Pre-Physician’s Assistant Pathway (27 credits of Math/Science courses)
Pre-Physician’s Assistant Pathway (27 credits of Math/Science courses)
The pre-requisites for physician assistant programs can vary. It is important for students to determine the specific requirements for each physician assistant program they wish to apply to, in consultation with a pre-health advisor. Most physician assistant programs require the following courses:
- BIO103/BIO104 General Biology I & II (pre-requisite for microbiology)
- BIO105/BIO106 Anatomy and Physiology I & II
- BIO216 General Microbiology
- CHE110/CHE111 General Chemistry I & II
- CHE210 Organic Chemistry
- MAT115 or MAT120 Biostatistics or Statistics
- One semester of a writing intensive course
Other recommended and/or required courses:
- BIO312 Genetics
- CHE211 Organic Chemistry II
- CHE421 and CHE422 Biochemistry I and II
- MAT133 Calculus I with review and/or MAT181 Calculus
- PSY100 Psychology
- Medical terminology (can be taken online)
Other Requirements:
Schools require between 500 – 3000 hours of relevant patient care experience (paramedic, EMT, nurse, ER tech, CNA, etc). The GRE (graduate record examination) is required by some schools.
Grades:
Physician Assistant programs are highly competitive. While most schools require a minimum GPA of 3.0 to apply, a higher GPA is necessary to be considered. The national average science GPA of students entering into a Physician Assistant program is 3.3.
You can use the following file as a guideline to organize the prerequisites of the schools you are interested in (PA_SchoolComparisonSpreadsheet_WCSU). The information for all accredited PA schools is found here https://paeaonline.org/our-programs.
Additional Information: The Connecticut Academy of Physician Assistants maintains a website for all programs in Connecticut. Their website is https://connapa.org/pa-programs/