 Hi everybody, my name is Boris. I'm a first year physician assistant student. And joining me today to answer all of your pre-PA questions is Ms. Teresa Ren. She's the Interim Director of Graduate Admissions at Lemoine College in Syracuse, New York. Ms. Ren, please tell the viewers who you are and what you're responsible for here at Lemoine College. Hello everyone, I'm Teresa. As Boris mentioned, the Interim Director for Graduate Admissions at Lemoine College. Our office oversees the admission process for all graduate programs at the college and our responsibility is to help candidates through the admission process, getting your application materials together, preparing for interviews, and all the things that go along with earning a spot in your program of choice. So you go through all of the applications to the EPA program and all the other graduate programs at the college and then you select who gets an interview and then ultimately who gets in. Yeah, so our office handles a lot more of the day-to-day helping you get your application to that competitive status for a program. Our faculty partners in each program are the ones that assist in creating the admission decisions and reviewing your materials for admission, depending on the program that you're applying to. So our office is really here to assist you in making the most competitive application possible. Okay, that makes a lot of sense. And can you just tell the viewers a little bit more about Lemoine's program in specific? Like is it a new program? Sure, so yeah, Lemoine's program is a really well-formatted program. It's 24 months, two years, split between the didactic year and the clinical year. Because of our college being a Jesuit institution, it draws a very specific type of applicant. So we tend to see a very large number of candidates each year. It's one of our most competitive programs. And in addition to that, we're looking for students who are not only academically talented, but have a sense of affiliation with our mission values as a college. We do often surprise students when they find out that academics and your academic rigor of study is not the only factor in the admission process. And actually a lot of students are surprised to know that, especially because of our intensive interview process, we do deny students to this program who have perfect GPAs from prestigious and Ivy League institutions because they don't share our real mission for finding compassionate care providers. 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. And just as somebody who's been through the process, I can definitely say it's not just based on numbers or just based on test scores. Honestly, from the minute I got on campus, I could just tell that they're really good at what they do and it is very well-rounded and they also just really care about you. Not to make this an advertisement for Lemoine. That's always nice to hear. You know, I've been with Lemoine just over a year now and I will tell you that really it does sell itself. There's not a whole lot of selling that has to be done. So a really strong program with really dedicated people that are trying to really be student success focused. So yeah, it's a wonderful program. So with that said, you're the interim director of graduate admissions for a very well-established PA program. So could you please describe your ideal PA candidate? Well, like every other PA program, we are looking for academically strong students, right? This is a rigorous program of studies. So we need students who are academically talented. But in addition to that, because of our Jesuit identity, we are really looking for students who have a commitment to community, who have a commitment to taking these skills and really bettering the world and bettering the communities that they're gonna serve in. So there is an element of that that has to come through the admission process. It's not gonna come from your transcript. It won't come necessarily from your CASP application, but very often it comes to the interview process or more of the written portions of your application. So for us, the ideal candidate is someone who's academically talented, who has really high quality patient care experience and a foundation to build on that experience. And someone that really identifies with our college's mission and the idea of really bettering the communities that they're gonna go and serve. So what you're saying is the CASP essay actually does matter? Sure, yeah. Again, we have a holistic review process. So we read everything that you submit to us as a PA applicant. So for us, of course that essay matters. It weighs heavier at certain parts of the admission process. So it comes in very heavily as we prepare for interviews. It comes in a little bit less heavy, but equally important earlier on in the admission process. 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 are really, I mean, we are reading every letter of recommendation. We are reading every statement you put in your CASP 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 in 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 it to turn 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 times applicants will reach out and say, you know, here's my stats and they'll give you like numbers. 