ISSUE 6

By Jim Pearson and Dr. Scott Massey

Welcome back to PA Admissions Corner. In the last issue, we finished a four-part series on controlling your admissions process, in which we set out several ways to streamline and maintain your PA admissions from the beginning of the cycle to the very end. As we move forward, let’s take a look at the overall industry, how it has changed in recent years, and some statistics about PA programs and PA student population that may surprise you.

So Many Opportunities!

Without the professional training provided at almost 260 PA educational institutions across the nation, close to 10,000 people per year would be unable to become physician assistants. The delivery of healthcare across the nation would suffer. Every year, well over 27,000 candidates apply to PA programs across the United States in hopes of being chosen for an interview, then selected as a student to be trained as a physician assistant.

We often say that with this excellent number of applicants compared to the overall seats available, no PA program should have unfilled seats. Yet it routinely happens that on the first day of classes, cohorts have empty seats where qualified students could be learning— and paying tuition—which should never be taken for granted when it comes to maintaining a great PA program. Why does this happen? How are PA programs nationwide failing to take advantage of this growing graduate healthcare market? These are the puzzles we’re here to solve.

Growing Graduate Health Care Market?

You bet it is, for now. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, employment of physician assistants is projected to grow 31% from 2019 to 2029. Compare that to the projected growth of all occupations in the U.S. economy combined (only 4%) and it’s easy to see that PA careers are skyrocketing.

“Well, obviously!” you might be thinking. “With the aging baby boomer population, the healthcare industry is without a doubt bigger than it ever has been.” That’ true , but consider this: PA careers’ projected growth of 31% outpaces the projected growth of healthcare diagnosing/treating practitioners (10%) three times over. It’s not simply the baby boomers who create the demand, either. Increasing rates of chronic obesity-related illnesses like diabetes are upping the need for preventative and maintenance healthcare.

The benefits of training and employing PAs are apparent in this climate.

• PAs can be trained more quickly and at less cost than physicians.
• PAs fit well into the team-based healthcare provision models.
• States are constantly expanding the autonomy of PAs and the procedures PAs are allowed to perform.
• With a median annual salary of $112,260, PAs have well-paid and rewarding careers.

A brief overview of current market analysis clearly shows that, like many graduate medical educational industries, the PA educational industry has experienced significant growth over the last 15 years. That growth rate will continue for years to come, presenting new opportunities.

Those opportunities will come with challenges though; the number of PA programs is increasing with this demand, so the number of your program’s competitors is also on the rise. More opening seats mean more competition for applicants to fill them. In some areas of the country, applications per school have started to drop.

More about Your Applicants

Here are some interesting statistics about PA program applicants. As you review these, take note of certain populations or groups that your program can reach out to. Look for areas in which new focus and opportunities can be created.

PA applicants have an average non-science GPA of 3.50 and an average science GPA of 3.30. Are you surprised that the average isn’t higher? Actually, high GPA often doesn’t mean what we assume. We’ll discuss this further in our upcoming issue on grade inflation.

Matriculant students have an average non-science GPA of 3.71 and an average science GPA of 3.45.

The top ten majors of PA program applicants:

• Biology
• Health Science
• Psychology
• Biological Sciences
• Exercise Science
• Kinesiology
• Biomedical Science
• General Studies
• Nutrition
• Other

Did you know?

• The median age of applicants is 25, and the average age of first-year students ranges from 25 to 28.
• In 1980, 36% of Certified PAs were women. Today, 71% are women.
• About 72% of PA students are single.
• Over 70% of PA students are White.
• 95% of applicants admitted to PA programs had previous experience in healthcare.
• The average number of PA programs an applicant will apply to is EIGHT!

