The Physician Assistant Life - Everything Physician Assistant. A Podcast for Practicing PAs, Pre-Physician Assistants and PA

Stephen Pasquini PA-C
  • 4.5 (40)
  • Education

The PA Life – Physician Assistant Podcast

Episodes

  1. 08/22/2017

    Applying to PA School with a Low GPA: Admissions Directors Answer Your Questions

    Applying to PA School with a Low GPA: Admissions Directors Answer Your QuestionsHow to Get Into PA School With a Low GPA PA school administrators from ten top-ranking PA programs answer your questions on how to get into PA school with a low GPA. A low GPA is probably the hardest area to improve. This makes sense – it was years in the making, and can’t be undone without time. It can take about a year in advanced level science courses to bump a high 2.x GPA over 3.0. The lower your GPA, and the more classes you’ve taken, the longer it will take to reflect improvements in your academic record. Here is the part almost nobody says out loud, and it is the reason I still write about this every year. In PAEA's most recent national student report, the class that actually matriculated into PA school had a mean undergraduate GPA of 3.6 and a median of 3.7. Those are the numbers everyone quotes at you. But read one line further down that table: the range ran from 2.2 to 4.0, and the 10th percentile sat at 3.3. (Source: PAEA By the Numbers, Student Report 6, published January 2025, 2022 matriculating class, n = 3,159.) Somebody with a 2.2 got a seat. That is a fact, and I want you to hold onto it on the bad days. I also need you to hold onto the other half of it, because I am not going to lie to you: they were the exception, not the plan. Nine out of ten students who got in walked in with a 3.3 or better. So the honest answer to "can I get into PA school with a low GPA?" is yes — and it is going to cost you more work than it costs the person sitting next to you. Let's talk about exactly what that work is. What is your CASPA calculated GPA? Before you do anything it is important that you have this number in hand. You can view your CASPA GPAs once your application has been Verified. You can read about that here on the CASPA website. And if your application is not verified yet, or you are a year out and just want to know where you stand, do not guess. Your school's GPA and your CASPA GPA are usually not the same number. CASPA recalculates everything: plus and minus grades count, quarter hours get converted to semester hours, and every attempt at a repeated course counts. Retaking a class does not erase the D. It averages with it. So run your real numbers first. I built a free CASPA GPA Calculator that gives you your science, non-science, BCP and overall GPA the exact way CASPA does it — quarter conversion, repeats, +/- grades and all. No signup, no cost, about ten minutes with your transcript in front of you. Do that before you read another word of this post. Every single decision below depends on knowing your real number instead of the one in your head. When I applied to PA school I had a cumulative GPA of 2.9, a result, probably like many of you reading this, of some early misdirection. I got my act together in the second half of my undergraduate career, finishing on the Dean's list with a 3.8 GPA. But my overall GPA did not fully recover and was lower than the 3.0 minimum of the school where I was accepted. Indeed this is not the norm, but you should not let a lower than average GPA stop you from finding a path to PA school if this is truly your passion. Fortunately, you are not alone. Every year PA programs from across the country come together to answer questions posed by aspiring Pre-PA students like yourself. Not surprisingly, questions regarding PA school admissions and low (or lower than average) GPA topped the list. Below are the answers to these questions. PA school GPA requirements: every program’s minimum, next to what its accepted class actually averaged For years this spot held a hand-typed list of “20 programs that accept low GPAs.” It went stale, and worse, some of the numbers in it were flat-out wrong — so I tore it out. What follows is built live from the PA School Finder directory, verified against each program’s own admissions pages, CASPA and the ARC-PA. It rebuilds itself every time this page loads, so it cannot go stale on you again. How to read it: sort by Min cGPA to find the programs whose floor you clear. Then read straight across to Avg accepted cGPA. The distance between those two columns is the honest measure of your climb — and it is where your patient care hours, your upward trend and your essay have to do the heavy lifting. Loading the live PA school GPA table… Loading the live table… [wpcode id="56154"] Views: hce · gre · gpa · pce · tuition · prereq · pance100. THE DIV MUST CONTAIN TEXT ("Loading the live table…"). The classic editor (TinyMCE) STRIPS empty divs on save — Stephen editing a post title deleted the config div once (2026-07-15). The engine overwrites the fallback text when it renders. Styled to match thepalife.com: Roboto, black headings, brand green #009946 links/accents. HONESTY RULES: · hce view: the main table is ONLY programs that explicitly require 0 patient care hours. Programs with NO PUBLISHED minimum are counted and listed separately — a blank is not a zero. · gre view: only verified "Not Required" makes the table; "Check Program" listed separately. · PROBATION/PROVISIONAL badged on every row. Counts computed live, never hardcoded. · ItemList JSON-LD injected for search engines. --> .palife-live-table{font-family:Roboto,-apple-system,sans-serif;color:#0a0a0a;margin:18px 0;font-size:16px} .palife-live-table .plt-count{font-size:.9em;color:#555;margin:0 0 10px} .palife-live-table .plt-ctl{display:flex;flex-wrap:wrap;gap:8px;margin:0 0 14px} .palife-live-table .plt-ctl input,.palife-live-table .plt-ctl select{font:inherit;font-size:.9em;padding:8px 10px; border:1px solid #ddd;border-radius:4px;background:#fff;color:#0a0a0a} .palife-live-table .plt-ctl input{min-width:200px;flex:1} .palife-live-table .plt-scroll{overflow-x:auto} .palife-live-table table{width:100%;border-collapse:collapse;margin:0} .palife-live-table th{text-align:left;font-weight:700;color:#000;font-size:.82em;text-transform:uppercase; letter-spacing:.03em;padding:10px;border-bottom:2px solid #009946;white-space:nowrap;cursor:pointer; -webkit-user-select:none;user-select:none} .palife-live-table th:hover{color:#009946} .palife-live-table th.plt-sort-asc:after{content:' ▲';font-size:.8em;color:#009946} .palife-live-table th.plt-sort-desc:after{content:' ▼';font-size:.8em;color:#009946} .palife-live-table .plt-prenote{margin:0 0 14px;padding:12px 14px;background:#f4f9f6;border-left:4px solid #009946; font-size:.86em;color:#333;line-height:1.55} .palife-live-table .plt-prenote b{color:#0a0a0a} .palife-live-table .plt-prenote a{color:#009946} .palife-live-table td{padding:9px 10px;border-bottom:1px solid #eee;font-size:.92em;vertical-align:top} .palife-live-table tbody tr:nth-child(even){background:#fafafa} .palife-live-table td a{color:#009946;font-weight:500;text-decoration:none} .palife-live-table td a:hover{text-decoration:underline} .palife-live-table .plt-badge{display:inline-block;font-size:.68em;font-weight:700;padding:1px 5px;border-radius:3px; margin-left:6px;vertical-align:1px} .palife-live-table .plt-prob{background:#fdeaea;color:#a4262c} .palife-live-table .plt-prov{background:#fff5e6;color:#8a5a00} .palife-live-table .plt-more{margin:12px 0 0;text-align:center} .palife-live-table .plt-more button{font:inherit;font-size:.88em;padding:9px 18px;border:1px solid #009946; background:#fff;color:#009946;border-radius:4px;cursor:pointer;font-weight:500} .palife-live-table .plt-more button:hover{background:#009946;color:#fff} .palife-live-table .plt-note{margin-top:14px;padding:12px 14px;background:#f4f9f6;border-left:4px solid #009946; font-size:.86em;color:#333;line-height:1.55} .palife-live-table .plt-note b{color:#0a0a0a} .palife-live-table .plt-note ul{margin:8px 0 0;padding-left:18px;max-height:220px;overflow:auto} .palife-live-table .plt-note li{margin:3px 0} .palife-live-table .plt-note details{margin:8px 0} .palife-live-table .plt-note summary{cursor:pointer;font-weight:600;color:#0a0a0a} .palife-live-table .plt-foot{margin-top:10px;font-size:.76em;color:#777;display:flex;justify-content:space-between; flex-wrap:wrap;gap:6px} .palife-live-table .plt-foot a{color:#009946} .palife-live-table .plt-msg{padding:22px 0;text-align:center;color:#555} @media(max-width:640px){.palife-live-table .plt-ctl input{min-width:0}} (function(){ var EP='https://www.paschoolfinder.com/wp-json/pa-ssot/v1/csv'; var boxes=[].slice.call(document.querySelectorAll('.palife-live-table[data-view]')) .filter(function(c){return !c.dataset.pltDone;}); if(!boxes.length)return; boxes.forEach(function(c){c.dataset.pltDone='1';}); function parseCSV(t){var rows=[],row=[],f='',q=false; for(var i=0;i"]/g,function(c){return{'&':'&','':'>','"':'"'}[c];});} function fmtDate(iso){var m=/^(\d{4})-(\d{2})-(\d{2})$/.exec(iso||'');if(!m)return''; return ['Jan','Feb','Mar','Apr','May','Jun','Jul','Aug','Sep','Oct','Nov','Dec'][+m[2]-1]+' '+(+m[3])+', '+m[1];} function nameLink(r){var badge=r.acc==='Probation'?'PROBATION' :r.acc==='Provisional'?'PROVISIONAL':''; return (r.url?''+esc(r.name)+'':esc(r.name))+badge;} function loc(r){return [r.city,r.state].filter(Boolean).join(', ');} /* A DEADLINE IN THE PAST IS NOT ADVICE (2026-08-04). On that date 83 of 349 accredited programs had a CASPA deadline that had already gone, and every table here still printed it as though a student could still apply. Computed against TODAY IN THE BROWSER on purpose: if this depended on the weekly CSV push it would be wrong for up to six days at a stretch, every week, forever. */ var TODAY_ISO=(function(){var d=new Date();return d.getFullYear()+'-'+String(d.getMonth()+1).padStart(2,'0')+'-'+String(d.getDate()).padStart(2,'0');})(); function dlPast(r){return /^\d{4}-\d{2}-\d{2}$/.test(r.dlRaw||'')&&r.dlRaw'+esc(r.dl)+'CLOSED this cycle' : esc(r.dl); } function liList(arr){re