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 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 Lemons. Definitely. And so one thing I want to ask right now is are there any red flags or common mistakes that you can think of that would just, I don't want to say reject an applicant. How would I say this? I usually use the word make them less competitive or pull them from the admission process. You know, those are, you know, I understand you'd want to use sensitive language because this is also very emotionally charged process for people. And many applicants are applying more than one time. So they've been through this process more than once. So it can be very emotionally draining. Exactly, that's why I'm being very careful. Yeah, yeah. So what I would say red flags, that's even a hard term to use in a holistic process because in a holistic process in theory, there shouldn't be one thing that should deter you from continuing in the process. If you're looking at things holistically, you're factoring in everything into that conversation. But some things that tend to be most concerning, a student may have our minimum requirement for patient care experience, but perhaps it's all in a low quality category. All of it is in shadowing or all of it is in more of an administrative role in a physician's office or something like that. That can be concerning, because although you have the minimum, you really haven't had any real high quality, higher decision-making type role. And it would be difficult for someone to be successful in our program without a little bit more high quality experience. So even though you may have that minimum, if all of your experience is in a lower quality category, that tends to be concerning to us early on in the process. That even if you were to air an interview spot, it may be an issue for you moving forward. Other issues with the, a lot of times students, if I get, I know this comes up later, but it's sort of like an applicant tip. Very often students do not take the time to describe their experiences in CASPA in good detail and really tell us what that role is. So they'll, for example, use a title for a job that they assume we know everything about. They might say, oh, I was in a CNA, certified nursing assistant. And although we are competent people, we know what that role generally entails. You're missing an opportunity to really showcase your experience by not describing it. Even if you think it's something really obvious. So sometimes that can be a little concerning if you look at an applicant, it almost looks like they rushed through it. They didn't really give you enough information. And we really want to get to know that experience because it's an important part of our review process. So that would be another sort of red flag is not taking advantage of the duty section and describing that experience in detail. I actually really want to cover that really briefly because I do kind of help some pre-PA students with their applications and I looked at their CASPA. And a lot of people try to stick all of that into their essay. They think that it's a narrative of their whole life. And they want to describe all their duties. And I tell them, no, that's not the place for it. The advantage of all that space CASPA gives you to describe all those responsibilities that you had in that section. So definitely take your time describing each experience. Yeah, you nailed them on the head. You have this opportunity to showcase those specific roles in so many different parts of your application that your essay should be more qualitative in nature. It should be more personal, more descriptive of you and your experience and your goals as opposed to just a listing of everything we already have on file for you. I'm so glad you said that. Yeah, and it's hard. But the duty section in that experience is, you're talking maybe three sentences if you're really creative. They don't give you an open-ended blank slate. You have to really fit it in. So just really taking your time to think about what the most important things to list for that role are is very helpful. We tend to be really good detectives in our office and with our faculty partners to say, if we don't think we know enough about that role, we can kind of table it as a group, talk through it or even sometimes reach out to an applicant and say, we're really, we're lost on this. This isn't right. But you can imagine that presents a delay and it's a little bit, we wanna see you present your strongest application up front. Just real specifically about that, would you recommend doing numbers? Let's say the patient or the applicant is responsible for 20 patients per day as a CNA on the floor. Would you put those numbers in like it's a resume? Yeah. My advice would be to focus more on the type of work you're doing as opposed to the amount in a shift, for example. So I use a great example would be an EMT. I'm less concerned with how many calls you've had as I am about the type of work that you got to do during that position. And the fact that you took vitals or you arrived on scene in emergencies or you worked alongside whatever. The quality of that experience and the description of that experience is much more important than giving the stats on it. However, if you have space and you can fit that in and it's a job that you think we're already very familiar with, it certainly doesn't hurt and it only amplifies your experience. But we can calculate that. Again, that's calculated on your CASP application as far as how long you've been there and the number of hours you've been there. So really that space is to describe more so the position itself. Okay. So the description of experience part of CASP is basically what can you do? What have you done? Like tell us what your competencies are. Yeah, exactly. Okay. So now that you've determined that an applicant is competitive by their GPA, their patient care hours, they wrote a great essay you think they're a good match for the school and you've decided to invite them for an interview. What's something that makes an applicant stand out and maybe are there any red flags during the interview process that you could think of that would make an applicant less competitive in the interview process? I talk with my colleagues at other schools a lot and we share that one of the best things an applicant can do and really an interview we can do is to be really familiar with the college that you're interviewing with. You know, we just live in such a lucky day and age where you can find so much online. You know, it's not like even when I went to college for the first time and you know, you relied on these paper brochures to come in the mail, we don't really even mail anything anymore. It's all right at your fingertips. So whether it's exploring again the college's values and mission and what they stand for, the program or specific faculty coming to your interview with as