 What's up you guys the Donald welcome back to my channel so I am really excited because I got this question and I wanted to talk to you guys about it because it's kind of close to my heart as well since I was also technically an international student when I went to PA school so that's what this video is going to be about today. If you are new to my channel welcome if you're not thank you guys so much for bearing with me as I come through this whole like move and just getting settled. Still work in progress but you know we're getting better so thank you guys so much for you know rocking with me and riding with me. Alright you guys so I had the question that was posed to me by one of my subscribers that stated if they are a masters trained foreign student can they apply to PA school? Now I mean technically like that's a really simple answer it's it's a yes I mean anyone can apply to PA school right so Anise of mine who has already graduated or whatever can apply to PA school but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to get in so I feel like the more appropriate question is as a foreign trained graduate or a medical student or physician if you do apply to PA school what are your chances of getting in or can you get into PA school not really can you apply and that answer is a little bit more convoluted however it's still pretty simple and it's it's yes you can get into PA school but you're gonna have to take a little bit of an extra step other than your you know your U.S. trained graduate. I wanted to point out just a few points for you and things to look at so that when you are applying to PA school you're giving yourself the best opportunity and the best chances so as a foreign international student you know you your path to PA school may not be as easy it may be windy but at the end it will all be worth it and like this is like a testament like from myself as an international student you know there were things that I had to look at and situations that I had to make sure that were in place so that I could ensure that hey I'm not wasting my money because it's expensive to apply to PA school so as a foreign trained international grad or foreign trained student a lot of coming into the United States obviously a lot of the U.S. schools say that you have to have graduated from a U.S. regionally accredited program now what does that mean right what does it mean for you to have graduated from a U.S. from a U.S. regionally accredited program it says regionally accredited college or university means an institution of higher education accredited by one of the following regional accreditation associations so there are six of them the first one is the middle states association of colleges and schools the second one is the new england association of schools and colleges third is the higher learning commission formerly part of the north central association of colleges and schools the fourth is the northwest accreditation commission and northwest commission on colleges and universities the fifth is the southern association of colleges and schools and the sixth is the western association of schools and colleges now these various different associations give accreditation to the schools in their area so obviously a western would deal with like schools in the western part of the country the middle states would deal with schools in the middle part of the country and so on and so on so if you have gone to a private school a private undergraduate program or anything like that like there are ways that you can go ahead and see if your school was accredited so now let's say like you came from you know another country as i did and you are now like applying to school in the united states obviously for the most part you would have gone to a regionally accredited program but there's a way for you to check that you can go to www.ca.org back slash search hyphen institutions i will leave a link for that and there you can just type in your institution's name and it will let you know if it's been accredited and by which accreditation body it has been accredited from now as a foreign graduate you're not really going to have that your school is not necessarily going to be accredited by one of these regionally regionally accredited schools so you have to take the extra step to go ahead and make sure that you're still meeting the requirements now part of that means hey did you go to a school where english is not the primary language or are you from a country where english is in the primary language um and that might very well be true and so if that's the case then you have to take the english as a second language exam um for lots of these pa programs just to make sure that you are proficient in um you know in english because they're going to be teaching you in english so that is one thing you have to be mindful of how you would go about figuring out first and foremost if you're even eligible to apply is by google searching it or by coming to like any type of web media based thing where it tells you like what are the schools that accept international students so you just google you know type that into google and you will like see a list of pa schools populate that accept international students now some of these lists may not always be updated so again you have to go a step further and make sure that once you go to the school's website they do indeed accept international students now as an international student you can be like me where you know i am still technically an international student because i'm not a us citizen however um i had been in the united states and so therefore english was my primary language so there were like different like kind of quote-unquote loopholes i guess you could say that didn't necessarily apply to me that i would not necessarily have to go through as some of you international students who are literally coming from you know trinidad over to the united states to try to study in the states so with respect to that you have to go into the