Frequently Asked Questions
- Must prerequisites be completed prior to submitting an application?
- Must prerequisites be completed at JMU?
- My university offered human anatomy and human physiology as combined courses - Anatomy and Physiology I and Anatomy and Physiology II. Will this meet the prerequisite requirement or must I have a separate course in anatomy and a separate course in physiology?
- Is there a time limit on how recent the prerequisites were completed?
- Can on-line courses meet the prerequisite requirements?
- Please explain the Health care experience requirement. What can I do to gain the direct-patient, health care experience? Can it be volunteer experience? Does shadowing a PA count? Do I have to do only one type of activity for all the hours of experience? My experience is in the mental health area. Does that count?
- Do I have to apply to the JMU Graduate School and to the PA Program as separate applications?
- Do I have to submit letters of recommendation and original transcripts with both the CASPA application and the JMU Graduate School application?
- Must I apply to the program through the Centralized Application Service for PA (CASPA)?
- What are the characteristics of the applicants who have actually been selected for the program?
- How is the curriculum arranged?
- Who teaches in the program?
- How have JMU graduates performed on the Physician Assistant National Certification Examination (PANCE)?
- What is the job market for PAs?
- Where are the programs clinical rotation sites and how are students matched with sites?
- When are PA information sessions held?
- Must I take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)?
1. Must prerequisites be completed prior to submitting an application?
No. Prerequisites must be completed by the time a candidate would begin classes in the PA program (late August), not when the application is due. If a candidate has not completed the prerequisites by time of application, s/he simply completes the portion of the application that states how and when s/he plans to complete the given prerequisite/s. The application is reviewed and a position may be offered on the condition that the candidate successfully completes the prerequisites prior to beginning the PA curriculum.
2. Must prerequisites be completed at JMU?
No. Prerequisites can be completed at other accredited colleges and universities in the U.S. or at foreign schools recognized by JMU.
3. My university offered human anatomy and human physiology as combined courses - Anatomy and Physiology I and Anatomy and Physiology II. Will this meet the prerequisite requirement or must I have a separate course in anatomy and a separate course in physiology?
The prerequisite can be met either by taking a one semester course in anatomy and a one semester course in physiology, OR by taking both semesters of a combined Anatomy & Physiology I and Anatomy and Physiology II sequence.
If a prerequisite course was completed as a requirement for an academic degree, we accept the date the degree was awarded instead of the date the course was taken. If a candidate's coursework is older than seven years, but his/her occupation has required him/her to remain current on information in a prerequisite field, the candidate can ask the PA program Admissions Committee for an exception to the seven-year time requirement. The candidate should submit a letter of explanation requesting the exception along with supporting documentation. The Admissions Committee will decide whether or not to grant the exception.
4. Is there a time limit on how recent the prerequisites were completed?
Yes. Within the last seven years:
- Human Physiology - one semester
- Human Anatomy - one semester
- Biochemistry - one semester (Organic Chemistry is not a substitute for this course)
- Genetics - one semester
Within any number of years:
- Medical Terminology
If a prerequisite course was completed as a requirement for an academic degree, we accept the date the degree was awarded instead of the date the course was taken. If a candidate's coursework is older than seven years, but his/her occupation has required him/her to remain current on information in a prerequisite field, the candidate can ask the PA program Admissions Committee for an exception to the seven-year time requirement. The Admissions Committee will decide whether or not to grant the exception.
5. Can on-line courses meet the prerequisite requirements?
Yes, provided the on-line courses were taken from an accredited college or university, academic credit was awarded and a transcript showing the course/s and grade can be forwarded as with any other course. We do not recommend taking anatomy through an online course.
6. Please explain the Health care experience requirement.
What can I do to gain the direct-patient, health care experience?
Can it be volunteer experience?
Does shadowing a PA count?
Do I have to do only one type of activity for all the hours of experience?
My experience is in the mental health area. Does that count?
The healthcare experience requirement can be met in several ways. The hours may come from one experience or a combination of experiences and may be voluntary or paid work. Examples of health care professions that require direct patient contact include nurse, EMT or paramedic, corpsman, patient care technician, nurse's aide, surgical assistant, clinic/medical assistant respiratory technologist, radiology technologist, medical technologist, mental health worker, and clinical research assistant. Other professions and experiences not listed may also qualify as direct patient care.
Healthcare related professions that generally do not count toward this requirement because they do not involve hands-on patient contact include transporter, CPR or ACLS instructor, lifeguard, non-clinical research assistant, candy striper, unit clerk, and others. Although desirable for other reasons, PA shadowing and student/intern experience does not count toward the required 1,000 hours of patient care experience. Please contact us if you have any questions regarding your healthcare experience.