much information you can already under your belt really makes your interview more engaging because you can skip all the intro stuff. You know, you don't have to spend time talking about the basics because you've already done your research. So when that happens, that really is a standout point for us, for an applicant. They really, they came knowing a lot about us. They clearly are interested in us because they learned a lot through their research and they come with questions that are related to our program specifically. That's a great tip for applicants as if you're invited to interview to bring questions that are specific to the college you're interviewing with. As opposed to more generic questions, you know, about all PA programs or the PA profession very generally, it's really nice when an applicant can show that they've done that research, you know, on the specific school that they're interviewing with. So one thing to make an applicant stand out for your program specifically is to know about your program specifically, not just same answers to every program but know exactly when Lemoine was founded, why, things like that or like any other specific things. Yeah, we're certainly not looking for you to be a tour guide, right? So, you know, so I don't need you to know like every rote fact about the college but specifically about the mission and the values of the college. You know, we are different than a larger research institution in a big city. You know, we have a different feel. We have different pedagogy. We do things differently. So understanding that and understanding the type of program you're applying to is nice. But of course, you know, we're not gonna ask you who was the first president of Lemoine or you know, what's this building called? That stuff will teach you as you're a student with us but we want to more so just know that you understand our mission, our identity. And then again, how does that relate to your values and your goals as a clinician down the road? And so if a student does wanna research, for instance, Lemoine, your school and they have an interview at your school, where would they find those values and all those things that they should research? There, every college website, when you go on to any college website, there's almost always a call to action at the very top and it'll say either about us or info or fast facts and it'll tell you a lot about like the college's mission statement. And then you can kind of go into the program websites and start looking more specifically at the PA program websites. And very often our creditors require us to put a lot of that information on our website. So a lot of that information is available. And of course, if there's something that you really feel is important and you're having trouble finding it, the admission office at any college will be happy to guide you to that information too. Excellent. So just to kind of recap, one thing that definitely makes an applicant stand out in the interview process is knowing the colleges, the college that they're interviewing, the mission values, and then also being able to kind of dovetail those with their own values and explain why that person is a good fit for the college and the program and why the college and the program are a good fit for them as well. Absolutely, yeah, absolutely. Excellent. And so next question just off of that is, are there any common mistakes or red flags or anything during the interview process that would make somebody less competitive as an applicant? Oh yeah. I have to laugh a little bit because it doesn't matter if you're applying to PA school or you're applying to an MBA program or you want to be a teacher and you're applying to an education program. Some of these common mistakes are just found everywhere. One that I would mention is saying that the school you're interviewing with is not your first choice or that you're applying because you didn't get into your first choice or there's some illusion there that you, we weren't the ones that you were hoping to apply to. That can be a quick deterrent for a faculty interviewer to say, what do you mean? Or what we tend to see in clinically based programs is I was trying to get into med school and so now I'm just gonna try this instead. And it's like, well, everyone has a life path and there's a way to explain that life path but just to kind of unload that and make it seem as though this isn't something you really even researched and maybe you don't really even know that much about it can be a deterrent as well. So why don't you be really honest in your life path if that's what your life was and you were intending to do that, we value that, we think everybody has a good way that they got to us but you wanna be sensitive in the way you approach that topic if that's the case for you. So just with that, let's say somebody had been shooting from med school their whole life and then they discovered the PA profession during their shadowing experience and they decided, hey, this is better for me. Don't hide the fact that you want it to be a doctor at some point and now you wanna be a PA. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think that again, as a Jesuit institution having a really holistic review process we oftentimes throw around the term cure a personality, right? Care of the whole person. So we wanna know that life story. What did you do? Why did you apply there? How did you start a program and now you're not in it anymore? What happened? So we're really sensitive to the fact that everyone has a different path to getting here. Some people were born with parents that were PAs and they knew from the second they could talk that they were gonna be a PA. Other times it's not something people discover until they've been in a career and this is almost like a second career for them. So there's so many ways to come to this place. So being really transparent and honest in that but being sensitive to the fact that this is a very competitive program and we wanna make sure that if you've made the choice to apply to it that you've done the research and you understand