The Most Influential Noncognitive Factors Affecting PA Admissions

1. Faculty interactions. It’s not the first or last time you’ll hear us say this. High-touch communication is vital, and an engaged faculty is exciting to applicants and to matriculating students.
2. Career motivation. Motivation is a more important factor in academic success than almost any other. Motivation comes from inside, but there are ways that your program can stoke those fires and keep them burning bright.
3. Knowledge of the PA profession. Knowing what to expect ahead of time keeps students prepared for the rigors of a medical study program.
4. Maturity and professionalism. These are traits that our recommended interviewing techniques (behavioral and group interviewing) can help your program gauge ahead of time (see Issue 4 of PA Admissions Corner for more information) so you don’t inadvertently get stuck with students who won’t be able to perform, or those who can’t handle the pressure and drop out.

Why So Many Unfilled Seats?

This is where we come in. In our years of studying PA programs across the country, we’ve learned where the biggest problems lurk when it comes to filling cohorts with qualified students. There are always exceptions to the rule, but the problems are usually neither with the quality of the applicants nor the quality of the PA programs, but in a fundamental breakdown of applicant processing and communication outside and inside the program.

These breakdowns happen in several places:

1. Between the applicants and the program. This is seen in a lack of high-touch prompt communication with applicants, which is needed to build a relationship of trust and mutual interest. Is your program quickly reaching out to its best applicants?
2. Between your program’s admissions process and your program’s enrollment. Is your program suffering from a bogged-down, understaffed, disorganized admissions process? Are you losing great applicants because other better-organized programs are getting to them first?
3. Between your program’s admissions team and your program’s mission. Does your program lack an updated and understandable rubric for consistently scoring applicants to find the ones that most closely align with your program’s mission and values? Do you have a system in place to ensure that you’re capturing the applicants your program wants the most? Are you wasting time chasing applicants who have little desire or intention to attend your program?

If you have been following our first Issues of PA Admissions Corner, you’ll know that we jumped right into providing solutions for these communication breakdowns, and naturally, there is much more to come. We are pleased to share what we have learned with PA admissions directors and their admissions programs.

We, too, have a mission. Ours is to help you work with the prospects who work with you, those who have the highest probability of enrollment and matriculation in your PA program. And remember, we don’t want or expect every PA program to follow a cookie-cutter pattern. We want your program to play to its strengths in every step of the process. Our goal is no more empty seats!

NEXT TIME…
In the next Issue of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll begin our four-part series on Struggles in Admissions Practices, in which we cover specific issues that plague every program:

• Grade inflation in high schools/undergraduate programs
• Lack of didactic preparedness among applicants
• Competition from other programs
• How to assess your competitors and find your program’s strengths

To your admissions and program success,

Jim Pearson, CEO
Exam Master

Dr. Scott Massey Ph.D., PA-C
Scott Massey LLC

ISSUE 5

By Jim Pearson and Dr. Scott Massey

We’re glad to welcome you back to another edition of PA Admissions Corner. In Issue 4, we tackled the ways you can make the most of your applicants’ interviews while keeping a competitive edge. The final step in the process is consistently ranking applicants so you can decide, with the most efficiency and the least bias which are the ideal fit for your program. The control and evaluation of your admissions data determine your admissions department’s long-term outcomes.

Ready to Choose?

Though this is our “final” piece about program control, it is by no means the “final” step in choosing ideal applicants. In fact, this aspect takes place during the entire Admissions Cycle. The process of ranking applicants begins as soon as candidates applications arrive, when you must decide the most important information to track to meet your enrollment goals. Today we’ll look at three different areas where you can maintain control of the ranking rubric to ensure that the best applicants are selected for your program:

1. Initial screening process
2. Post-interview evaluations
3. Overall applicant ranking rubric

Control the Initial Screening Process

As PA Admissions Director, you want to know from the outset who is reviewing initial applications, what qualities they should look for, and why. There are applicants out there who are closely aligned with your mission statement and mission goals, and you want to ensure these applicants are never overlooked. There should be an across-the-board process for how applications are reviewed, with specific data transferred to an appropriate rubric scoresheet. This not only includes applicants who meet the general requirements for program admission, but also those who fit into specific diversity groups, have particular experiences (e.g., military service), or any other special categories that you feel will contribute to the ideal student for your PA program.

