You did it.

After the prerequisites, patient care hours, CASPA essays, personal statement, supplemental applications, interviews and approximately 47,000 refreshes of your email…

YOU GOT INTO PA SCHOOL. 🎉🥼

First: CELEBRATE.

Seriously.

Do not immediately turn your acceptance into your next academic assignment.

You worked incredibly hard to get here, and you deserve to actually enjoy this moment.

But once the confetti settles, there’s usually another thought that sneaks in:

“Wait…should I be studying before PA school starts?”

Maybe you’ve already ordered an anatomy book.

Maybe someone on Reddit has convinced you that you should memorize every medication known to mankind before orientation.

Maybe you’re terrified that everyone else in your class is going to show up knowing more than you.

As two PAs who have taught PA students, worked in PA education and served in PA admissions, here’s what we want you to know:

You do NOT need to teach yourself PA school before you go to PA school.

In fact, trying to cram an entire semester of medicine into the months before your program begins probably isn’t the best use of your time.

But there ARE a few things you can do now that will make your transition into PA school significantly easier.

Here’s where we’d focus.

1. First, Don’t Spend Your Entire Break Studying

We know this feels counterintuitive.

You’ve spent years trying to get into PA school. Now that you’re finally accepted, shouldn’t you get ahead?

Not necessarily.

PA school is intense.

Once it begins, there isn’t a lot of downtime.

So if you have several weeks or months before your program starts, use some of that time to do the things that will become harder once school begins.

Travel.

See your family.

Spend time with your friends.

Exercise.

Sleep.

Read something that has absolutely nothing to do with medicine.

Get your appointments done.

Organize your life.

If you’ve been working nonstop to accumulate PCE, consider whether you’re financially able to give yourself some time off before school begins.

You aren’t being lazy.

You’re getting ready for a demanding chapter of your life.

You do not get bonus points for arriving at orientation already exhausted.

2. If You’re Going to Review Something, Start With Anatomy

If it’s been a while since you took anatomy and you REALLY want something academic to review, this would be near the top of our list.

But notice we said review.

Not relearn your entire undergraduate anatomy course.

Focus on getting comfortable again with major anatomical structures and relationships.

Think:

Major bones and landmarks.

Major muscle groups.

Basic innervation.

Major blood vessels.

Organ locations.

Directional terminology.

Basic neuroanatomy.

You don’t need to memorize every origin and insertion before your first day unless your program specifically tells you to.

The goal is simply to make the terminology feel familiar again.

Because once PA school starts, you’re going to be learning anatomy in the context of disease, physical examination, imaging, procedures and clinical medicine.

Having a basic framework can make that new information easier to organize.

3. Review Basic Physiology—Not Every Disease

If anatomy is the “what and where,” physiology is the “how.”

And understanding normal physiology makes abnormal physiology MUCH easier to understand.

Instead of trying to memorize hundreds of diseases before school starts, refresh some of the fundamentals.

How does blood move through the heart?

How does gas exchange occur?

How do the kidneys regulate fluid and electrolytes?

What does the autonomic nervous system do?

How does insulin affect glucose?

What’s happening during the menstrual cycle?

How does the body maintain blood pressure?

You don’t need PA-school-level mastery.

You’re simply reminding your brain:

“Oh yeah. I remember how this works.”

Then when your professors start teaching pathophysiology, you have something to attach the disease process to.

4. Get Comfortable With Medical Terminology

This is especially helpful if your patient care experience hasn’t involved a ton of medical terminology.

You don’t need to memorize a medical dictionary.

But you should feel reasonably comfortable with common prefixes, suffixes and abbreviations.

You should understand terms like:

Bradycardia.

Tachypnea.

Hematuria.

Leukocytosis.

Dyspnea.

Bilateral.

Proximal.

Distal.

Acute versus chronic.

Anterior versus posterior.

Why?

Because PA school moves FAST.

If you’re constantly stopping to translate the vocabulary itself, you’re adding another layer of work to an already heavy course load.

5. Know HOW You Learn

Technically, you should already know how you learn before you start PA school. There’s not time to figure out how you learn in PA school. You NEED to know this beforehand.

But, you also need to be adaptable and adjust quickly.

A lot of very smart students arrive at PA school using the same study strategies that got them through undergrad.

Then suddenly those strategies stop working.

Why?

Because the volume is different.

You may have been able to reread a chapter five times in college.

You may have rewritten your notes until they were beautiful.

You may have highlighted 80% of the page.

In PA school?

You often don’t have time.

You need efficient ways to learn large amounts of information and retrieve it later.

Start familiarizing yourself with concepts like:

Active recall.

Instead of rereading information, force yourself to retrieve it.

Close the book and ask:

“What are the causes?”

“What are the symptoms?”

“What would I expect on exam?”

“How would I diagnose this?”

Spaced repetition.

Review information over increasing intervals rather than trying to cram everything the night before an exam.

Practice questions.

Once you’re learning clinical medicine, practice applying information instead of only memorizing facts.

The goal isn’t to build the perfect study system before school.

It’s to understand that studying more hours does not always equal learning more.

Efficiency matters.

6. Learn the Language of Labs

You don’t need to memorize every normal laboratory range before orientation.

Your program will teach you what you need to know.

But if you want a practical head start, become familiar with the major components of common labs.

Know what you’ll find in a CBC.

Know what you’ll find in a basic or comprehensive metabolic panel.

Understand what hemoglobin and hematocrit represent.

Know the basic roles of sodium and potassium.

Understand what creatinine tells you.

Know what glucose represents.

Again:

Familiarity, not mastery.

When your professors start discussing anemia, kidney disease, electrolyte abnormalities and liver disease, those lab names won’t feel completely foreign.