  2. 11/30/2012

    How NOT to be a PA Sellout: The Physician Assistant Vocation

    How NOT to be a PA Sellout: The Physician Assistant Vocation So many PAs I meet are unsatisfied with their careers. I have met many a PA or NP who has become entangled in a web of profit-driven, incentivized-by-the-numbers healthcare. They have forgotten why they became a physician associate (PA) to begin with. We all become PAs with a great desire to help people, but it often doesn't end that way. PA Jekyll and Mr. Hide The transformation happens sometime around graduation... Once the salary figures start being tossed around. It's amazing how our priorities can shift so rapidly. We tend to focus on competition, numbers, earnings, and benefits, sometimes neglecting the true worth of our abilities in helping those who rely on us. We succumb to social pressures, and after a while, when money and profit run dry, we are left unsatisfied. This level of dissatisfaction is measured by the degree to which you have succumbed to another pressure in life: Social Pressures to Conform This counterforce can be very powerful, and you want to fit into a group. Unconsciously you feel that what makes you different is embarrassing or painful. Your parents often act as a counterforce as well.  They may seek to direct you to a career path that is lucrative and comfortable. If these counterforces become strong enough, you can lose complete contact with your uniqueness, the reason you went into medicine, and who you really are. Your inclinations and desires become modeled on those of others.  This can set you off on a very dangerous path, and you end up choosing a career path that does not really suit you, your desire and interest slowly wane and your work suffers for it. You come to see pleasure and fulfillment as something that comes from outside of work. Because you are increasingly less engaged in your career, you fail to pay attention to changes going on in the field, and you fall behind the times and pay a price for this. At moments when you must make important decisions, you flounder or follow what others are doing because you have no sense of your inner radar or direction to guide you. You have broken contact with your destiny, the one you aspired to when you started PA school. At all costs, you must avoid such a fate!  The process of following your life task all the way to mastery can begin at any point in life. The hidden force that drove you into a career in medicine, into this career as a physician assistant, is always in you and ready to be engaged. Three Steps to Realign With Your Goals as a Physician Assistant First: Connect or reconnect with your inclinations. The first step is inward, search the past for your inner voice, clear away the voices that confuse you such as parents or peers, and look for an underlying pattern, a chord to your character that you must understand as deeply as possible. Second: With this connection established, you must look at the career path you are already on or about to begin. The choice of this path or redirection of it is critical. To help in this stage, you will need to enlarge your concept of work itself. Too often, we make a separation of this in our lives. There is work, and then there is life outside of work, where we find real pleasure and fulfillment. Work is often seen as a means for making money so that we can enjoy that second life that we lead.  Even if we derive some satisfaction from our careers, we still tend to compartmentalize our lives in this way.  This is a depressing attitude because, in the end, we spend a substantial part of our waking life at work. If we experience this time as something to get through on the way to "real pleasure," then our hours at work represent a tragic waste of the short time we have to live. Instead, aim to see your work as part of something more inspiring as part of your "vocation."  Your work is connected deeply to who you are, not a separate compartment in your life.  If you do this, you will develop a true sense of vocation! Third: You must see your career or vocational path more as a journey with twists and turns rather than a straight line. Choose a position that corresponds to your inclinations. Make a living and establish some confidence. Once on this path, you will discover other side paths. Eventually, you will hit upon a field that suits you perfectly. You will recognize it when you find it because it will spark that childlike sense of wonder and excitement. It will feel right. Once found, everything will fall into place, you will learn more quickly and deeply, and your skill level will reach a point where you will be able to declare your independence from within the group you work for and move out on your own. In a world in which there is so much we cannot control, this will bring you the ultimate form of power.  You will determine your circumstances, and you will be the PA you wanted to be when you first visualized the stethoscope hanging around your neck. Whatever you do, don't be a PA sellout.  Be who you know you are called to be deep inside. If we do this, we can transform the PA profession from just a career to the one place in medicine where patients, not profits, come first. We transform our profession into a vocation the way it should be! The post How NOT to be a PA Sellout: The Physician Assistant Vocation first appeared on The Physician Assistant Life.

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