Here is an example from an actual program we helped in the past that had complicating factors affecting their admissions program’s outcomes. One major issue they suffered from was a weak, inefficient, and frankly mysterious rubric for selecting their interview candidates. In discussions with the admissions director and staff, we identified the following:

• They did not know why they were using their current rubric to select interview candidates; it was inherited from the previous administration.
• They could not identify the analytical data reasoning for their interview selection rubric’s design.
• They could not describe how their interview rubric was originally created.
• They could not justify with analytical data why they selected one student over another for admittance.

This was a difficult case. It serves as a good example of how educators can fall into traps of using past processes and procedures within their educational institution— specifically within their admissions departments, that are not fully understood and which have not been fully structured on proper data analysis.

When you gain control of how your candidates are reviewed and selected for interviews, you can determine your own destiny in terms of the students that you select. Establishing preselected rubrics…

a) gives your screeners the ability to focus on the most important criteria.
b) ensures that applicants meet your expectations.
c) ensures consistent screening.

Control the Post-Interview Evaluation

In Issue 4, we discussed in detail how to leverage group interviewing and behavioral interview questions to better understand who your applicants are. We highly recommend at least two interviewers for each student so that these scores can be averaged; this helps to curb any interview bias, which can sometimes skew the scores, resulting in admitting applicants who look good on paper, but not necessarily in practice. Such applicants may not have adequate academics and other attributes. Behavioral and group interviewing are excellent ways to gain useful insights about your candidates and to spot red-flag behaviors warning that a particular applicant is not right for your program.

The value of consistency is clear. If each interviewer fills out the same ranking form (we’ll provide examples of these in future issues) and applies the same ranking system to each interviewed applicant, the results are immediately useable and compatible. Now you can efficiently incorporate those scores to each applicant’s overall ranking, adding a vital dimension in deciding which applicants will receive an offer to matriculate.

When you control the post-interview evaluation process, you can be certain that decisions are made based on all of the information in the application. A good rubric system will ensure that the final selections are made based on the composite information from each candidate’s application and interview process, and you will eliminate faulty decision-making based on incomplete information.

Control the Overall Applicant Ranking (Rubric)

Now you have a harmonious score sheet for every interviewed applicant. You know their important application statistics and how they performed in their interviews. Rather than the admissions committee wading through multiple files, reading reports, and somehow compiling this information into a working understanding that can easily be the victim of bias, they (and you!) have a clear and concise list of the applicants who fit into your program’s mission and values. There’s no need to wait at this point; you can offer seats immediately to those students who clearly made the cut.

Aggregate the entirety of applicant scores and then review for the most appropriate selections. Then, welcome these highly desirable candidates into your program before other programs can snatch them away. Remember that in a Rolling Admissions Cycle, there is no need to wait to extend offers of enrollment.

What about those applicants who came close? If you decide to waitlist an applicant, there is no need to ignore or discourage them. Make contact and let them know they are still under consideration. We recommend appointing a specific person to prioritize the waitlist and keep these applicants in the loop. A strong waitlist is an excellent way to ensure that you’re not leaving empty seats on the first day of class.

Controlling the Rubric: Summary

Allowing admissions teams to make decisions or offers without an appropriate rubric can result in flawed decision-making based on specific data points while possibly ignoring red flags or other key admission factors that are important to your program’s mission and values. When you control the overall applicant ranking, you can ensure that the correct candidate attributes are considered before final selections.

By exercising this control, your PA admissions program will…

• eliminate faulty selections based on incomplete information.
• ensure that final matriculants reflect your program’s mission statement.
• ensure that underrepresented populations are offered seats.

Conclusion

In Issues 2 through 5 of PA Admissions Corner, we have focused on controlling your admissions process from beginning to end. Now you know the importance of…

• understanding the players in the process, along with their roles and expectations.
• taking the initiative of a Rolling Admissions Cycle that reaches out early to great applicants.
• making the most of the interview process by asking the right questions and ranking the answers consistently and without bias.
• keeping a consistent and consistently understood rubric to apply to admissions so that ideal applicants are never missed.

