CapYear Cast - Ashley Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C

Today on the CapYear Cast, we are joined by Ashely Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C. Ashley is the Program Director for Bryant University's Master in Physician Associate Studies program, and she was kind enough to share her time and her insights with us. In this brief interview, Ashley talks about what a competitive program like Bryant's looks for in an aspiring applicant. Besides the undergraduate must-do's like advanced course work and solid a GPA, she discusses several ways for candidates to stand out. For instance, gap years spent gaining patient-facing hours, demonstrating an ability to balance work and school, PA-shadowing, and even tips for how to make your essay stand out. All in all, it's a must-listen for current and future PA-school applicants! 

Thanks for listening & subscribe for updates!

Graduates (& soon to be graduates) - Get clinical experience and a paycheck! Create your FREE profile on https://capyear.co/ to find employers looking to hire pre-health graduates and current students. Plus, you can find a growing number of clinical research positions. 

Applying to Medical or PA school? CapYear offers application support and career advice from physicians, PAs, and nurses to launch your career and make your application for MD/PA school stand out from the crowd.

Providers - CapYear saves time and money by proactively sourcing applicants for your positions from a pool of diverse, college-educated talent looking for clinical positions to launch their careers. The future PAs, nurses, and physicians of America can fill many entry-level clinical positions, support your team and help deliver a great patient experience. Visit our job board, post a job, and let our team get to work for you today!  https://jobs.capyear.co/

For more information on gap year placement, medical assistant hiring, or MD/PA school application support, please email us at [email protected]

https://capyear.co/

https://jobs.capyear.co/

Transcript below:

John Walkup: Hi, and welcome back to the CapYear Cast. I'm your host, John Walkup, and joining us today is Ashley Hughes. She's the program director for Bryant University's Master of Science and Physician Associate Studies Program.

Ashley, welcome to the program.

Ashley Hughes, MSPAS, PA-C: Hi, John. Thank you very much.

John: I'm glad you could join us. So you've been in this position for about a year now - what drew you to Bryant?

Ashley: I had been working in PA education for close to 10 years. I believe it was about seven years in the role of an academic coordinator, and I was looking for a role that I would be able to get into that would allow me to really try to redesign and refine a curriculum a little bit more so than I already was. The opportunity was available at Bryant. They had the position open for the program director. I met with the president of the university and the provost, and they were so incredibly welcoming.

They, they're very supportive and understanding of the goals that I had for being able to design the curriculum to a point where, you know, I felt that we would. Be a hundred percent preparing our students for their board examination and let me run with it. So it just seems like a really great fit.

John: That's great. Bryant has a unique program. I know you do gross anatomy at the Warren Alpert School of Medicine at Brown University. There's your 2000 hours of didactic lessons - what sets Brian apart?

Ashley: So we actually have a few different areas of the curriculum that are very unique to Bryant. So one of them is, yes, we do send our students to the Brown Anatomy Lab, and that's where they meet with the same instructor that teaches the Brown Medical School students and they have a very condensed anatomy course. I actually teach the history and physical examination course. It's not typical for a program director to be that involved in the education of the program. But I very much enjoy doing so, and I have the entire core faculty involved in that. Lastly, we have what we call an immersive clinical simulation experience. That we have run throughout an entire week for our students where they're in the clinical simulation lab, caring for patients, using the skills that they've learned in the clinical medicine courses, and that is very new for us that we've designed this year, and it's worked out very well, and the students have really liked it and enjoyed the entire time.

John: All right, we're going to get into it now. So if you look at any ranking out there, like US news or whatever, a physician associate is usually one of the top jobs, if not the top job. It's always top five. That makes for a lot of competition for limited spots, especially in sought after programs like Bryant.

So, from your perspective, you're the program director, I'd like to talk about what makes an ideal candidate for the Bryant University program. Tell me about the characteristics you're looking for in a successful applicant.

Ashley: So if you look at our mission statement, our mission statement really boils down to trying to find candidates who are passionate about giving back to their community.

They really want to serve underserved populations. They want to deliver high quality healthcare, and they want to be leaders in their community. So those are the types of people that we're looking for. On top of that, we're ideally trying to look for the students who've been very successful in their undergraduate studies and those that have at least 2000 hours of patient care experience.

And that may be a bit hard for a student to achieve immediately after undergrad. So more often than not, we're looking for those students that have at least one to two gap years, because that's typically what gives them enough time to acquire those clinical hours.

John: Interesting. Well, thank thank you for bringing that up! At CapYear, that is what we do. So if you do have a gap year CapYear is here to help you with that. We help place gap year students in medical assistant facing roles. So they get those patient hours. That's is difficult to do, so I'm glad that that's something we can help with. So enough of my self plug there, let me get back. Let me talk about on the academic side, are there any specific academic requirements for the program that you should be doing before you get into the program?

