When considering all the options for funding your PA education, scholarships reign supreme. With scholarships, you don't have to worry about accruing interest, assessing grace periods, or navigating potential forgiveness programs.  Instead, scholarship awards pay for your educational expenses in advance — without any financial cost to you now or in the future.  Recently, we've explored PA-specific scholarship opportunities, including:  full-ride scholarships that cover all your PA training expenses and offer stipends for living expense state-based and school-ba ..read more

Recently, we explored opportunities for PA school scholarships grounded in the future.  These included chances to trade financial support for years of service, including five full-ride scholarships. We also examined how populations you hope to work with or specialties you hope to work in can provide further funding for your PA education.  If you haven't yet caught that article, be sure not to miss it.  To build upon that foundation, let's look at location-based scholarship prospects next. Because where you've been, where you are, or where you're going may offer new possibil ..read more

Many aspiring PAs would rather not think too deeply about the cost of attending PA school. Though you may try to choose programs as wisely as possible with cost in mind, the average applicant grins and bears the need to take on student loans, pushing the burden to a future, fully employed version of themselves able to pay back whatever they borrowed for their education.  Honestly, figuring out an alternative can feel exhausting when you're already overextended preparing for PA school or already in the thick of training as a PA student.  However, funding your PA education exclusiv ..read more

In PA Practice Briefs, I share an inside peek at my real-life PA practice and the issues that arise monthly. Here's what has been coming up lately.  For the first 12 years of my PA career, I worked primarily in outpatient medical oncology. Aside from side gigs to pay off my student loans and the occasional moonlighting shift with my department's inpatient unit, my PA work involved longitudinally caring for patients. I would assess my patients as they received chemotherapy every few weeks. If they were among those who were curable, I would continue to see them every few months after CT ..read more

The latest CASPA application cycle is just around the corner. Though a few programs with late-cycle deadlines are still accepting applications, the current cycle will close in the coming weeks. When it does, CASPA accounts temporarily pause, during which you won't have access to alter any information within your application portal until the new cycle officially opens.  However, as we near this between-cycle period, there are a few simple steps you can take now to help ease the start of the new application season and hit the ground running once it's upon us.  Even if you're applyi ..read more

Most PA school applicants or near applicants have a top-choice program in mind. The one PA program that, should you get into it, would have you happily giving up all other options.  A school may be at the top of your list because its location means you wouldn't have to relocate, or it's somewhere you've always wanted to live. Perhaps it beats out other potential choices because of its lower cost, which could help you avoid student loans or at least lower their total.  Maybe it's a top pick by default because getting in would help you avoid the need for additional prereq courses o ..read more

If you've heard anyone talk about being a PA student or are (or have been) one yourself, I'm sure you've heard the analogy before. Learning as a PA student feels like drinking from a fire hose.  Though the saying may be overused and feel over-worn, the concept it conveys remains true. PA training entails the delivery of more information than any one person can absorb in a mere couple of years. But many PA students still feel compelled to try.  When you are fascinated by the material and eager to learn, the instinct to understand and retain as much knowledge and as many skill ..read more

Welcome to the latest PA Practice Brief, where I provide a frontline glimpse of my clinical work as a PA. In these Briefs, I share details on newly arising topics or recurrent themes in my PA career that might be relevant to your own future work and deliver an inside look at issues future PAs might be curious about or may not have known to consider.  This past week, I lost my hospital ID badge. I held out hope it would find its way back to me, knowing that while replacing the photo ID might be simple, getting the additional three access passes attached to it would prove to be a he ..read more

Questioning whether you're ready to apply to PA school is an exercise that nearly every aspiring PA participates in, especially as the application cycle grows nearer.  While you might dream of a scenario where abundant patient care hours, prerequisite classes that are fully completed (and aced), and valuable experiences help your application shine, few candidates apply with what they'd consider to be a flawless application.  Consequently, most PA school prospects find themselves wondering about the right time to apply to PA school. Do you try to get more experience or take on a f ..read more

The condensed, fast-paced nature of PA training is a distinctive feature of the career. With most PA programs, you can be in and out, have your master's degree, and be ready to practice in just over two years.   If the relatively short runway to becoming a medical provider has influenced your pursuit of a PA career, taking on a postgraduate residency or fellowship may seem counterintuitive.  Or perhaps you fell in love with a specialty as a PA student, and having some extra time dedicated to training in that area sounds pretty great.  However, if you'd like to avoid di ..read more