Want to know more? Don’t worry! We’re only at the tip of the proverbial iceberg. We’ll build on each of these lessons in future issues as we continue to share proven practices you can use to make your PA admissions program the best it can be.

NEXT TIME…
In the next Issue of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll examine PA Educational Industry Statistics, and we’ll talk about some surprising trends in the field of physician assistant education. How well do you know your competition? Where does your program fit in or stand out?

To your admissions and program success,

Jim Pearson, CEO
Exam Master

Dr. Scott Massey Ph.D., PA-C
Scott Massey LLC

ISSUE 4

By Jim Pearson and Dr. Scott Massey

Welcome back to PA Admissions Corner. In the current series, we’re discussing our best recommendations for taking control of your PA program’s entire admissions process and maintaining that control. In Issue 3, we shared ideas on controlling the Admissions Cycle. In Issue 4, we will move on to controlling applicant interviews.

Control Begins with Timing

When we talk about keeping control of the interview, what exactly do we mean? This “control” really means who is chasing who. Do you have plenty of applicants eager and excited to interview with your program? Then you are in control. Do you have to delve further and further down your waitlist or accept less-than-ideal candidates for interviews in hopes of meeting a target cohort number while your best applicants have already been tempted away by other programs? Then the applicants are in control. The best candidates can pick and choose, and another program has already won their affection and trust by beating you to the offer.

As previously discussed in Issue 3, applicant interviews can happen more expediently in a Rolling Admissions Cycle. A Rolling Admissions Cycle permits you to conduct interviews several times from April through October, giving your program a better chance of keeping more qualified and promising applicants. A slow or delayed interviewing process puts you at risk of losing those applicants to other programs. With widely available online technology that facilitates meetings with minimal expense and no travel, there is little preventing interviews from being highly flexible and timely.

The smart move is to identify ideal applicants early and move them through the interview—and hopefully acceptance—quickly, using high-contact communications to foster a sturdy relationship. And remember: applicants are interested in programs that are interested in them.

Making the Most of the Interview

So, you’ve got a great applicant lined up for an interview. Now, you only have a few hours to determine if this person is right for your program. Make the most of this opportunity through behavioral interviewing, group interviewing, and providing a welcoming atmosphere for students and their affinity groups.

Behavioral Interviewing
What kinds of questions will your interviewers ask?

• Why do you want to be a PA?
• Why do you want to help people?
• Why should we admit you to our program?

Your applicants will undoubtedly be able to answer those questions elegantly if they took some time to practice their coached prewritten response. But what does that tell you about the person? Only that they can memorize an answer, or maybe they’d make a fine stage actor.

For the last 20 years, we have instead recommended using behavioral interviewing. This type of question presents a situation to the applicant and asks them to respond, and those situations can be adapted to the applicant depending on their age and experience.

Some examples of behavioral questions:

1. Tell me about a challenge you successfully met.
2. Give me an example of when you had to work with someone who was difficult to get along with. Why was this person difficult? How did you handle this person?
3. What tricks or techniques have you learned to make school or work easier, or to make yourself more effective? Where did you learn that strategy?

The applicant is then ranked based on factors like depth and complexity of their answers, stress tolerance, adaptability, and insight, instead of a memorized positive statement.  We will examine the process of behavioral interviewing in-depth in an upcoming Issue of PA Admissions Corner.

Behavioral interviewing can more effectively identify applicant attributes. It has demonstrable effectiveness in the fields of business and psychology. It reduces interviewer bias (particularly when two or more interviewers’ scores are averaged). This approach can better discern how candidates have dealt with academic stress in the past, and it can identify how candidates can think through specific problems based on past performance.

A notable bonus to behavioral interviewing: not only does it help your interviewers find exceptional applicants, it also helps them eliminate unprofessional or unqualified applicants who would ultimately struggle or potentially complicate your program.

