 Anyway, this video is mostly about my thoughts on post-bac as an option to get your GPA up. That's the only reason people really do post-bacs is because they're not competitive for whatever reason for PA school or usually medical school, and so they do these structured programs in hopes that they become more competitive. Hey guys, my name is Boris. I'm a board certified physician assistant. I've been practicing for a little bit under one year, so I graduated from PA school in 2021. And I actually decided I wanted to practice medicine in 2007. So do the math. That's almost 15 years from the time that I decided I wanted to go to medical school or PA school to the time that I actually graduated and started working as a PA. So what happened in between? Well, what happened in between was a very crappy GPA, 2.9 out of college. What else happened is poor planning, not actually getting any healthcare hours, shadowing, volunteering. With that during my undergraduate career, I graduated with zero hours, 2.9 GPA. And so that's why it took so long. It took a lot of learning, a lot of trial and error to figure out exactly what to do to get into PA school. So one thing that I did that was different than most people do is I did a structured pre-medical post-bac where you're there for two semesters and you take all upper level biology, chemistry, science courses. Some post-bacs have mentorship, shadowing opportunities, some even have agreements with medical schools. I don't think there's any with PA schools, but there's some with medical school agreements where if you do well enough in the post-bac that there's a certain number of slots slated for you in the medical school. And that's another thing. Most people do these pre-medical post-bacs for medical school. Very, very few people do them for PA school or under as practitioner school or dental or vet school or anything like that, but it does happen. In my class of, I'm estimating here it's been a long time, but of about 15 people in the post-bac, everybody was a medical or pre-medical student except for three of us. I was pre-PA, one girl was pre-dental and actually no, I think two of us. I think just me and the pre-dental person, everybody else was pre-med. So yeah, just so you know, that's your level of competition there. There's folks hoping to go to medical school, not just PA school, not vet school, not dental school. So I know they say, you know, PA school is as competitive or more competitive than medical school by the numbers. That might be true just because there's fewer spots, there's fewer PA schools, but as far as the quality of applicants, the GBA, the hours, the experiences, things like that, the caliber of pre-medical applicants at least that get in is generally higher than those of PA school applicants. Not much higher, but higher, noticeably. So that's your competition by the way. But anyway, this video is mostly about my thoughts on post-bac as an option to get your GBA up. You know, that's the only reason people really do post-bacs is because they're not competitive for whatever reason for PA school or usually medical school. And so they do these structured programs in hopes that they become more competitive instead of just, you know, retaking classes at an undergraduate institution, not in a formal post-bac setting. So long story short, what are my thoughts on the structured pre-medical post-bac, particularly as a pre-PA student? So my certificate is right there. It's on the wall. I'm obviously very proud of it, not just because it was at Cornell University, but because it actually was probably one of the biggest accomplishments of my life, obviously getting to and through PA school and, you know, passing the pants and all that. That's what that certificate signifies right there. You know, that's obviously an even bigger accomplishment, or possibly an even bigger accomplishment. But either way, the post-bac completing it and doing as well as I did is probably one of the biggest accomplishments I've ever had and the one that I'm most proud of. That's why it's one of the very few things on my wall in my office right behind me. So my thoughts on the post-bac. Very high risk, possibly very high reward, okay? Why is it very high risk? Because if it's a two-semester program, basically an entire school year, you don't get anything out of that except for the completion certificate. So it's not a certification that's going to get you certified to do some sort of a job or you can make more money. It's not a master's or even a part of a master's so you don't come away with a master's degree or anything like that. It's not really anything that gives you anything unless it makes you more competitive to PA school or medical school. And so that's why it's high risk because they're usually extremely expensive. The one at Cornell, I don't remember what the tuition was at that time. I want to say $60,000 to $70,000 a year and plus housing expenses and whatnot. So people in my program were coming away with an extra like $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 in debt. I had the GI bill pay for it so I came out scot-free, zero extra debt. But a lot of people paid a lot of money for this thing. And so when you're paying that kind of money and all you get is the potential to be more competitive for a graduate program, not an actual certificate, not any sort of degree. That's very, very high risk at a lot of expense for potentially zero reward if you don't end up getting into the program you want to get into. So it's a lot of money, it's a lot of time out of your life, it's a lot of effort. That kind of studying, that kind of effort, studying 12, 15 hours a day, not sleeping a whole lot. I slept between three and five hours a night every night of post-bac because it was so intense. That takes a toll on your body. So you're giving up money, you're giving up time, which is the most important thing you have as a person. You're giving up health just for this thing that may not actually materialize and actually give you anything. That's why I say it's high risk, high reward. So that's the negative side, that's the downside of it, the kind of negative Nancy side of it. The positive side is if you do well, if you do exceptionally well, it