How To Apply To PA School!

Hi friends!

The Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA) is opening soon (generally around the beginning of April! So I thought I would share the general process I have experienced and how to navigate the whole thing, especially if you are applying for the first time!

CASPA is basically the place where you go to collect and submit all your materials to apply to PA school in one place. This will be where you upload your resume, your personal statement, your letters of rec, your experience, and especially your classes and performance thus far. Don’t worry! It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t too hard if you just break it down one thing at a time! The cycle opens early in April, then closes in March the following year. Most schools start taking applications right when it opens, but some wait a little bit. The time to apply depends on your school, but the earlier the better! I definitely recommend that you collect and organize everything that you can ahead of time. So to help, I’m going to go through each thing separately:

Make an Account

First, you have to make an account! Visit https://caspa.liaisoncas.com/applicant-ux/#/login and follow the steps.

Tackle the Categories, One at a Time

Next you will see four different categories to go through and fill out information. Start with personal information. This one is all about where you are from, your background, your family, contact info, etc.

Academic History

The next section is academic history. This is where you will enter where you attended high school, college, your transcripts, and your standardized test scores (like the GRE, or the PACAT, which may be coming out in the near future). You will need to get proof of the middle two from wherever your college stores your official letter of attendance and transcripts. For me, it was National Student Clearinghouse. The involved part of this section is definitely entering your transcripts. Make sure you follow the directions for how to enter special courses, such as AP courses. If you have any letters in the code for your classes (like BIOL101A, where my undergrad had multiple different sections denoted by a letter), MAKE SURE YOU INCLUDE IT! I had to redo my transcripts because I did not include the letter the first time even though it did not impact the class! Don’t forget to enter additional classes if you took extra classes at a different institution like I did! Here is what my entry generally looked like:

Supporting Information

There are a lot of sections here! So I’m going to break it down.

First is your evaluations, aka your letters of recommendation. Depending on what programs you apply to will possibly change who you get these from!
The next part is all about your experiences. This includes everything! Patient care hours, leadership positions, volunteer hours, etc. Below is an example:

Achievements is the following category, which is where you can list every award, scholarship, etc. you ma have earned!
Certifications is where you’ll enter any licenses you might have, such as CNA, AHA BLS provider, Diabetes trained, etc.
This next section is always the one that gets everyone in a tizzy. Ah, yes, the personal statement/essay. I highly recommend starting this before you start your application on CASPA. I used a Microsoft word document and wrote and rewrote my essay there. This section can have an entire post of its own, so to read about my thoughts on a personal essay, read How to Write Your Personal Essay. I even posted my example!
The last one is memberships, which you may or may not have. I did not have a very large list very this one.

Submit Your Application!

Yay! The moment you have been waiting for! Once you have everything filled out, requested, and ready to go, you can submit your application to programs you are applying to! Once you select your programs, be sure to visit each program’s tab on CASPA to fill out questions they specifically may be asking you.

All Done?

Once you have everything filled out and you have picked the schools you want to apply to, you may have to wait a few days for CASPA to verify your status. There are three different stages of the CASPA application: In Progress, Received, Complete, and Verified.

“In Progress” means that you have created your account and are working on your application!
“Received” means you have submitted your application, but it hasn’t gone anywhere because some materials are still missing, like transcripts!
“Complete” means CONGRATS! You have completed your submission and CASPA has received your official transcripts and other materials and are reviewing your application to consolidate it into their own formalized document and calculate your total GPA. This may take a few weeks.
“Verified” means SUPER CONGRATS! Your application has been shipped off to all your selected programs that you have paid to apply to!

As you can see, starting this process as soon as you can is a good idea because some steps take a small while! If you are familiar with PA school, which you probably are if you’re applying, you know that PA schools generally accept applicants on a rolling admission basis. This means it follows a loose “first come, first serve” model. Of course, they are only going to take the most competitive applicants for interviews and offer seats from a group of interviewees, but it benefits you to submit early! The sooner, the better!

Good luck with your application! Don’t get discouraged in the process, just take it one step at a time! And of course, send me a comment if you have any questions!

- Kate :-)

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