Group Interviews
In this method, your interviewers propose a question to a group of three applicants, then give them a finite amount of time (10-15 minutes) to solve or debate the issue. Group interviews let you observe how your applicants constructively interact with others, a valuable trait in a PA’s training and career. Group interviews can also identify red-flag behaviors among applicants. Our observation is that applicants with aggressive traits can’t conceal them when encountering this scenario.

There is a strong tendency for applicants with aggressive traits to want to overshadow their peers and show everyone that they are the best or the smartest. Excessively aggressive applicants consider interrupting, grandstanding, and criticizing to be their strengths. They are often unable to listen to instruction the first time and can’t tolerate constructive criticism.

Group interview observations provide crucial insights about how these applicants will act in your program. Regardless of high grades or other scores that look fine on paper, aggressive applicants can ultimately prove to be serious burdens in your program and should be strongly considered for rejection. Your program needs mature, professional students, not prima donnas.

Establishing a Welcoming Atmosphere
Having control of the interview process does not mean dominating it. Your applicants are interviewing you as much as you are interviewing them. Remember these pointers that promote high-touch communication, consideration of applicant feelings and concerns, and an atmosphere that builds trust.

1) Allow time for the applicant to ask questions. Outside of behavioral and group interviews, applicants need an opportunity to get answers from a devoted representative. If you are doing a large number of interviews over several days, we recommend setting up “stations” where applicants can meet and get answers from people, like:

• • • Current Students
    • Financial Aid
    • Program Director
    • Campus Services (representatives who can answer questions about housing, the surrounding area, etc.)

These types of interview stations can be conducted in group meetings or online, with prearranged meeting times that applicants can join in to “Meet the Director” or  have a “Q&A with Financial Aid.”

2) Remember the affinity group. Applicants may be accompanied by parents, partners, or other important people in their lives. These people will likely play a part in the decision process and should be welcomed and encouraged to ask questions of their own. Adding a dedicated station or Q&A session just for affinity group members (while the applicant is in their interview, for example) is a memorable way to make an impression.

3) Display the professionalism, efficiency, and respect you expect in return. Your goal is to learn who your applicants are and if they’ll fit well in your program, not to criticize, demean, or analyze them under a microscope. Applicant questions should always be answered honestly: this builds trust, and people are remarkably good at detecting when they’re being misled. Meanwhile, the prospective applicant is watching your program for signs of disorganization and disinterest. A bad experience in the interview process can undermine their view of your entire program.

Generally, upon leaving the interview phase, an applicant has already decided whether or not they want to attend your program. Don’t waste this opportunity to prove that your program is the right choice!

Are You in Control?

Examine your interview process to see if you are exercising these effective ways to take control and keep it

1. Get the timing right! Get those interviews started early in the Admissions Cycle. Waiting too long means losing applicants to programs that move faster and express more interest.
2. Use behavioral and group interviewing techniques. These interview styles will tell you far more about applicants than standard questions with easily rehearsed answers. You can take note of exceptional applicants while dismissing those revealing red-flag behaviors.
3. Interview and be interviewed. Remember to answer questions, make your program accessible and welcoming, and ensure that your ideal applicants leave the interview process excited by the idea of matriculating with your school.

NEXT TIME…
In the next Issue of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll be talking about controlling your Applicant Ranking Rubric. We’ll examine what data is important to your program’s vision and mission and how to evaluate it.

To your admissions and program success,

Jim Pearson, CEO
Exam Master

Dr. Scott Massey Ph.D., PA-C
Scott Massey LLC

ISSUE 3

By Jim Pearson and Dr. Scott Massey

In evaluating your Admissions Cycle and processes, the key factor is control. You cannot improve your admissions department’s outcomes until you can take control of these four aspects of admissions:

1. Personnel
2. Cycle
3. Process
4. Data

In this Issue of PA Admissions Corner, we will look at controlling the cycle of admissions.

The Admissions Cycle is the annual timespan when applications may be submitted, which is followed by the selection of your cohort as applications are evaluated, interviews are conducted, and enrollment is selectively offered. The timing here can make a surprising difference in the quality of applicants your program attracts and the amount or lack of control you have over the entire process.

