the PA School Interview Guide.

That's the book I wrote about interviewing.

It's on the PA platform.com it is also on Amazon.

And there's a lot of great pre interview Advice and then questions.

There's over 300 questions in there.

And so that's one way to Prepare.

Talking to PAs, family members, friends, kind of getting them to quiz you, doing some mock interviews, really just going ahead and practicing so that when that interview comes, even though you'll be nervous, you may not be quite as nervous as you would have been if you are scrambling last minute to try to prepare.

So those are a few things you can do.

And again, I just want you to know that waiting is the hardest.

And so after you wait, after submitting your application for the interview, then you have a whole other waiting process of waiting to hear back from your interview.

And, gosh, that may even be worse, I'm not sure.

But in that period, at that point, there's not really anything you can do.

And so you may get the call that you're accepted, which is awesome.

You may get put on a wait list, which is better than nothing.

And at this point, even to get an interviewer a spot on a waitlist is a huge deal.

And people come off waitlist all the time.

And then you may get a rejection.

And if you do, if you're rejected from a school, either before you get an interview or after, reach out to that program.

See what they suggest you improve on.

See what part of your application they didn't feel was adequate or didn't fit with their program so that you can improve yourself if possible.

So those are all of my tips for today.

I'm sure I have more tips, but those are the things I wanted to talk about, and I hope that that was helpful and not too boring, but I would love to hear from you.

So if you enjoyed today's episode or if you hated it, but really, if you enjoyed it, please give me a review on itunes on the Pre PA Club.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Leave it in your review and I will get to those, I promise.

And yeah, I would love to hear from you if there's something you want answered on the podcast, if there's a subject that you think we should cover, please let me know and we'll do it.

And I would love to get some suggestions from you guys.

So feel free to reach out, Instagram, email, whatever.

And thank you.

Thank you for tuning in.

Tuning in.

I will see you guys next week.

And y', all, I have a great interview for you.

I will say one word, and that word is.

Duke, you ready?

All right.

See you guys next week.

Bye.