 you know I'm really glad you said that because obviously GPA is important you have to be able to get through a rigorous program but you really shouldn't be discouraged if your GPA isn't a 4.0 or 3.9. It's more important that you care about the PA profession and like you said are kind of consistent with Lemoine's values and that's a acceptance of the program as well. Yeah we certainly have a holistic review process and not every PA program is the same. Each program has their own admission process and admission criteria but at Lemoine we do have a very holistic process so we're looking for really well-rounded folks in all of those areas. Excellent. Really we have to find people that have that academic foundation that have that patient care experience and then as we dive a little deeper we start to get into more of those supplemental application materials. I think that makes a lot of sense especially from your standpoint you have to kind of sift through the applications and find someone who can handle the program and then that list of people you actually choose people who are more suited to the values of the program. Yes in short yeah when I say holistic I mean we're really I mean we are reading every letter of recommendation we are reading every statement you put in your CAS for record. We're reviewing things like have you studied in a clinical program before? Have you had any misdemeanors or felonies or academic integrity issues? You know all of those things come into play and weighing these decisions and deciding who's earned an interview spot and then certainly upon interview that's a whole nother set of admission criteria that we're looking at then now that we're getting to know you as a person you know in a live or more live environment. So yeah in short yeah what we're trying to do is find folks that have that foundation and then we're trying to find the people that are you know you can use the term like hidden gems you know we're digging through everything to find the right folks. It's not an easy task. No it sounds really difficult. It does because many many times applicants will reach out and say you know here's my stats and they'll give you like numbers and they'll say I have this GPA, I have this test score, I have this number of whatever hours and those are important stats. That gives us a good ballpark of where you where you compare to your peers, where you compare the applicant pool but as we get into more of that that real assessment of you as a future clinician that's a harder thing to put a number on so a lot of times students forget that that part is very important especially for a program like Lemoine's. And so a question I get quite a bit is what do you consider a lower undergraduate GPA? What do you consider a competitive undergraduate GPA? Great so yeah every every program is very different and every program has different standards so at Lemoine we can consider a student eligible for admission with a 3.2 cumulative and a 3.2 science GPA. That's that means you're eligible you can you can have a foot in the game. Competitive applicants the last few years those who we have invited to interview have had a 3-4 or higher in both of those categories. But again this is a pandemic year right so everything that we normally would tell someone could be out the window. We don't know yet how competitive more competitive or less competitive our applicant pool this year. I have no reason to believe that we won't be in that same that same criteria again this year so again eligible to to apply would be a 3.2 cumulative and a 3.2 science GPA and understanding that the last few years we've really interviewed students who are closer or above a 3.4 in those categories. So the question I probably get the most and definitely one that I had when I was an applicant is let's say you didn't have perfect grades in college and you kind of have like an upward slope in your grades let's say you didn't do well freshman year or sophomore year you had like a 2.1 but then you really got your act together and you got very good grades and your last 60 credits are good or let's say you had a low college GPA and then you did a post-bac or a master's and for some some way you prove that you are academically strong in the last part of your career. How would you go about emphasizing that to the admissions committee so that let's say your overall GPA is like a 3.1 but the last credits the last 60 credits were like 4.0 how would you go about emphasizing that so that your application does not get kind of sorted out just by the numbers. So if it's any comfort to an applicant we go through a tremendously detailed review of your record and we are people with what I believe to be common sense right so if we're looking at a transcript and clearly we see the GPA is on a low end any rational person would then do the secondary thing it's a let's look at this a little bit more critically and a lot of those things we can fill in the gaps on our own you know we can say okay clearly there was just one really rough semester or there was a really rough start and then they transferred schools and clearly once they got to that next school they were you know they excelled they did fantastic we can fill in some of those gaps on our own without a whole lot of explanation what tends to be more concerning from an admission side of things is when an applicant has consistently struggled in a certain content area or consistently struggled you know for example I use the example a lot of the biology classes right our program values heavily the science GPA and very often bio courses are what make up a good part of that so if your science GPA is on the lower end and we see that you struggled in all your biology classes that's hard for us to view you as competitive because our program is heavily reliant on your ability to have that foundation that's a little different than a student who has excelled in every science class but struggled in some humanities or some English coursework um or you know something in that nature where it was a little bit more outside of the sciences in a situation like this when you're applying to a program as competitive as peaceful you have to take ownership of your transcript right one of the worst