truly what this profession is. All right, so number one on the list of things not to do is don't say that this is your second choice program or second choice career. Don't say you actually wanna do something else and you're just trying out this PA thing. Don't do that. Okay. So that's number one. Yeah, yeah, think of it like you're, I sort of joke sometimes with students and say, think of it like you're interviewing someone to be your new best friend. Would you want that person to say, oh, you're great, but like I was really hoping to hang out with Cindy down the road, but you were just like available. Yeah, it's a lot nicer if you know that person really is invested in you and they know a lot about you and they think you'd be a great best friend. So it's a silly way to think of it but kind of put it in that perspective. I think that's a good way to think of it. All right, so can you give me one more thing someone shouldn't do during the interview? During the interview or during the admission process like the full process or just at the interview? You know what? How about one of each? If you're invited to interview, it's because we believe that you could be a good fit for this program. And if you do your best and you are yourself and you do the absolute best you can do with interview questions, that's all you can worry about. That's the part that's in your control and anything else beyond that what's happening with the committee and the faculty and the analysis of all of that. There's nothing a student can do to change that. So I always say, if you've been invited to interview do your best to lose that imposter syndrome this feeling that you don't belong there for some reason. You know, we see something in you and we wanna learn more about it. So do your absolute best. You know, I've heard that before like if you're invited to the interview there's no rank order system anymore. You are possibly gonna get one of those spots. It's all about performance at the interview from now on. Yeah, a lot of times what I'll tell applicants in our information sessions is, you know, once you get to the interview it's almost like everyone's on even playing field, right? Like you've all been invited for some reason. So there's no reason to then be comparing yourself to the person next to you or the person to the right of you or left of you because you've both been invited on your same merit for whatever reason that was. So at that point it's really a matter of just being yourself and remembering that it's a two-way interview. You know, competitive programs that can feel very much like you're on the spotlight and you're the one being critiqued and in many ways you are. But we're also, you're also critiquing us. You know, you're a competitive candidate which means you have a choice of a number of programs likely in the country to explore. So the fact that you're interviewing with us is a reminder to us that, you know, we wanna also recruit you to choose us if we should offer you an invitation. So it's a two-way interview. That's a really good point. And I know one common interview question is do you have any questions for us? Yeah. The worst answer to that question is no. No. Yeah, you wanna put the other person not on the spot but you wanna know more about the program. Like what is your favorite thing about this program? Why did you choose to teach here, whoever's interviewing you? Yeah. Yeah, those are all great. I mean, there's so many different ways you could go with that question but when you're asked in an interview, do you have any questions? It can be an opportunity for you to learn more about the person interviewing you. It can be an opportunity to learn more about the college, learn more about the program or an opportunity to really turn the question back around and say, this is something in my experience that I've really valued. Does your program also value that? Does your faculty also have experience with that? So it can be an opportunity to also showcase something about yourself while getting a question answered. And many career services offices at all different colleges offer a lot of help in that. So if you're an alumni or even if you're finishing up your senior year and you wanna get some good interview practice, very often your undergraduate institution will have a career services office that can do a lot of really good prep with you on that. I will say this year is going to be different, right? We're in a pandemic year, there's just a lot of just different things that we're gonna do. So this year will be the first time that Lemoine will do interviews virtually and I would anticipate and I'm learning that most programs are leading that direction this year. So there's a whole other experience here that will be new to everybody. It'll be new to the interviewers, it'll be new to the interviewees. So something I would say is if you're doing a virtual interview, you need to understand that's very different than an in-person interview. They're just different, they feel different, they look different, the types of time that you'll have will be a little bit different to talk with people. So I would really encourage you to research that in depth, practice interviewing virtually, practice with your career services office or friends and family, colleagues, whoever you can get to work with that, because it can feel very different. And sometimes people who are very charismatic and very personable and very compassionate in person get stage fright on video. And so you need to know if that's an area that could be sensitive to you and you need to have practice that in anything else. And what's that? That's really good advice and just to add to that, just something more practical is like just the logistics of doing a video interview, I should definitely know, is sometimes things are noisy in your house and you need to think about the time that they won't be noisy. Sometimes your wifi isn't really good and you have to work around that because technical difficulties probably aren't a great excuse when you're interviewing. Yeah, you know, and again, this will