Ashley: Absolutely. So we have all of the courses that we require posted on the program website. We require eight hours of general chemistry, anatomy, physiology biochemistry, microbiology, all of and statistics. So all of those courses are listed there, and I apologize if I'm missing one of them. The caveat to that is we understand that there are some schools out there that have maybe changed their curriculum.

So courses such as general chemistry rather than being taught over two semesters and being given for eight credit hours, are now being taught in a condensed fashion. So we do understand that, and we do make some exceptions when that is the case, but we do have definitely a list of courses that we do require the students to have before they apply to the program.

John: I would assume these are courses that you. You may not need to get a perfect 4.0, but you probably should have above a 3.0. Am I, am I correct there?

Ashley: That's exactly right. So our preference is for 3.0 or higher in those courses. And those courses are often designated as comprising the BCPGPA, so the biology, chemistry, and physics.

So we try to look for that because we know on previous analyses at this program and other programs that that's a correlate to passing the boards after graduation.

John: Let's talk about the application process itself. Now, I believe this is the CASPA process, which is getting underway right now. Is that about right?

Ashley: Yes, it actually just opened. So the application window is now available so students can log in, they can submit their application, and it's a multi-step process. So first, they submit to CASPA, and CASPA allows you to designate schools so you can designate as many schools as you would like as a PA school applicant.

Once you do that, if you select Bryant, the next step is to submit the supplemental application.

So then they would have to fill out their supplemental application, which is one or two questions from Bryant specifically, so that we can learn a little bit more about the applicant, perhaps things that we did not gather from the CASPA application.

From there, our director of Admissions reviews all of the applicants, which historically has been around 800 applicants. Last year we had over a thousand.

John: How many spots are they competing for?

Ashley: 47 spots.           

John: It's very competitive. So how do you do that selection process? How do you evaluate candidates, especially when so many are going to be very similar in terms of what they want to do and the grades they're bringing to the program?

Ashley: Absolutely, and this is very difficult. We have to do this with the, the use of the entire team here. So our admissions director will first go in and look at the applications and make sure that those people who have submitted have all the minimum criteria that we are requesting and that they've taken all the appropriate prerequisite courses.

So once that's done, she starts filtering the applications to the faculty members. And we have two faculty members at the minimum reviewing every person's application. And we create a multi-tiered bucket that we put these applications into. And it's based on the score that we develop. We have a very detailed rubric, and on that rubric, we evaluate the grades and courses.

The number of difficult courses a person has taken per semester. We look at their volunteer experience, we look at any sports or athletics they were involved in during undergrad, if they were able to maintain a job and go to school, their clinical hours, the type of position and their recommendation letters.

And we also, of course, take into effect a person's life experience and their general picture because we like to have a holistic approach to the application process. And typically, once we do that, we'll end up with about a hundred people that we offer interviews to. And out of those 100, then we'll accept 47.

John: Wow. Okay. So I got so many questions here. Let me just start on the first one, which is, There, there's definitely a balancing act between loading up your undergrad schedule with really difficult courses and then excelling in those courses. And I'm wondering it, does it, is it better to have a, a whole bunch of hard courses on there, or is it better to sort of have a fewer courses, maybe not as difficult, but straight A's.

Ashley: So we'd like to see some, some pretty rigorous scheduling in undergrad, and that's because in PA school, we're trying to feed you all of the information that you need to practice clinically within about 12 months, right? So it's helpful for us to see that a person is capable of taking two to three really difficult or hard, hard science.

Courses within one semester. So that applicant might be a stronger applicant to the faculty reviewing than somebody who's taking one difficult science course per semester.

John: Right. And you also mentioned the candidate that might have a job, you know, sort of a part-time job on the side. How does that influence how you view applicants?

Ashley: So that's helpful because what we look at as I said, we look at the number of courses per semester, the difficult ones. If we see someone who's a stellar applicant and maybe they're only taking one or two difficult courses, there could be a reason for that.

It could be that, you know, maybe they had to work while they were in school and because of their need to have this job and to support themselves in one fashion or another. That. Was the reason why they took fewer difficult courses. So we take that into consideration and that's helpful for us because that applicant would be looked at as having as rigorous of a schedule as that person who is perhaps not working and maybe taking those three difficult courses per semester.

John: Got it. All right. Now I want to dive into the personal essay. And I'm curious when you're reading these essays because you know there's so many, there, there really is almost a form to these, right? You want to start out with a hook, and you kind of talk about how you're viewing this, how you're viewing yourself, and what you've done.

How you can read these and not have your eyes glaze over reading the same thing. What makes some of these essays stand out?