7. Don’t Try to Memorize Pharmacology Before PA School

We see this question all the time:

“Should I start studying medications?”

Not by trying to memorize a giant drug list.

Pharmacology makes significantly more sense when you understand the disease you’re treating.

Instead, if you really want exposure, become familiar with broad concepts.

What is a drug class?

What’s the difference between a generic and brand name?

What is a mechanism of action?

What are contraindications?

What does half-life mean?

What’s the difference between an adverse effect and an allergy?

Your program is going to teach you pharmacology systematically.

Let them.

There is very little benefit to randomly memorizing 200 medications without understanding the clinical context behind them.

8. Get Your LIFE Ready for PA School

This is the part nobody gets excited about, but it can make an enormous difference.

Your academic workload is about to increase dramatically.

Anything you can simplify BEFORE school starts is a win.

Figure out:

Where are you living?

How are you getting to campus?

Where will you study?

What’s your monthly budget?

When will you exercise?

How are you going to eat when you’re exhausted and have an exam tomorrow?

Do you have reliable childcare if you need it?

Do you have backup childcare?

Do you need to schedule medical or dental appointments before school begins?

Does your computer meet your program’s requirements?

What subscriptions, memberships or unnecessary expenses can you eliminate?

Where will you buy groceries?

It sounds boring.

Until you’re three weeks into PA school and realize you have an exam Friday, no clean clothes, nothing in your refrigerator and a dentist appointment tomorrow morning.

Reduce as many unnecessary decisions as possible before school starts.

9. Build a Routine That Includes Taking Care of Yourself

Please do not wait until you’re drowning to decide that sleep, exercise and mental health matter.

You don’t need a perfect wellness routine.

But start thinking about your non-negotiables.

Maybe it’s:

A 30-minute workout.

A morning walk.

Meal prepping on Sunday.

Church.

Dinner with your spouse.

Calling your parents.

Going to bed by a certain time.

One night per week where you stop studying at 6 PM.

Whatever keeps you feeling like YOU.

PA school will require sacrifices.

But it should not require you to completely abandon every part of your life that makes you healthy.

10. Talk to Current Students—But Don’t Let Them Terrify You

If your program connects incoming students with current students, take advantage of it.

Ask practical questions.

What do you wish you knew before starting?

Which resources did you actually use?

Where do students usually study?

What does a typical week look like?

What should I buy—and what is a complete waste of money?

But remember:

Every student’s experience is different.

If someone tells you:

“Cardiology will destroy you.”

That does not mean cardiology will destroy you. 😂

Take advice.

Don’t inherit someone else’s anxiety.

11. Don’t Buy Every PA School Resource Yet

Incoming students LOVE buying things.

Books.

Apps.

Flashcards.

Study subscriptions.

Anatomy programs.

Question banks.

Three different stethoscopes.

A $900 tablet.

And then school starts and half of it sits untouched. Or your program requires something very specific and you just wasted your money.

Wait until your program gives you its required resource list.

Then talk to students ahead of you.

Ask:

“What did you actually use?”

Spend strategically.

PA school is expensive enough already.

12. Start Thinking Like a Clinician—Not Just a Student

This is probably the biggest mental shift you’re about to make.

Up until now, most of your education has been about getting the correct answer on an exam.

PA school is preparing you to eventually care for actual humans.

That changes the way you learn.

Instead of simply asking:

“What do I need to memorize?”

Start asking:

“Why does this matter for my patient?”

When you eventually learn heart failure, don’t just memorize the symptoms.

Ask:

Why is this patient short of breath?

Why are their legs swollen?

Why did we order this test?

Why are we giving this medication?

What dangerous diagnosis am I trying not to miss?

What would make me send this patient to the ER?

That is clinical thinking.

And developing it takes time.

You aren’t supposed to have it mastered on day one.

But start becoming curious about the WHY behind medicine.

What We Would NOT Do Before PA School

If we were starting PA school again tomorrow, we would NOT spend the months before school:

Trying to memorize every medication.

Studying every disease.

Buying every resource TikTok recommends.

Trying to learn an entire semester ahead.

Comparing ourselves to classmates.

Panicking because someone else was a paramedic for six years and knows more cardiology.

Remember:

Your program accepted you.

Not the imaginary version of you who already knows everything.

Your classmates are going to arrive with completely different strengths.

The EMT may feel incredibly comfortable with emergencies.

The MA may know outpatient medicine.

The CNA may be phenomenal at bedside patient care.

The scribe may already understand documentation.

The researcher may understand evidence better than anyone else.

And you will have strengths that other people don’t have.

You’re all there to learn how to become PAs.

Your Simple Pre-PA School Preparation Checklist

If you want the short version, here’s what we’d do:

Academically: Lightly review anatomy, physiology, medical terminology and basic labs if you feel rusty.

Study skills: Learn active recall and spaced repetition.

Logistically: Get housing, finances, transportation, appointments, technology and your daily routine organized.

Personally: Rest. Travel. Exercise. Spend time with your people. Do things you love.

Mentally: Stop expecting yourself to already know what you’re going to PA school to learn.

And finally…

Enjoy Being Accepted

You spent SO much time trying to get here.

Don’t rush past this part.

There was probably a point during prerequisites, CASPA or interview season when you would’ve given anything to be where you are right now.

You’re not “trying to get into PA school” anymore.

You’re going to PA school.

Take the pictures.

Buy the sweatshirt.

Tell your family.

Celebrate.

Rest.

Get your life organized.

And then show up on day one ready to learn.

You do not need to arrive knowing everything.

You need to arrive ready to become the kind of PA your future patients deserve.

And THAT is what PA school is for.