 Hey guys, my name is Boris. I'm a board certified physician assistant and the title of today's video is going to be Will PA school take a chance on me? Let's say you're not the most competitive applicant, you know, maybe your GPA is okay, but it's not great Maybe you have a decent amount of hours Maybe even have like 10,000 you've been working in the field for a long time But you know your grades aren't solid or for whatever reason you're just not terribly competitive You're below average in some category. That's important. Usually it's great It's almost always GPA, you know, just being perfectly honest. It's almost always that so What if a lot of things are in check? What if you're a good person good solid person with a lot of experience people told you your whole life? You know, you would be a great provider. You'd be a great PA, you know They'd be stupid not to let you in not to take a chance on you, you know So what if your GPA is 3.1? So what if your GPA is 2.75, you know, you'd be a great provider people love you people connect with you Well, you have such great people skills, you know, you have so much experience as an EMT or a paramedic You know, why couldn't you be a PA working in the emergency department? You know, you have so much experience You probably have more knowledge than a lot of PAs that do work in emergency medicine, you know Why wouldn't a PA school just take a chance on you? Not to be a Debbie Downer, but let me answer that question very thoroughly why exactly a school may not take a chance on you Okay, if you happen to have low grades Here's why the very very simple oversimplified easy response to that is PA school is hard. I Wish it was, you know more complicated than that, but it's it's because PA school is hard It's because the curriculum is insane. It's like it's cruel. It's it's so hard that it just it shouldn't be like You shouldn't be able to put people through that. It's that hard, you know These smartest people the best students like their whole life 4.0 students high school 4.0 students college Fantastic at studying fantastic at learning huge amounts of information Very quickly and then regurgitating them on a test Fantastic on test scores great GREs great SATs great ACTs, you know top of their class their whole life These people still struggle The smartest people, you know think about the nerdiest smartest person in your high school class in your college class Maybe you made fun of them. Maybe you didn't. I don't know but imagine that person Just having a very tough time and constantly feeling like they're behind for two whole years Every day for two whole years studying seven days a week 40 50 60 70 80 hours a week and still feeling like they're constantly behind. That's how hard it is Okay, it's not a joke. It's an insane amount of information It's an education that should should take, you know, three four years But it takes two it takes two and a half and that's part of the appeal of the PA program is You get to be done faster. You get to practice medicine faster. The cost of that is an insanely unfairly ridiculously difficult program Particularly in the didactic year when you're doing all the actual class time. Okay, so that's why PA schools in particular require a very very very high Undergraduate GPA not because they're mean not because they don't like you not because you're not a good person Not because they don't want to take a chance on you. It's because if let's say they take a chance on you and You get in and you fail You fail out the first semester you fail out after two semesters of didactic year Who was that helping? Is that helping you? No You just wasted a ton of time a ton of money a ton of hope for the future All this like energy that you put in financially physically mentally spiritually emotionally hoping thinking like oh man I got in I'm gonna be a PA. I'm gonna have this amazing career and then boom It's all taken away because you got a C plus, you know Most VP PA schools most PA schools require a 3.0 GPA most PA schools require a B or better in every single class So boom you got a 79% You're out. You're done all that money you paid all that preparation you did all that You know hope and energy that I just talked about gone It doesn't matter because the standards are the standards and the standards are high because you literally have lives At your not like disposable like in your hands, you know You have to know this stuff You have to know an insane amount of information very quickly and be able to pull it out at a moment's notice When you see something when you see a patient so medicine's not a joke and neither is PA school because Medicine's not a joke. So hence PA school is not a joke. It's very serious And they have to have to have extreme confidence in your ability to get through the school academically, okay, so that's why Unfortunately, it's not about you being a good person. It's not about you having potential. It's about hard numbers hard facts Is your GPA? Have you shown a consistent ability to take lots of Classes a full schedule of hard upper level bio and chem courses at the same time not one here to their You know part time. No full time four or five classes at a time 16 or 20 credits For a couple of semesters at least and get a very high GPA because college compared to PA school is a joke My post back at Cornell University taking 20 credits, you know at a time with a bunch of ridiculously smart kids That was a joke compared to PA school Okay, that's a lie. No, I think I studied more in post back But that's because I cared about my GPA and PA school GPA doesn't matter, you know So I think that's why I studied harder in post back Then I did in PA school, but still PA school. I felt like I was constantly behind like I just told you, you know So that's why perhaps it's not about you It's not about PA school is not wanting to take a chance on you or being mean It's because they have to have to have to have extreme confidence in your academic abilities to get through the program Because if you don't that hurts you first and foremost It hurts the person that they could have let in that might have had a better chance at getting through the program It hurts them because they're so limited spots, you know, and we need providers There's a provider shortage So anybody that has a high level of confidence that could get through the program should be in that The PA schools should give that person the spot and not take a chance on someone who has a lower likelihood of getting through the program You know, and it also hurts the school because their stats go down. They you know, maybe get less funding Whatever the case may be it's not good for them if you don't get through the program And also it hurts your potential patients because let's say you do get in You know, and you're someone who maybe should not have gotten in you're below standard for some reason and somehow you get through I don't know if you end up cheating. I don't know if you end up, you know abusing stimulants like Adderall I don't know for some reason you get through the program some way somehow and you shouldn't have been in there in the first place Then your patients suffer, you know Because you just are not the kind of person that is able to handle these things and not everybody can Okay, not it's not fair. It's totally unfair But not everybody can handle this kind of schooling in this kind of work, you know, it's not for everybody Unfortunately, so it's again, I'm gonna say this for like a ninth time. I'm a broken record. I'm sorry but the main thesis of this video is It's not PA schools or medicine being mean and not taking a chance on you because you might be a very very good person It's just that they have to have to have a very very high amount of confidence in your academic abilities And there is really no getting away from that. How do you reverse that? How do you prove even if you haven't had a good GPA? How do you reverse that and prove to PA schools or medical schools or whoever that you can study that you are good? Academically watch this video right here how to fix a bad GPA. I'll see you in the next video