Ashley: The essays that stand out for me are those that are not essentially a recap of a person's resume. Okay. So as you said, having a hook line.

So why did you want to be a pa? That is typically the question that's posed to applicants when they're trying to fill out these personal essays. So what led you to the profession? Why do you want to be a pa? I don't want to read about their experiences. And how those experiences are essentially mirroring what's on their resume.

I want to learn about perhaps maybe a patient encounter that was meaningful to them. I want to learn about the first time they heard about the PA profession and really what was different about PA and what made them lead in that direction versus. MD or NP or some other health, allied health profession. So I would say those essays that stand out are the ones that have more of a personal touch to them that maybe tell a story and completely avoid summarizing their resume.

John: That's really helpful. Thank you. I will highlight that in the transcript because I think that's a great takeaway.

And so let me ask now about the reference letters and letters of recommendation and things like that. Who are the best people to ask for those, and what sort of things do you really want to have come across?

Ashley: We want to learn more about the person's character. I want to know who they are as a person. I want to know about how they function in a team and how they take criticism. So those are really the top three things that we look for, and ideally, the best people to write recommendation letters are those that know the applicant best.

So that could be someone who they are working with. It doesn't necessarily have to be their direct supervisor. Maybe it's a PA that they work alongside. So as you said, for cap year, these students sometimes if they're applying to PA school, will take a year and function as an ma. Asking that pa that they're working with on a daily basis to write a recommendation letter is incredibly valuable because as a reviewer, I'm thinking the PA is writing this thinking.

I can see this person as a colleague in the future. So that is very helpful. Using instructors as people to write a recommendation letter is also perfectly fine, especially if, if it's an instructor that can speak to a very strong academic performance in undergrad. What I would avoid is asking people that you know personally.

So sometimes we have applicants ask a friend or a neighbor or someone that they're close to, to write a recommendation letter That has less value than asking coworkers, colleagues, academic instructors, or other health professionals that they've worked with closely.

John: This is really fantastic. Okay, now, now we're going to get into uncharted territory. I want some unique advice for our aspiring applicants. Is there anything that might not be found online or in a textbook that you might suggest?

Ashley: So one thing, and I, I don't think this is in a textbook, but we do have a rolling admissions process, and what that means is we're reviewing applicants and bringing them in, interviewing and making a decision that same day on whether we're to accept or deny acceptance to that applicant.

And applying early is critical because we can get through maybe two or three different interview sessions and we could have our entire cohort filled. Or maybe we'll have two seats left. So if you are applying later in the application cycle, you may not know it. But you could be vying for only two or three open seats within a program.

So look at the program and see if it says rolling admissions or not. And again, Bryant does have rolling admissions, so based on the quality of the applicants and the quality of those people as they're coming in and interviewing with us, we could either have plenty of seats available in October, or we could have no seats available in October.

John: The early bird gets the worm.

Ashley: Absolutely. Yes. The only other thing that I would suggest is PA shadowing. Okay. So we do really want to make sure that people have a good understanding of the role of a PA in healthcare and the understanding of the relationship that occurs between the collaborating physician and the pa.

So it's important to have that, those shadowing hours. If a person can shadow in more than one. Specialty, then that puts them at a higher ranking than someone who has either done virtual shadowing or shadowing in one specialty only. So I would highly suggest shadow a pa, try shadowing in different medical specialties as well.

John: Wow. More fantastic stuff. Great. What are some of the challenges and some of the common misconceptions that applicants might face, especially as they're going through the process and they're, they're, they're leaning on cap, maybe they're leaning on CASPA a little bit too much to sort of fill in this application.

What sort of roadblocks would you try to remove from people's way?

Ashley: I'm not quite sure if this is a roadblock, but one thing I have seen is people will take a portion of their CA application and reuse that in the supplemental application. Mm-hmm. For Bryant's, and I would say that's a big no-no and never to do that because we can see what's within the CASPA application and what's in the supplemental application and we want to ensure that you're taking the time.

To write something that's very specific to our university, if this is where you want to go, rather than using some of the information from your CASA app, which can be used for all PA programs that a person is applying to.

John: Awesome. All right, we’ve covered a lot of ground here. And quickly before we go, is there a link on Bryant that I can direct people to if they want more information on your program?

Ashley: Yes. So if you go to bryant.edu from there, under the academics, you can select the PA program. And under the PA program, we have everything from information about our faculty to the curricular design, to prerequisites, to even an email address, to contact our admissions director if you have any very specific questions that are not answered on the website.

John: Awesome. Ashley Hughes, program director for Bryant University's Master of Science and Physician Associate Studies. Thank you very much. We do appreciate your time, and we'll send next time on the CapYear cast.

Ashley: Great. Thank you very much.