be new for us too. Yeah. We, again, cure a person Alice, being sensitive, being holistic, how could you not be understanding and compassionate to someone that's got a baby in the next room or a little bit of wifi disruption? You know, certainly those things happen. That's just part of the game when you move to a virtual environment. But the things that are in your control, are you comfortable speaking to a camera? Have you practiced that? Do you know how to log in? Have you used the platform before? Where are you in your house? If you can't control what happens outside the door, can you at least control the environment that you're in, the room that you're in? You know, things like that would be helpful. Okay, so it's definitely good to practice and just kind of be ready for that environment, the online interview. Definitely. And just to watch the instructions from each college you're interviewing with very closely because not everyone will be the same. So you wanna watch and read those instructions really carefully, you know, make sure you're paying attention to detail and those confirmation emails that go out. Okay, that's a really good point. Thank you so much for saying that. I think that's really good advice for people preparing for the interview. Yeah. 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 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 means you're eligible. 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 criteria again this year. So again, eligible 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. And the same thing goes with patient care hours. So Lemoine requires a minimum of 750 direct patient care hours, patient care experience. Again, every program is different. We are not making any changes to that. So we are requiring still a minimum of 750 hours. When it comes down to reviewing those hours, obviously there's certain positions that are more high quality and certain positions that are lower quality. So there's a whole assessment in that as well. So the minimum is 750 patient care hours but is that competitive if someone comes in with 750 or do you really look at more kind of like the GPA minimum is 3.2 but 3.4 is really where you want to be. So is it the same for hours? You know, at Lemoine again in an effort to be really holistic and to give people a fair shot we are looking for 750. If you have 750 or more you're gonna be considered competitive for our program. Where the competitive nature of those hours oftentimes comes in is a student that maybe has 750 hours but only low quality hours but obviously be seen a little bit less competitive than someone that has 750 really high quality hours. So those decisions come into play as we're offering interviews as well. We're gonna do an analysis of that but if you have 750 hours you are eligible and you are competitive to apply to our program. Very often I have students say, well I only have let's say 800 hours. I have 800 hours but they're really, really good hours they're in high quality category. Should I even bother applying? Is that not enough? That's absolutely enough. We wouldn't tell you 750 if we didn't believe it. So if you have 750 and they're good hours I would encourage you to apply. Where it comes into a little bit more weight is at the interview a good amount of your interview is talking about your experience. So if your experience is limited or the scope of your experience is limited then obviously an applicant with much more experience may appear more competitive to us because they have more to talk about. They've had more time and more experience as opposed to someone that maybe only has the minimum. But again, that's your opportunity in an interview environment to showcase what your strong points are. And so that's your job as an interviewee to really take note events. And maybe I don't have as many hours as the other people here today but what do I have to bring to the table? How can I showcase my skills in another way? We accept students after interview who are lower on the hours, closer to that 750, 800 hours. And we accept students who have 30,000, 40,000, 50,000 hours. There's a whole wide span there. So if you are eligible, you are eligible. You're invited because we think you're competitive. And we want you to continue to accrue hours as much as you can while you're in the application process and in the admission process. But do not be deterred. If you have that number of 750 and you feel good that your experiences are in that high or at least moderate quality category to get you something to talk about at your interview, you are competitive and you should throw your name in the hat. I'm really glad you said that. And just one thing to kind of clarify. I think you've said a couple of times like low quality versus high quality experience. Can you give example each what's considered low and what's considered high quality patient care experience? Yep. So every college has a different way that they assess patient care experience. At LaMouine in an effort to be really holistic and to give people a good shot at being competitive, we've broken our hours into three categories. High quality hours are hours that require a lot of decision-making. They have a lot of direct patient care alongside very often physicians or physician assistants or even nurses. Those are roles like CNAs, even medical scribing, EMT work and a lot of other assistant level positions that oftentimes require a certification of some sort to be in that role. Moderate quality hours tend to be positions that are in a clinical setting but don't have the highest degree of decision-making. For example, a student may come to us with hours in a pharmacy where they were working alongside the pharmacist and working with medication. That's great. That's a clinical environment. You're learning a lot. You're working with people from different clinical settings but perhaps you're not really deciding on that path of care for that patient or you're working along with people that are making those decisions. It's a great experience but it's not gonna be at our highest level. Low