Through hundreds of interviews and observations of dozens of PA programs, we have found that the following measures are highly effective for keeping the control of the Admissions Cycle where it belongs: in your hands.

1. Run your Admissions Cycle from April to October 
Opening your program to applications beginning in April puts you first in line to accept applications and allows you to interview the most candidates. In fact, the pool of applicants can be as much as 40% larger when your admissions cycle opens early. It should come as no surprise that PA programs on a fixed cycle—that wait until August or later to start interviewing—can lose as much as 43% of their top applicants to competing programs.

Over 70% of all PA programs start their admissions cycle in April (when CASPA opens) and close their admissions cycle between August and October of the same year.

2. Maintain a Rolling Admissions Cycle
There are three major types of admissions cycles: Fixed, Rolling, and Hybrid (a combination of fixed and rolling cycles).

The Fixed Admissions Cycle reviews and selects applicants for interviews and enrollment at distinct intervals( for example in Oct after all of the applicants have been received and the application cycle is closed). Applications are reviewed only after a specific date. Interviews are conducted over a number of contiguous days. Then, applicants are selected. For some time, this was how things were done in PA schools, and those schools had the power to be controlling of their application process, candidates and exclusive in their decision-making.

Things are done differently now. With the onset of electronic communications, a sharp increase in the number of competing PA programs, and an increase in a candidate’s ability to choose where they matriculate, a fixed cycle is no longer the best option. Unless your PA program is highly ranked or in a famously desired destination, you’ll need to be competitive in your Admission Cycle.

Here is a breakdown of the type of admissions cycle PA programs use:

The Rolling Admissions Cycle reviews and selects applicants for interview on multiple occasions during the entire admissions cycle. The advantage of a Rolling Admissions Cycle is not needing to wait for all the applications to arrive before selecting applicants for interview. Qualified applicants can be interviewed right away and can be offered immediate seats for matriculation. Less qualified students can be put on a waitlist. This process can be repeated several times during the admissions cycle. The benefits are clear: a Rolling Admissions Cycle lets you open your program to top-qualified applicants much sooner than a Fixed Admissions Cycle.

3. Interview early in the Admissions Cycle
Following from our second point, the sooner in the Admissions Cycle you interview, the sooner you can offer seats to top-qualified applicants and the sooner they can accept. Don’t wait around while another program snatches them away from you. Those top-qualified applicants are motivated to select your program’s offer instead of waiting around to see what else is out there. PA programs with Fixed Admission Cycles and late interview start dates must go deeper into their waitlists, which inevitably leads to enrolling more students who may have academic concerns.

4. Send acceptance letters early in the Admissions Cycle
You have interviewed a top-qualified applicant and everything looks great.  Why wait to send an acceptance letter? Applicants who don’t get a quick response tend to interpret this as rejection and will look to your competitors for a better outcome. If those competitors are quick to offer acceptance letters, you’ve lost a valuable applicant. Regardless of whether you eventually send an acceptance letter, that applicant is likely to have established trust with the program that cared enough to invite them early – even if they have not already accepted, made plans to attend, and paid the tuition.

We have found that 72 hours is the time frame you can expect a student to retain the highest amount of interest in your PA program after the exposure to the environment (the interview). Waiting longer than that incurs a much greater risk of losing that student. We generally recommend that a PA program wait no more than seven days to respond. By expediting this communication process, you have a much higher likelihood of closing the candidate to joining your school and getting the student to deposit.

Keep Control of the Admissions Cycle in Your Hands

Your PA program will succeed or fail on enrollment and retention of your applicants, it sounds harsh, but running a PA program is a business. By following these four guidelines, you retain more control over the admissions process. Consider the trouble caused by waiting too long to act during any of the four steps: the top-qualified applicants will be prioritized by competitors, and your program will be scouring further and further down the waitlist. Just to fill the cohort, you may need to comb through far less-qualified applicants who will hopefully be able to handle the rigors of a PA program, but they may not. Just like that, the control of your admissions process is in the hands of the applicants and the competition.

