Physician Assistant Preparatory Program

The physician assistant preparation (PA-preparation) concentration at the Mount is intended for students who plan to make application to a graduate program in physician assistant studies. The curriculum has been designed to satisfy the requisite course admission requirements for most institutions that offer the graduate degree. Most graduate programs also require a certain number of contact hours in a health care setting. The total contact hour requirement and the allowed environments differ among institutions.

The Career Center at Mount Saint Mary College will assist PA-preparation students in obtaining experiences that may satisfy some or all of these requirements. It is the responsibility of the student to investigate the specific pre-requisites for the graduate program(s) for which he/she intends to apply and, as appropriate, to acquire the necessary contact hours.

The PA-preparation curriculum at the Mount leads to the bachelor's degree in biology. While it is not necessarily required that an applicant to a graduate PA program have a degree in the sciences, the pre-requisite courses best fit into the sequence of courses taken by an undergraduate biology major. Most institutions have prescribed liberal arts requirements and those courses have been included in the Mount curriculum. The students are required to complete Biological Principles I & II, Chemical Principles I & II, and Calculus I & II with the following before applying to the department:

No grade in the courses above lower than a B

Overall GPA equal or greater than 3.2

Combined Math and Science GPA equal or greater than 3.2

Meeting all of the requirements outlined in the majors handbook

In addition to 40 credits in biology, the course of study includes the following:

A year of Freshman Chemistry with laboratory

A year of Organic Chemistry with laboratory

A year of Calculus and one course in Statistics

A year of General Physics with laboratory

A year of English

A year of Psychology