Hey this is Dave DuBose the PA coach. And today I want to do a little special video for you.
I promise you in a video that I shot early that I would take you behind
the scenes and let you know what it's like at a PA school interview.
I'm not gonna physically take you there today but in a video in
the future probably will try to sneak a camera to the room and give you some
insider tips. But today we're going to talk about what goes on behind the
scenes of a PA school interview process. Now, let me paint the picture for you.
So, we're all in a room sitting on a table with applications stacked waiting
for our big day of interview, we know who's coming in first session,
second session, how you guys are going to be split.
What order are we going to bring you in, what groups are coming in. All this
information we know.
So when you walk in, and we're sitting around a table waiting for you,
we're already prepared we've gone through your application, we've looked at your
narrative again and made notes. We've looked over your GPA, GRE scores.
We got your transcript, cited strengths, weaknesses, and get to those of
recommendation, highlighted, underlines and things that may trigger some
questions for us.
So when you walk in we're kind of prepared and ready for you.
Now, there's a lot of things that happen sporadically during an interview process, too.
So when you're sitting there, you may say something that sparks another question
from us and we may jot down some of these and say, "I'm going to go back later
and ask him this or ask him that.
But for the most part things are pretty organized and orchestrated. There are
some questions that you're going to get that pretty much everybody's going to get.
And then there's a lot of pointed questions that are going to be strictly for you
based on the information that we have on you in front of us.
Makes sense? So when you turn the application in, just know you're giving us the
ammunition. It was to turn around and lift you up with or potentially break
it down just a little bit just try to get in your head and see where you are.
So you walk into the room, you interview. You may do it in a group,
you may do it individually, you may do with PAs from the community,
PAs that work at the school on a faculty, and PA students.
Now, once you leave the room,
well I take that back, while you're there, we're secretly making notes about you.
We're jotting it down what we think about you as an applicant, and we're writing
you with a red card that we have in front of us, and it says something like
accept immediately,
accept, wait list,
do not accept. Those so many categories that you will see at most PA programs.
What you want is for everybody around that table to be checking "accept immediately"
that means you've blown that interview out the water or you did blow it out the water.
Now once you leave the room, we sit around and briefly, because we don't have a
lot of time because people are coming in. We briefly discuss you. Yeah we talk about you
behind your back
and say, "Wow Michael was impressive."
"Sarah was absolutely phenomenal."
"Jennifer, I don't know. She seemed a little nervous, too scared, not really sure.
Her voice was cracking a little too much. All the answers she gave on this,
I don't know about that." You know so that's not what kind of break it down
and we quickly jot down our notes and we jot down our initial score:
accept immediately, accept, do not accept, wait list. You get the drill.
So your goal as a PA applicant when you walk out of the room after you've
given your interview, you give it your best shot.
You want everybody's pin to check their first box: accept immediately, which means
we have to have you, we want you, we want you in our program, you have a seat
expected you to take it or tell us you want to go to another program.
And that's how it typically goes, alright? So once again this is Dave, the PA coach
giving you the insider tips that nobody else is going to give you: taking you
inside what goes on in a PA interview
Nobody is going to give you this, guys. Stay tuned I got so much more.
You know who I am. Dave, the PA coach. I talk to you soon.