7. Do I have to apply to the JMU Graduate School and to the PA Program as separate applications?
Yes. You must apply to the Graduate School in order to be admitted to the university and to the graduate college. The Institution Code for GRE scores for JMU is 5392. To apply to the graduate college go to The Graduate School.
Additionally, you must apply to the PA program in order to be admitted specifically to the Master of Physician Assistant Studies program. This is accomplished by applying through CASPA.
8. Do I have to submit letters of recommendation and original transcripts with both the CASPA application and the JMU Graduate School application?
No. You must submit the requested letters of recommendation and original transcripts as part of the CASPA application. You do not need to also submit letters of recommendation and original transcripts with the Graduate School application. If you are offered admission to the PA program, you will need to send original transcripts to the JMU Graduate School prior to beginning classes.
9. Must I apply to the program through the Centralized Application Service for PA (CASPA)?
Yes. All candidates must apply through CASPA
10. What are the characteristics of the applicants who have actually been selected for the program?
The Program does not have a model candidate. PAs work in a wide variety of jobs within the medical field. The role of the PA program is to educate people who can fill that wide variety of jobs. So the program selects candidates with wide ranges of abilities, backgrounds and interests who will combine their PA education with those varied interests and fill a broad range of PA positions.
Below is a statistical profile of candidates admitted to the MPAS program between May 2006 and 2008. We expect some year-to-year variation in these ranges and means. They are offered here to help candidates gauge how competitive they may be with other candidates. Where provided, the ranges are more significant than the means.
| Student Characteristics | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Yr enrolled – yr graduated | 2006-2008 | 2007-2009 | 2008-2010 |
| Number of qualified apps. | 193 | 222 | 264 |
| Number enrolled | 13 | 23 | 27 |
| Average prior college credit hours | 144 | 147 | 153 |
| Overall GPA upon admission | 3.41 |
3.16 |
3.28 |
| GPA for Science courses | 3.27 |
3.0 | 3.19 |
| Prior degrees held | Doctorate 8% |
Doctorate 4% |
Doctorate 0% |
| Hours of health care experience | 2,903 |
5,472 |
8,600 1000 – 19,000 range |
| Gender | Female 77% |
Female 74% |
Female 74% |
| Age (years) | 26.6 average 21 – 38 range |
27.2 21-51 range |
27.7 |
| Percentage of Students with JMU connection | 31% | 30% | 26% |
| Percent students from Virginia | 92% | 70% | 55% |
Interpreting the Table:
This profile was assembled for reporting characteristics of enrolled students. It is not a list of selection or admission criteria. Not all the characteristics listed are admission considerations or criteria.
- With GPAs it is important to consider the table gives an average not a range. Also students’ performance is seldom uniform throughout their academic work. So, the average may not reflect that their more recent academic work may be better than their average. In such situations the Admissions Committee may be more influenced by the recent work.
- All students who complete the PA curriculum receive a Master of Physician Assistant degree.
- JMU connection includes students who have taken courses at JMU at anytime prior to acceptance into the PA program.
- Health Care Experience: The health care experience requirement must involve work directly helping patients with their healthcare problems. The patients might have physical or mental health problems. The experience can be attained in many ways. The experience could be either a paid or volunteer position. It might be accumulated through a single type of experience or by combining different types of experience that collectively fulfill the required hours.
Some candidates are applying to PA as a career change. Typically they have been working in some type of direct-contact health care job and have many hours of experience. Other candidates are seeking PA as a first career in health care. They often seek health care experience specifically to meet the requirement and they do not have education in a prior health care profession. So, they are more likely to seek activities that require brief education such as Certified Nurse Assistant (CNA), Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), or a position with on the job training. These candidates typically have fewer hours. It is important to note the wide range of hours. It indicates that candidates from both groups are selected. Health care experience is not evaluated merely on the number of accumulated hours.
Below is a partial, but representative, list of the types of activities that students have engaged in prior to entry into the PA program. These are only examples, many other types of positions also qualify. If a candidate is engaged in an activity and is not sure whether it would qualify, he should inquire of the PA advisor at the program.
Credentialed, employment-type activities
- EMT or Paramedic
- Athletic Trainer
- Certified Nursing Aid
- Cardiology Technician
- Medical Technologist
- Registered Nurse
- Licensed Practical Nurse
- Veterinarian
- Surgical Technologist
- Exercise Physiologist
- Rehabilitation tech
- Crisis Counselor
- Clinical Research Tech.
- Mental Health Case Mgr
Volunteer activities include these settings.
- Rescue Squad
- Physician Office
- Emergency Room
- Nursing Home
- Free Clinic
- Mental Health Crisis Counselor
Shadowing PAs The program does not count time spent shadowing PAs as meeting the direct patient-contact health care experience requirement, because the activity is generally, purely observational. The program does encourage candidates to shadow PAs, if it will help the candidate determine whether or not PA is the appropriate career choice for the candidate.