Top-qualified applicants will not be ignored by your competition, and unless those top-qualified applicants specifically want your program and only yours, they will have applied to multiple PA programs. According to CASPA, each applicant will apply to approximately seven programs each year. This means you have about six other programs ready to invite every top-qualified applicant into their cohorts.

The good news is that by creating a flexible Rolling Admissions Cycle, your program improves its odds of bringing those top-qualified applicants eagerly to your doorstep. Your PA program has shown itself to be expedient, communicative, and desirable. Applicants will respond by chasing your program; the control is in your hands.

Key Points:

• The pool of applicants can be as much as 40% larger when your Admissions Cycle opens early.
• A Rolling Admissions Cycle lets you open your program to top-qualified applicants much sooner than a Fixed Admissions Cycle.
• The sooner in the Admissions Cycle you interview, the sooner you can offer seats to top-qualified applicants, and the sooner they can accept.
• 72 hours is the time frame you can expect a student to retain the highest amount of interest in your PA program after exposure to the environment.
• According to CASPA, each PA applicant applies to approximately seven programs each year. Those other six programs are your competition. Don’t give them an early-bird advantage when you can offer the same.

NEXT TIME…
In the next Issue of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll turn our attention to keeping control of the interview process. By using the right kinds of questions, interview styles, and examining both sides of the interview coin, we’ll show you how to make the most of your time meeting and getting to know prospective students.

To your admissions and program success,

Jim Pearson, CEO
Exam Master

Dr. Scott Massey Ph.D., PA-C
Scott Massey LLC

ISSUE 2

By Jim Pearson and Dr. Scott Massey

The admission process for graduate medical education is a challenging and ongoing effort. We find that traditional graduate medical educational programs like medicine, dentistry, and pharmacy have had decades of structured development, allowing them to hone their admissions practices and procedures over time. Extensive support staff can also help manage their admissions departments.

Within the PA educational space, the opposite is usually true. PA education is a newer medical discipline. Until the early 2000s, there were less than 100 PA programs nationally (there are about 260 active programs now). Most physician assistant programs have a smaller staff managing admissions responsibilities, usually while balancing other assigned duties.

In Issue 2 of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll take a closer look at the various participants in the admissions process and the roles that they play. A thorough understanding of these roles is essential to improving the overall admissions process; the roles of these participants will be discussed often and in greater detail in upcoming issues.

The Five Key Participants

These are the most important people in the PA admissions process.

Applicant
The applicant is your prospective student, the person who is considering enrolling in your PA school’s educational program. Many of these applicants come from highly-ranked undergraduate institutions with distinguished educational credentials, but an equal proportion may come from lesser-ranked undergraduate institutions. If screened properly and given the chance, less-obvious choices can also fit your PA program’s mission and become just as distinguished practicing physician assistants.

Consider what an applicant wants from your admissions Department. Ideally, they want to know their status as soon as possible, including:

• Is their application accepted?
• Can they have an interview?
• Can they interview sooner rather than later?
• How quickly after that interview will they know the results?
• How interested is your PA program in them as a prospective student?

The applicant will go out of their way if they think they are likely to get an interview or acceptance letter early in their application cycle. But that same applicant will not bend over backward to accommodate a program that seems disinterested, disorganized, or nonresponsive.

Here’s a reminder of something often undervalued: most applicants have an affinity group of one or more people–like parents or partners–whose opinions will matter in the applicant’s admissions choice. There is much to be gained from incorporating these influential people into the process, at least peripherally. More to come on that subject later.

Admissions Director 
This may very well be you! An Admissions Director is the person in charge of managing the ongoing duties of the PA program’s admissions department: selecting admissions committee members, recruiting qualified interviewers, ensuring that proper goals are met for each year’s incoming cohort, and ensuring compliance in reporting/accreditation standards internally (parent university) and externally (ARC-PA). Like the CEO of a company, the Admissions Director steers the course of the entire process. A successful Director knows how to tell the difference between an excellent prospect and a poor one.

