Since every physician assistant school has a unique admission process it can be very confusing and cumbersome for pre-PA students to decide when to apply to PA school!
The CASPA application cycle starts in late April and runs for ~50 weeks before closing, but every school decides their own CASPA application deadline. If you’re applying to multiple PA schools, each with a different deadline, it can be tough to decide when’s the right time for you to push submit.
But if the PA programs you plan to apply to do rolling admissions, that can make your decision much easier!
When it comes to rolling admissions, we recommend you apply as early as possible!
See, with rolling admissions, schools evaluate prospective PA students as they submit – instead of waiting until the very end. That means they can interview (and even accept) students into their next class before other students have even applied!
Applying early could give you an edge when it comes to getting accepted into PA school and every little advantage helps.
Here’s an example:
Let’s say a PA school has 50 seats for their upcoming class. They plan on interviewing students at 3 separate interviews and invite 40 students per interview. That means they are interviewing 120 students for their 50 seats.
Interview #1 is in October
Interview #2 is in November
Interview #3 is in December
If a student applies early and gets invited to the October interview, ALL 50 seats are open at that time. Technically every single student could be offered a seat at this time if they rock their PA school interview.
Side Note: (If you aren’t sure you are going to rock out your PA school interview, then definitely consider doing a Mock Interview! You can check out ours here, and we will make sure you are super prepared to crush your interview so you can get accepted to PA school! Be prepared to sweat in all the best ways in our Mock Interview 🙂
After interviewing 40 students, the PA admissions committee gives out 20 seats at this first interview.
This means that for the second interview in November there are now only 30 seats available. If they are interviewing 40 candidates, the school can’t accept every single student (even if they love them all!!!) since they only have 30 seats open.
After the second interview, the admission committee gives away an additional 20 seats.
Now we are only left with 10 available seats left.
Students in the last (December) interview are at a disadvantage because there are only 10 seats left. So now we have 40 students competing for 10 seats in December, vs the October interview where 40 students were competing for 50 seats.
It’s really just math!
The more seats still open, the better your chances are!
If your chosen schools participate in rolling admissions, then definitely consider applying early so you can interview when the majority of the seats in their class are still available!