quality hours tend to be more shadowing positions or positions that are really administrative in nature but in a clinical environment, being a receptionist for a doctor's office. Working in a pharmacy but really as a cashier, not working with the medicines and the physicians and the pharmacists in that way. So there's some roles that are interesting to list on your application. They certainly should be included because they've been a broad picture of your experience but perhaps they're not really at a level where you're again making decisions and you're working alongside patients directly or with clinicians directly. So again, our website outlines a number of positions that we see most commonly. And again, if you have a role that's not on that document or you are unsure and you're not sure where you land, any office of admission will be happy to help you clarify where you stand with that. So for LaMoyne specifically, it's actually on the LaMoyne College PA Program website like what is considered high quality, medium quality and low quality experience. And I'm sure it's the same for a lot of other PA programs. Okay. And so I'm really glad you said that because it kind of relates to what we talked about earlier with the CASP application, the description of experiences. You want to be thorough and very honest in your descriptions of what you actually did at your jobs. One example I want to bring up is at the place that I got a lot of my hours, I was a medical assistant and I was actually in the room getting vitals, talking to patients, getting their interviews, getting their concerns, all kinds of stuff hands on with patients. But there were also people still with a medical assistant title who literally just did computer work and never really touched or talked to a patient. So that would be two things that the title is the same but the experience is vastly different. Yes, you nailed it right on the head. Very often the job titles that many of our applicants apply with have different responsibilities even depending on where they live. A CNA in New York State may have different responsibilities than a CNA from Pennsylvania or California or Washington State. Really? So because we recruit from such a wide geographic area it's important to list those duties in each position just so that you don't leave any room for error or any room for assumption that we're going to assume we know what you did even though maybe it wasn't exactly accurate. So being as detailed as possible in your application in regard to your experiences is very important. Okay. Well, definitely thank you for that. And one thing that you brought up that I'm curious about is there any preference for local people like your college is in upstate New York. So is it, do you give any preference to people who are from upstate New York? Cause I know you recruit from everywhere we actually have someone from Hawaii in my current class as far as Hawaii or Antarctica. Internationally, we get applicants. Yeah, we get applicants, very high quality applicants from countries all over the world. It's a really cool thing to get to meet these people and talk with them and learn about their clinical experiences from where they live. It's really cool. So that said, no, Lemoine does not give preference points to people that are local or people that are from a certain area. What I will say is that students who are more familiar with our college including our own graduates tend to be able to speak about that mission and values of our college very strongly as an interview. So sometimes it's one of those things that you do have to acknowledge that if a big part of our interview process is making sure that you're a good fit for our college, the person that's studied with us before already knows everything about our school and knows that they are a good fit because they've studied with us before. So I tend to think there's a little bit less nervousness for our own graduates coming into the interview because it's a more comfortable environment for them. They already know the space, they know the people very often. So it can be a little bit less stressful I think for them as opposed to someone coming in and the first time that they're meeting us is at their interview or the first time that they're seeing the college and really experiencing it can be at their interview. But there's no preferential points for that. There's no like, oh, you're from Syracuse, you get 10 points or anything like that. In fact, we want desperately to recruit people from diverse backgrounds and diverse areas and diverse places of thought because we want our classroom experience to be diverse for our students to be reflective of the communities that you're gonna go to work in. The other thing I will say is that we do have a real emphasis more recently in our program for finding students who want to go back and work in more rural or underserved communities. It's a big part of our mission and values as a college. It's a big part of our program mission and values. So now if you go on our website, you'll see a beautiful video that talks about that. You'll see some pieces online about that. They kind of talk about the fact that we want to find people who want to go to the communities that very often others don't want to go to. Whether they're as developed or whatever, those places need compassionate care providers more than ever. So we are looking for people, especially who understand that need and who want to explore that with us. A lot of that, again, values and mission is embedded in our clinical experience. So at Lemoine, you have a number of experiences in a number of different settings, not just your hometown. We want you to go out and bridge out and see the world and see these communities that desperately need help. So that hopefully you'll feel that sense of purpose and that sense of motivation to then go and do that, go back to that community or a community similar to it and provide that help. You know, that's a piece of advice I've actually never heard before, but I think it makes a lot of sense because the whole professional's