This post is a transcription of a Pre-PA Club Podcast with Mansi. To listen to this podcast, click here.
Mansi: Hi everyone! My name is Mansi. I am a recent graduate from University of Georgia. I just graduated this past May with a Bachelor of Science in Health Promotion in the College of Public Health. I've been taking my gap year since then, just trying to get my patient care hours and also applying at the same time. I applied this past cycle, and I am currently working as a medical assistant at a pediatric and primary care office. I'm actually the lead medical assistant there, so I get to do a lot of training, working with different people, and a lot of admin type stuff too. But I enjoy it! And my time there is ending soon. But as you all know, as everything with COVID continues, I might be working there for longer. Who knows!
Savanna: I’ve only taken one health promotion class because my roommate was a health promotion major, and we wanted to take a class together. I think that was one of the first years they offered the major. But now it seems very popular.
Mansi: Yeah, it's getting really popular, especially with public health kind of coming back up. I think a lot of people are getting more interested in it. And I got to do a lot of kind of advocacy for the major throughout my time there, so I definitely was able to help recruit more people in it. It was really fun. I really enjoyed my time!
Savanna: Did you go into school as a health promotion major, or what made you choose that over something like biology or chemistry?
Mansi: I actually went into school as a biology major, just like everybody else. I was interested in medicine and healthcare. But I actually took a sociology course, which was part of the different requirements for the biology major. In the sociology course, there was a section about medical sociology, and we focused mainly on public health during that time. Even though it was only like two weeks, I became super interested in public health that way. I had never really heard of public health as a career, so I did more research about it. I didn't even know that UGA had a School of Public Health because it was so small. That convinced me to change my major because of how interested I was in it. So, I was like, “I should probably change my major, explore a little bit more into that.” I changed my major going into sophomore year of college.
Savanna: So tell us a little bit about your application cycle and what that was like.
Mansi: I took my GRE in November of 2018; that was fall of my senior year. I actually decided on the PA track between sophomore and junior year, so it took me a little bit of time to get into the mindset of everything I needed to check off in terms of my application. Throughout my spring semester of senior year, I did an internship, as a clinical research assistant, and it was actually pretty time consuming. So, I didn't have any time to apply, which was one of my biggest regrets now. I actually applied really late; I submitted my CASPA for my current program sometime in early July, which was really stressful. When I finished my internship, I spent about a month to a month and a half working on my personal statement. In my major, we had to write a lot of different papers and projects. I was on the faster side of getting my personal statement done, but I did have to go through several edits. Once I had my personal statement done, it took me about two weeks to finish the CASPA including the transcript entry. All in all I applied early July, and I received my interview invite around the end of October. It definitely took its sweet time getting processed! I interviewed in mid-November and was accepted 10 days later. Ever since then, I've just been a little relieved. For most of my summer, it was just peak stress level with my job and trying to submit everything on time.
Savanna: It's stressful! I was just doing a talk about CASPA. It’s hard to explain, but it’s tedious. So how many schools did you apply to?
Mansi: So I applied to 22. I actually applied to a lot against everyone else's advice. I think my main issue was because I was applying so late. I wanted to kind of make sure that I really didn't want to apply twice; that was my main thing. That’s another reason as to why my application period was so stressful because of all the supplementals I was filling out. Luckily, the physician I work for was super super supportive, and she let me take off as many days as allotted for interviews. So I was offered 11 interviews, to which I declined 3 of them. Out of the ones that I went to, I was accepted to five programs. I was definitely very busy, but I genuinely enjoy interviews so much more. It was actually probably the most enjoyable part of the application cycle. I loved getting to meet new people and talking to different program faculty.
Savanna: I loved interviews too, which I think is kind of weird. But I'm like right there with you. Well, that’s impressive!
Mansi: I was not expecting that at all when I applied because that's that's the main reason I applied to so many. I was expecting to get responses from maybe 3, if I was lucky.
Savanna: So you were in the fortunate spot of getting to decide on a program! So what were you looking for? Did you go to any interviews and feel like, “yeah I don't want to go there.” Or did you ever feel like you knew instantly? What did you use to decide?
Mansi: So the main thing I thought about during my interviews was the feel of the school. During my very first interview, I was a nervous wreck. I wasn't really paying attention to anything other than my own performance and how I thought I did. However, as I went on during the interview process, I really was able to get a good feel of the faculty, the campus, the different resources I would have, so location was actually a big thing for me. I've been in Georgia for the majority of my life. While I do have ties here, I didn't mind having the opportunity to explore and go to different cities especially because PA school is only 2-2.5 years. In addition, I really wanted to be in a big city where I would be able to access to multi-specialty hospitals for my rotations. I also considered the kind of faculty at the programs and how I felt while talking to them. Another big consideration I looked at was the alumni outlook. For a lot of the programs I interviewed at, we were able to speak to PA students and alumni, which gave me huge insight into how well the program could prepare me to go into my career. So, a lot of schools that I went to interviews for Actually, we got to speak to. Obviously I paid attention to the PANCE pass rate, class size, the student-faculty ratio, and those other main topics.
Savanna: That’s awesome. Congratulations! So the program you will be attending -- it’s a PA/MPH program right? Does this make it longer to get the additional public health degree?
