When it comes to choosing a major for PA school, it really doesn’t matter what your major is. Schools only really want to see that you have completed the required prerequisites and so in my class we had tons of different majors. I was a biology major but if I had to go back and do it again, I probably would choose something different. You know I’m loving doing website design and podcasting and so I might would’ve done a marketing degree or something in design, honestly. Choose something that you are interested in first of all because you got to have that bachelor’s degree and then you can always get the course work in other ways.
Now if you choose a science major it will make it a little bit easier to obtain those things at the same time, potentially. I was biology at UGA. What was strange about my program was that I had to take anatomy and physiology for PA school but that was not considered part of my major. I couldn’t even get into the classes at UGA because there are other majors like kinesiology and health promotions that had to have those courses whereas my major did not. I had to take those elsewhere over the summer and then they counted as electives for me they didn’t even count as science courses. All my other biology and chemistry counted but I also ended up taking extra classes. I had to take organic chemistry 2, which is not typically a requirement for a lot of PA program. I had to take these classes that we’re kind of killing my GPA and weren’t necessarily helping me because it was part of my major. You want to look at all of that.
Let’s talk about nursing. Nursing experience is great for PA school when it comes to getting those patient care hours. As far as the degree and the training, that’s something you have to look at with each PA program because a lot of these programs they want the upper-level course work, which isn’t always required for BSN.
You do want to check and look at the classes you would be taking and check with the schools to make sure you those would count. You don’t want to waste your time and money doing nursing and RN only for the credits not to count. You also want to be able to explain why you are going the PA route. If you’re choosing to be educated in the nursing model, the question would come up of, “Why not Nurse Practitioner?” You really want to be able to speak to that and tell them why you want to do PA and then you’ll have to use that experience. Plan on after you get your BSN and your RN license, actually working as a nurse for a while to show the you didn’t do it for the heck of it.