purpose is to kind of expand good, compassionate quality care to places that don't have it. It's a really great thing about being a PA and the reason we do what we do. And so a lot of colleges actually have that. If you check their mission statements, they want to expand care to rural, to urban, to just underserved communities. So it makes sense that they recruit people from those communities, but what you just said is if you have experiences in those communities, even if you don't live there, that's a really great thing. So maybe try to work at a practice that is either very urban or very rural or even in a different country. Even if you're not from that community, it will be great to have experience in that community. Oh, absolutely. Anything you can do to diversify your experience is appealing to any admission committee. They're gonna see that you've taken that effort to really expand your horizons and learn about things outside of your own bedroom window. And you've really taken that effort. But if that hasn't been an opportunity for you for whatever reason, at least acknowledging that need and understanding that need and being able to articulate it will be really beneficial to you. We understand that everyone has the affordability or the opportunity to go study abroad or to even go study in another city. These things are difficult to do. So if that hasn't been an opportunity for you, that's okay. But being able to articulate that and understand that that's a part of our program's values is important. Definitely. And just kind of practically with that, like, yeah, I'm definitely not advocating that everyone should try to go do a mission abroad. Yeah. I definitely couldn't as an applicant. But maybe if you're looking for a practice to work as a medical assistant and there's one five minutes away from your suburban home, maybe try to apply to one that's 40 minutes away in a more rural part of town. Yeah. Something like that. I think so, yeah, if it's something you can do, the admission process should never be so cumbersome to you that you're changing your entire life path around it, right? We want you to apply because this is a path that fits your life, that this is gonna fit your future goals, your values, your identity as a future clinician. But if those opportunities to diversify your experience are presented to you and you have an opportunity to try to do some even shadowing work or scribe work or whatever in a different city and a different area than you traditionally work, it only makes your experience more diverse and gives you more to talk about at that interview. Excellent. That's definitely a piece of advice I'd never heard and I think I watched every YouTube video and read every game platform when I was applying. I mean, I researched this so much and I've never heard of this advice. I think that's very powerful. And this is sort of a newer, more public initiative from a morning. So this is really within the last few months to a year that we've really started really vocalizing this as part of our identity and part of our goals as recruiting students. So again, as you go to the PA website, you'll see a beautiful video that we have now that really talks about this from a student perspective, talks about what it's like to be a student in our program, but specific to our mission and values and what we're looking for and what the students that are in our program have because we found them. So that's a great resource for students that are looking at the morning. Definitely, and thank you for that. 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 all 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 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 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? Well, 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 a secondary thing. It's, 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. We can say, okay, clearly there was just one really rough semester or there was a really rough start and then they transferred to 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 say 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 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 PA school, 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 wanna say I did poorly because the professor didn't like me. I did poorly because I, you know, I had an issue with a classmate or whatever. At the end of the day, we are looking at your academics, right? We are looking that 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 wanna know if it's a class that you got the content from. But I think if I could summarize it a little bit shorter, if you have an academic history that is non-traditional, that has 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 gonna 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 but applications 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, 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 CASPA 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 gonna 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 CASPA, you just get that as an extra class. So you raise your GPA, but only by a little bit. So retaking classes is too much for you. Yeah. Get that out. Yeah, 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 struggling with figuring out if your GPA is competitive, you wanna 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 gonna 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 improve your GPA in a fairly short window of time if you're really strategic in how you do it. But you can't just go out and just start taking random classes and think it's gonna 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 CASPA 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 gonna 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 gonna acknowledge that it's a low point for your application. You're gonna see what you can do to rectify it. And then if you feel it's important that we know something you're gonna 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. 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 it. Everybody has their vice. 