Mansi: Yes it does. I'll be attending George Washington University, and it's a PA/MPH dual degree, so it’ll actually take 3 years.
Savanna: Is that optional or does everyone do that?
Mansi: There was an extra part of the application that you fill out if you choose to apply for the additional MPH degree. I did that just because I want to have that dual degree going into my PA career. The interview itself was the same for all students; I interviewed with other students who were applying to be just in the PA program. So the MPH adds 1 whole year to the program, which is the first year. The second year will be the PA didactic year, and the 3rd year will be the PA clinical year.
Savanna: Okay, cool. Did you apply to any other MPH programs?
Mansi: Yeah, I actually got accepted to Nova Southeastern. They have an MPH option, so you can choose that once you are a student. So I was looking into that option as well. Being in D.C. was my main factor that made me choose GW. It really sold me due to the location, especially being in the public health area and being near the policy making capital.
Savanna: Great! So you do have a lot of interview experience. Throughout your interviews, did anything come up from your application? Like was there anything that you feel really made you stand out, or anything that was a red flag that kept coming up?
Mansi: Yeah! One of the main things was definitely the organic chemistry series. I didn't do well on those at all during school, so during my interviews, I made sure to bring those up. If it ever came up or if the conversation surrounded academics or GPA, I definitely brought that up. And everybody received it really well. I wasn’t grilled. I think they definitely appreciate that I brought it up and owned up to it. Another red flag would have to be my patient care hours. Going into my application cycle, I only had about 1200 hours. I was kind of nervous for some of the schools that didn't count forward those hours, so I made sure to apply to schools that do count forward. And if a school had a certain cap, I just wouldn't apply to those, especially some of my reach schools that had averages of 4,000-5,000 hours for their accepted students. For me it was a red flag just because I didn't feel like I was strong in that aspect. But I would say I was able to turn it into a pro because I talked about the quality of my patient care hours and how much I was able to do as a medical assistant in a small practice without many staff members. We were able to get insight into all different aspects of the clinic and how it ran.
Savanna: Yeah, I feel like everyone has things in their application -- organic chemistry was mine too! So I think it's interesting, like I never really looked at schools that had public health options, but I think the whole idea of it's really interesting. It would be very helpful. As someone who already has some public health knowledge, how do you feel that will help you in your career as a PA?
Mansi: So, I want to say my undergrad major really gave me the background that I needed in order to go into clinical medicine and look at different things that make a patient. You know, look at a patient more holistically in that aspect. That definitely was one of the reasons why I was interested in getting an MPH. But I want to say the reason why I chose to do MPH in general was that I really want to be able to push my scope of practice as a PA once I go into the career. I have a lot of different interests - maybe pursue research in the future, be in hospital leadership, or, depending on how things go,
maybe form a public health program specifically for a target population that I have in mind. I felt that having an MPH would help me be able to achieve those things.
Savanna: Yeah that’s great. I think more and more people are choosing that as an option, which is really cool. And more programs are offering it. So let’s talk a bit about how you'll be moving from Georgia to D.C. at some unknown time in the future. Is there anything you've done to prepare for that? How do you plan that move that’s very far away with having to get everything in order? What steps have you taken?
Mansi: I’ve networked a lot, so I talked to a lot of people who I know that have personally moved from Georgia to D.C. I reached out and talked to them about their position. Actually, I got really lucky, and there's a girl who's older than me in the program. She also went to UGA, so our journeys were very similar. She’s a year ahead of me, so I was able to kind of connect with her. She walked me through the different nuances of what life in D.C. is like. I think cost of living is a big thing. I know D.C. is an expensive city, so that was a huge adjustment for her. I’m looking into that as well. Obviously, I know there will be some sort of culture shock going from the South to the center of America’s capital. I’m definitely looking forward to that, but I think I'm ready for it, especially because I've lived here for a long time. So I definitely want to get that exposure by living somewhere else. And in terms of kind of preparing to actually move up there, I'm connected with people from my program to make my circle a little bit smaller and a bit more familiar. I've actually found a roommate as well. So I'm hopefully going to start making those social connections as well which I think will make the move a lot easier.
Savanna: That’s so exciting! So, where do you see yourself ending up? I know it’s hard to know and it’ll probably change, but what are your thoughts on that after school?
Mansi: I know it's hard to say right now, and I do want to keep my options open. I Definitely I know rotations are gonna change my mind. Right now, the clinic I work at sees a lot of asthma patients because I work for a pediatric pulmonologist. We kind of the routine pediatric visits but also very severe asthma cases. I know as of now, I am really interested in pulmonology. Although, I don't know if that's where I see myself ending up, but that is one of my interests. And definitely with the coronavirus going on, I do see myself more and more into critical care and wanting to learn more about it. I was actually able to shadow a critical care physician assistant during my application time, so I got to see a little bit of that as well. I think I've gotten a little taste of both worlds. So that's where I’m leaning towards right now.
Savanna: Okay, sounds good! And where can we find you and follow along?
Mansi: I recently created a blog on Instagram, https://www.instagram.com/mansithepa/. I'll just be posting things about my life, about my journey, about my program, and trying to help out other pre-PAs as well. Thank you for having me! It was really fun.