11. How is the curriculum arranged?
The first sixteen months of the program consist mostly of on-campus, classroom courses with a few direct-patient experiences. The clinical year is twelve months in length and is comprised of 40 weeks of clinical experiences, a four-week directed project period, and a few days of on-campus classroom work. For the clinical rotation experiences, students are assigned to work with physicians and other clinicians in a variety of medical specialties. These rotations take place mostly in Virginia with some in immediately adjacent states. Students must be able to travel and relocate frequently during the clinical year.
12. Who teaches in the program?
Classroom instructors come from several sources: PAs and a physician within the program, university faculty from the biology and health sciences departments, many physicians, a few PAs, NPs, pharmacists, and other clinicians from the community and the region. Clinical rotations are precepted by primarily physicians with some PA’s and NP’s.
13. How have JMU graduates performed on the Physician Assistant National Certification Examination (PANCE)?
The table below shows the pass rates for the most recent five classes for which complete scores are available. Because the JMU PA Program has relatively small numbers of students enrolled in each class, a single failure greatly changes the percentage.
| Year | Pass rate for first-time takers |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 85% |
| 2005 | 94% |
| 2006 | 89% |
| 2007 | 90% |
| 2008 | 100% (as of 3/16/09) |
14. What is the job market for PAs?
In its “Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2008-09 Edition” http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos081.htm#outlook , the Bureaus of labor Statistics projects a rise from 66,000 PAs in 2006 to a needed 83,000 by 2016. This is a projected 27% increase which falls within the Bureau’s highest category of needed growth in the ten year period.
The Bureau describes the job outlook for PAs as,
“Employment of physician assistants is expected to grow 27 percent from 2006 to 2016, much faster than the average for all occupations. Projected rapid job growth reflects the expansion of health care industries and an emphasis on cost containment, which results in increasing use of PAs by health care establishments.
Physicians and institutions are expected to employ more PAs to provide primary care and to assist with medical and surgical procedures because PAs are cost-effective and productive members of the health care team. Physician assistants can relieve physicians of routine duties and procedures. Telemedicine—using technology to facilitate interactive consultations between physicians and physician assistants—also will expand the use of physician assistants.
Besides working in traditional office-based settings, PAs should find a growing number of jobs in institutional settings such as hospitals, academic medical centers, public clinics, and prisons. PAs also may be needed to augment medical staffing in inpatient teaching hospital settings as the number of hours physician residents are permitted to work is reduced, encouraging hospitals to use PAs to supply some physician resident services.”
“Job opportunities for PAs should be good, particularly in rural and inner-city clinics because those settings have difficulty attracting physicians. In addition to job openings from employment growth, openings will result from the need to replace physician assistants who retire or leave the occupation permanently during the 2006- 16 decade. Opportunities will be best in States that allow PAs a wider scope of practice, such as allowing PAs to prescribe medications.”
For additional information on PA jobs, see the website of the American Academy of Physician Assistants www.AAPA.org
15. Where are the program's clinical rotation sites and how are students matched with sites?
The program requires each student to do 40 weeks of clinical experiences. These include eight weeks each in internal medicine and family medicine, four weeks each in obstetrics and gynecology, behavioral medicine, pediatrics, emergency medicine and general surgery, and a four-week rotation period in which the student elects the topic. These rotations take place mostly in Virginia with some in immediately adjacent states. Students must be able to travel and relocate frequently during the clinical year. Students do not choose the sites or the order in which the rotations occur. The faculty assigns students to rotation sites and also determines the students' schedules. Several months before students begin the clinical rotation portion of the curriculum, they provide information to the clinical coordinator about personal factors that they would like considered when the clinical coordinator makes the assignments for rotations. There is no guarantee that the coordinator will be able to accommodate the factors suggested by the students, but the coordinator does attempt to reduce the inconvenience associated with rotation placement assignments. Students are not required to provide sites or preceptors for any of their clinical rotations.
16. When are PA information sessions held?
| Date | Time | Location |
|---|---|---|
| Monday, September 14, 2009 | 2:30 p.m. | HHS #1207 |
| Thursday, October 15, 2009 | 5 p.m. | HHS #1207 |
| Tuesday, November 10, 2009 | 10 a.m | ISAT #259 |
| Friday, December 4, 2009 | 2 p.m. | HHS #1207 |
Reservations are not needed. A parking pass is required to park on campus. This can be obtained from the Parking Office located in the Parking Deck on Champions Drive.
17. Must I take the Graduate Record Exam (GRE)?
Yes, it is a requirement for admission. The Institution Code for reporting GRE scores to JMU is 5392.