could possibly make you much, much more competitive for medical school or PA school and then of course, you get one of those very coveted spots, two to five percent admission rates at most of these schools, medical schools and PA schools. So it could make you very competitive for a very, very selective, very difficult to get into program. And then if that's what you actually want to do with your life, practice medicine, then of course it's worth it because then you get to go live your dream and have the life that you want and what's two semesters, what's 70 or 100 gram, what's however many gray hairs or losing your hair like I did for the glory of practicing medicine. It's nothing, at least to me it's nothing. But so that's the downside and the upside is if you didn't do very well in undergrad and then you do extraordinarily well in a structured full time pre-medical post-bac taking all higher level biology chemistry classes, especially if it's at a prestigious school, a difficult school like Cornell, that speaks volumes. If you end up getting a very high GPA and that kind of environment, you know, that's two semesters that proves to the admissions people like, wow, OK, this person is serious. They actually can handle a full time, intense science based course load. Yeah, they could probably handle our program if they can handle this, you know, GPA isn't just a measuring stick. You know, PA schools, medical schools don't want a high GPA just because they're mean and they want to turn people down and they don't want to give you a chance. It's not that. It's because the deductive portion, didactic, the classroom portion of PA school, of medical school is so unbelievably intense. So much learning has to happen so fast and you can get behind like that. Actually, I have two PA students at the PA school I went to living with me currently just renting rooms in my house on Airbnb, you know, for the next month until they get their apartment and they've only been in class, you know, in school for like two weeks and they already feel like they're behind, you know, they're like asking me about advice and whatnot and I'm like, dude, that's basically how you're going to feel your entire time in PA school. You're always behind and these people are smart, you know, very, very smart, very, very good students, excellent undergraduate GPAs, excellent hours, excellent everything because they got in and these people are falling behind and struggling and feeling like they're constantly behind because that's just how it is, you know. So that's why you have to have a very, very high undergraduate GPA because if you get there, you know, they take a chance on you and you end up failing out, you know, that's not good for you because you just wasted all that time and money, that's not good for the potential student that could have made it through the program that could have taken your place and that's not good for the school because it screws up their, you know, statistics, you know, their attrition rates, how many people end up making it through the program, how many people end up passing the pants, you know, first time around, that's very important to the schools, you know, so if they accept somebody who's not likely or who's less likely to make it to the program than maybe somebody else, that's just bad for everybody, it's bad for you, it's bad for the school, it's bad for, you know, the person that could have taken your place that could make it through the program and if some way somehow, you know, you get into the school and you, you know, you have to cheat your way through or you like use Adderall or whatever off label and you end up, you know, getting through school somehow that way, well, that's going to hurt an endless amount of patients because you're not somebody who can learn the amount of things that you have to learn to safely practice medicine, you know, so it's in nobody's best interest to accept somebody who is not likely to make it through the program, who is not of the, you know, academic caliber, no offense at all, you know, but who's not of the academic caliber that a medical program requires. It's like, it's not fair. It's not fair at all that you have to be an insanely good student that you have to memorize insane amounts of information and then regurgitate, regurgitate them on a test, just to get into this career, but unfortunately, that's just the nature of the beast. We're not paid to lay bricks. We're not paid to write code. We're not paid to build things. We're not paid to, you know, do X, Y and Z, whatever you may think to do. We are paid to memorize insane amounts of information and regurgitate those pieces of information at the appropriate time. That's what we're paid for to be good at studying, to be good at memorizing, to be good at learning things very, very, very, very fast. Okay. So why do you need a very high GPA because you have to be someone who can do that. And so that's what you have to prove to PA schools, medical schools, is that you can memorize very large amounts of information, very fast, and under a high pressure situation, such as a test, be able to, you know, pull those out of your brain and use them correctly. So that's what a high GPA tells the school that you are able to do. So if for whatever reason, like me, you screwed up undergrad, you had a horrible GPA, and my version of a horrible GPA is 2.9, you know, if you're like 1.3, I don't know what to tell you. But if it's like, you know, low enough to the point where you're not competitive, and you know, you think that you can do it, maybe a post back is an option for you because those two semesters, if you do exceedingly well, will prove to the PA school or medical school that you do have that academic ability. If you do a post post back, and you don't do well, you just wasted a year of your life, a bunch of money, a bunch of stress, a bunch of health, you know, deficits for putting all that stress on yourself, and you still got nothing out of it. You know, so high risk, high reward, guys. High risk, because you're putting in a lot of time and money for something that may not give you anything. High reward, because it may give you a career. That's all I have to say about post banks. I'll see you in the next video.