program you need to talk to some of these program directors and admissions counselors to make sure that your meeting requirements be it having you know some type of visa or residency or whatever the case may be to actually apply even though you are not a us citizen so what does that international student status look like for that particular program that's important to know um and you can find all of that on their websites or by calling and then apart from that now you have to see like what are the requirements for the student do i need to take an extra exam do i need to now get all of my transcripts kind of like i guess you could say looked at by one of their the bodies that they have to kind of see like what your courses translate to with the school's courses and so i just wanted to read like an excerpt from a school that accepts international students but they ask you guys to do a couple other things just to ensure that you're meeting the standards it says after completing the CASPA application this is University of Maryland Baltimore County um i think it's for Anne Arundel Community College PA program so it says umb may request official evaluations for all foreign transcripts for all higher level institutions attended evaluated by one of the following organizations so there are a few organizations that can evaluate your foreign transcripts to see what matches with what prerequisite requirement okay um one of those is the world education services which is just WES and you can find that at ws.org or the educational credential evaluators which is ec and you can find that at ec.org so with respect to that you would then get your transcripts send them to these evaluation websites um they do cost so you would you know pay whatever the fee is uh and then have your transcript evaluated now there are other um evaluation websites that you know evaluate foreign transcripts however your school the school that you're applying to might not necessarily um accept these other ones like umb list these two so these are the ones that they go with now if your school doesn't list these two in a list someone else uh then you have to do the the the one that they list i mean because you're trying to get into that program so again it takes a little bit of extra like research and work but it will be worth it so after you've done all of that after you ensure that you know like hey your transcripts are actually like meeting requirements you may still need to take like some extra courses because maybe for your master's trained or your undergraduate trained degree in the foreign country that you're coming from you didn't necessarily have to do some of the prerequisites for the particular program that you're you're applying to and so that's where you would have to go a step further and then do that class but uh there are schools that allow you to have one to two prerequisite requirements outstanding so again you just kind of have to look at the website the school's website and look at that information and see if um those school the school that you're applying to allows you to do that now if that's the case then you're fine and you can apply immediately if not obviously you'll have to like kind of just go ahead and make sure that you're looking at your timeline when you want to apply be it this year or next year um but it's really up to you now with that being said obviously now our world has changed drastically in the last year the last few months COVID has really changed the way that schools are teaching and the way that they're accepting students and it may be uh an extra step as an international or foreign student like how how does that play how does COVID play a role in how you're actually going to get accepted or apply or get an interview and so those are things that you actually have to think about um because I don't know if you're coming directly from another country or if you're already going to be here but you're still considered international like I was but those are questions that you have to kind of source out as well before you spend that money to apply to PA school so it's important for you to do your research one place that you can do such research and find out more information on getting into PA school is by going to get that to university or by coming right here and subscribe me to my channel so go ahead and hit that subscribe button but again you can also just google things and go to school's website and talk to the admissions counselors that's really um I think your best bet when it comes to kind of doing some of this kind of back end research is by going ahead and making sure that you are meeting the requirements by getting it from the source so please um you know if you are interested in becoming a PA if you're serious about it and you really want to make sure that you're putting your best foot forward then do your research um you know go to the various different resources out there um and then you can go ahead and go to the school's website and make sure that you're connecting and lining up with the requirements that they have in place for you so that is it I mean hopefully this was an answer to your question um I wanted to address it because again like I said I was an international student and so it's kind of close to my heart um but if you have any other questions for me please leave them in the comment section below it helps my channel out a lot hit that like button because that helps my youtube algorithm guys I really do look at your comments and try to like garner um answers and videos for you all from those questions and comments that you're leaving so please leave a comment go to get that see university dot com and sign up right now so that you can know exactly can be the first to know when my new platform drops it will be dropping this fall so I'm really excited about that um continue to stay tuned and please follow me on instagram at adana loupier thank you guys so much for watching please stay safe out there I will talk to you guys next time