things you can do as an applicant is blame a grade on somebody else it doesn't matter right we don't want to say I did poorly because the professor didn't like me or I did poorly because I you know I had it if an issue with a classmate or whatever at the end of the day we are looking at your academics right we are looking at you have the content of that class not the necessarily experience that you had in it and if you would have given it a five star review on yelp right we want to know if it's a class that you got the content content from but I think if I could if I could summarize it a little bit shorter if you have an academic history that is non-traditional that has a a blip on it or a blemish because of a life experience or because of an academic fit issue like you were out of school and that school just was not a good fit you transferred you did well after that more than likely we will know we are going to be able to see that very clearly if we can or if you're worried that it's not clear your essay is a great opportunity to explore your academic history it's a great opportunity to slide in some information about yourself and tell us a little bit more about your life path if there's something we need to know there's opportunities throughout the entire cast the application to tell us that there's a number of different prompts that you can use there's a number of different places you can fit it in also a lot of times references will make note of that if you have an academic reference that's serving as a reference that's known you academically for a long time very often they'll tell us something that we need to know they'll say very outright you know this student had a really rough first semester this student had a really rough time with chemistry or whatever what you will see from their transcript that they did wonderful after that so a lot of a lot of CASLA is built to give you opportunities to tell us more about your academic path and your academic history but if you are significantly lower than our gpa standards you need to own that transcript and you need to go back and rectify those grades because they're not going to get erased from your record at any point in time they will stay with you until you go back and rectify them that's something a lot of people don't know is if you retake a class it doesn't get replaced in CASLA you just get that as an extra class so you raise your gpa but only buy a little bit so retaking classes to do much for you yeah get that out yeah it kind of it really it's so case by case so I would question like any blanket statement on that what I would say is that if you're if you're struggling with figuring out if your gpa is competitive you want to get the guidance of a really good academic advisor whether it's at your school that you're at now or a school you're going to work with to go back and take some coursework you need a really good academic advisor because if they can help you do the math to figure out what courses are hitting your gpa the most and what you need to retake you can you can improve your gpa in a fairly short window of time if you're really strategic in how you do it um but you can't just go out and just start taking random classes and think it's going to bring everything up after a semester you really have to do some thought out calculations on it sure so basically if you do have something that affected your gpa earlier maybe in your career or even later if something happened and you can attribute a lot of your maybe lower gpa to something an event or a particular class or just something what you said is basically you need to own it you need to understand that it is your responsibility but maybe use part of the casca essay to explain that and even maybe have a reference explain that for you as well but definitely like you also said don't blame anything on a professor or on a situation just say this happened this is the reason i accept it and this is how i'm going to fix it yep i would say if you have any blemish or concern with your academic record or your academic gpas the best thing you can do is just take ownership of your transcript meaning that you're going to acknowledge that it's a low point for your application you're going to see what you can do to rectify it and then if it's if you feel it's important that we know something you're going to explain it in your application in any part whether it's in your essay whether a reference addresses it or use a supplemental part of your application a supplemental question an opportunity for you to explain that is always helpful um but the most important thing is that you own that that is on your record and that you see what you can do to rectify it okay just something real quick on that i had a d plus in jazz dance yeah so somebody with a d plus on the record can still get into pa school and still be i'm almost done with everybody has their vice like it's not being able to jazz dance has not held me back from you know success in pa school so just if you just so you know if you have a d or a c or f just one of those is not going to hold you back don't worry still apply yeah i would agree one one class is not reflective of you as an entire person or you as an entire applicant so um you know be sensitive to that understand where your weak points are academically but you know move forward do what you kind of rectify it and you know put your best foot forward i'm really glad you said that i think a lot of people are just going to breathe a sigh of relief like i said like i said we are looking for academically talented students there is no pa program in the country that does not want academically talented people um but again we make it a little bit harder for ourselves at lamoine because we also want to find people that resonate with our mission and values that want to become truly compassionate care providers in their communities so we we make it hard on ourselves to find that hidden gem um but the application process the interview process is designed for us to find the best fit so whether you're worried about getting into a certain school or you're worried about the process just remember that the process is built to help you find the program that will be the best fit for you