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 gonna hold you back. Don't worry, still apply. Yeah, I would agree. One class is not reflective of you as an entire person or you as an entire applicant. So, you know, be sensitive to that to understand where your weak points are academically but move forward and 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 gonna breathe aside. 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. But again, we make it a little bit harder for ourselves at LaMoyne 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 make it hard on ourselves to find that hidden gem that 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. Absolutely. Thank you very much for saying that. Like I said, it's gonna help a lot of people just kind of breathe aside relief. So in the interest of time, I'm just gonna kind of ask my last question here. And that is what is the biggest piece of advice you can offer a prospective PA student or is there anything else that we haven't talked about that you just think that a prospective PA applicant really needs to know? I'd give two really good pieces of advice to anyone who's applying to PA school. The first is to connect with your admission offices at the different schools you're looking at see if they provide any opportunities to attend information sessions or to meet with admission counselors. Sometimes just having the opportunity to learn more from the college early on in the process can really help you later on. For example, our office hosts nearly weekly virtual information sessions for PA applicants where you can ask questions live of our admission counselors. So that's a great opportunity for you if you haven't explored that yet. And many colleges offer similar types of things that you can do. And the other piece of advice I would have is be cautious of any one person's opinion. I very often have applicants who will say, I'm super competitive, I have a great GPA, I have a great whatever patient care experience on paper, I'm perfect. But so and so that I've worked with at this hospital and my hometown said that I shouldn't apply because I don't have X, Y, or Z. Like what? Anything, all kinds of stuff. I just would really caution taking only one person's opinion. You are smart, you wanna be applying to PA school if you weren't intelligent person that really had a motivation to be in this profession. So use a lot of different resources. Make sure that you're getting advice from people that you trust and from people that really know what they're talking about that are able to guide you on your specific case. And most importantly, connect with the admission offices that you're looking to apply to. So you can get information direct from those sources and make sure that you're getting the information that's most applicable to the application year that you're going into. Very often I'll have applicants who are applying who will say, well, someone's who's helping me with the application and they said that you require whatever, I don't know, 500 hours of patient care experience. I said, well, no, we don't, we require 750. Well, that person that's helping them maybe applied 10 years ago or eight years ago or seven years ago, the admission requirements change. So you need to get the information from the right sources and you need to just be cautious not to let anybody deter you from something that you should be competitive because competitive for, because they have a, I don't know, they think they know. That's really interesting. I've never heard of that happening, but I can imagine if you do have some. Oh, it happens all the time. A lot of times someone who has a parent that was a PA will say, oh, you know, my mom said I should do this, this and this for the application. And sometimes it's really good advice. Sometimes it's not really good advice. It really depends. So just make sure you're getting a lot of opinions that you're using your instinct, you're using your good judgment to go from there. So that advice really goes in two different directions. Like one is if someone says that you shouldn't be a PA or you can't be a PA even though you're competitive don't take their advice. If you want to be a PA, please apply, go be a PA. It's okay. The other piece of that advice was pay attention to who's giving you advice and even if they may be graduated from the program you're applying to, definitely trust what they're saying but also verify and do your own research because like Ms. Wren said maybe what they're telling you is good advice but it was from 10 years ago and the programs have been updated maybe their requirements or something like that. So just do your own research. Absolutely. Yep. All right. Well, thank you very much for that. Thank you so much for coming on and answering everybody's questions. So I know everyone really appreciates it and it's just amazing to hear all these things said from someone who's actually the director of admissions not just some guy who's in a PA program. Oh, no, no, and this is, it's great. You know, it's great to do this for an opportunity to connect with future students and share your experience firsthand for what it was like for you and what it's like for you as a current student just to give a really authentic viewpoint on that. You know, I wish everybody good luck this application cycle and good luck. All right, and with that said we're gonna end the interview and thank you again Ms. Wren for coming on. Everybody should give her a nice round of applause virtually of course and yeah, thank you very much. Thank you so much for watching this video. If you learned something new or if you have any questions about your PA school application please post a comment below. If you know someone who's considering PA school or applying to PA school please share the video with them and just as a personal favor for me please subscribe to the channel. Please like the video. And if you have an idea for a future video or there's somebody else who want me to interview just go ahead and post a comment and I'll see you in the next one.