The Admissions Director carries a heavy load. In researching ways to improve PA program admissions processes, we have spoken with scores of PA educators across the country. We heard many common concerns. Directors worry that they are not screening, processing, interviewing, and selecting the best candidates that fit their PA program’s core vision and mission. They are concerned about selecting candidates who are unprepared for the rigors of PA education or are not emotionally equipped to become a physician assistant upon graduation. These concerns are almost universal, but each Director is also faced with unique problems, since no two programs are alike. We believe that our work and research have resulted in some innovative ways to reduce that load significantly while filling cohorts with ideal applicants.

Admissions Committee
This group mostly consists of the leadership and staff of each PA program, often pulling committee members from other graduate medical education programs. This Committee works together to set the admissions requirements for their PA program. As a group, they review, and screen applicants for their interview pool, select applicants for their waitlist, and select who will receive admittance offer letters.

We encourage programs to streamline their Admissions Committee process, beginning with appropriately adjusting the entire Admissions Cycle and reaching out quickly to the most qualified applicants. Outstanding applicants will likely receive multiple offers to matriculate; your program will lose a significant advantage if the Committee’s response time is slow. (Note: In the next Volume of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll discuss at length how to adjust the Admissions Cycle to your best advantage!)

Admissions Representative
The Admissions Representative is the front-line who initially communicates with applicants early in the admissions process. Your Admissions Department and its personnel must manage and succeed at:

• Initial communications with applicants
• Screening applicant application data
• Processing applications
• Scheduling interviews

Some PA programs’ initial screening and ranking of applicants are handled by the parent institution’s graduate education department or another graduate medical education program (a medical or pharmacy school admissions department, for example). If at all possible, however, we recommend having someone in your department who can serve as a contact representative by telephone, email, or both.

Unfortunately, many PA programs are short-staffed, especially when it comes to admissions—always behind the eight ball for focus and time commitments of Admission Department duties and responsibilities. Many PA programs tell us that they do not have sufficient time to handle admissions responsibilities on top of expected faculty duties. In future editions of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll discuss ways to evaluate and maximize your staff.

For simple applicant contact, we often recommend that understaffed programs deploy their secret weapon: current students who are enthusiastic about their program. Students are often eager to volunteer their time for a school they believe in. It looks good on their resume, and it’s an especially appealing prospect if their help means a shout-out in the campus newsletter or a helpful networking connection like a LinkedIn recommendation or a letter of reference.

We cannot emphasize strongly enough the importance of this role. Once a candidate’s application has been confirmed on CASPA, you should ensure that the communication process begins. Let the applicant know they are under strong consideration, and interviews will be scheduled soon. Remember that high-touch communication strategies help potential candidates perceive your program in a positive light. The benefits of making an applicant feel welcome and cared about are significant.

Interviewer
Experience has taught us that having at least two interviewers for each student is best so their two assessment scores can be averaged. Interviewers can be faculty members of the PA school. The Admissions Director, PA Program Director and other medical educational professionals from other disciplines (medical, dental, physical therapy school, etc.) often help in the interview process, too.

Admission Directors must evaluate their interviewers and interviewing methods to ensure that the methodology eliminates interviewer bias as much as possible while providing accurate and actionable information about the applicants. Will we cover these issues in detail in future Volumes of PA Admissions Corner? You bet we will!

Conclusion

Understanding the roles and responsibilities of everyone involved in the admissions process is only the beginning, and without this understanding, the process that follows becomes much more complicated. Clearly establishing and adequately filling these roles will streamline your process and encourage your applicants while also revealing where extra help or organization might be needed.

NEXT TIME…
Above all, remember that you, the PA Admissions Director, must retain control of the process. In the next Volume of PA Admissions Corner, we’ll talk about controlling the Admissions Cycle: the time when applications are accepted and applicants are selected. We’ll share proven best ideas for getting the most value and the best applicants out of your cycle time.

Best regards.
Jim Pearson, CEO
Exam Master

Dr. Scott Massey Ph.D., PA-C
Scott Massey LLC