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Members of the Physician Assistant Class of 2024 recite the student oath during a ceremony on April 7, 2023, in Hershey.

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PA Program COVID-19 Admissions Questions

PA Program COVID-19 Admissions Questions

COVID-19 Admission Questions

The PA Program at Penn State College of Medicine has updated its admissions policies, understanding COVID-19 may have impacted your educational experience.

At this time, we have updated our policies as follows:

  • GREs continue to be an admissions requirement. This remains unchanged.
    • We have never had a minimum GRE requirement and the range of an acceptable score varies. This can be viewed on our class profiles page.

Physician Assistant COVID-19 Admission Questions

  • While our grading preference remains taking a letter grade for courses, the Penn State PA Admissions Committee revised its grading policy for courses taken in the Spring 2020 and Summer 2020 semesters to accept Satisfactory or Pass grades in lieu of letter grades for both pre-requisites and other courses. Again, our preference is that a candidate reports a letter grade, but if your school did not give you the option to take a letter grade, we will accept Satisfactory or Pass grades for all courses, including pre-requisites, during these two semesters.
  • We do not have a minimum letter grade requirement for individual pre-requisite courses; this remains unchanged.
  • We have always accepted online courses and labs, including sciences, from regionally accredited institutions; this remains unchanged.
  • You will be given the option to detail any academic, professional, personal hardships faced because of COVID-19 by way of an Impact Essay within CASPA.
  • Healthcare hours required to matriculate remains at a minimum of 500 hours; many virtual experiences are accepted towards the minimum requirement.