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Pre-Health Professions General Information


Advising

Dr. Russell Wilke is chairman of the Health Professions Advisory Committee (HPAC). He advises health professions students with 45 or more semester credit hours. All questions concerning applications, standardized tests (MCAT, DAT, OAT), etc., should be directed to Dr. Wilke.

Dr. Connie Heimann advises health professions students with fewer than 45 credit hours and will be glad to discuss possible majors and alternative career options with any interested student.

Chiropractic Medicine
We also advise students interested in chiropractic medicine. Applicants to chiropractic schools do not need an HPE completed by the HPAC. They should arrange with individual professors for letters of recommendation/evaluation. See the information posted under chiropractic medicine.

Physician Assistant Studies
We also advise students interested in physician assistant (PA) studies. Applicants to PA schools no longer need an HPE completed by the HPAC. Most PA schools now use the Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA) national application service.

Recommendations and evaluations for students applying through CASPA are completed online and are very short. Thus, they are not amenable to the detailed and extensive evaluations that the HPAC completes.

When students apply to PA schools that do not use CASPA and require individual recommendations/evaluations, students should make requests to individual professors. The GRE (Graduate Record Exam) is required for some programs.

For more information, visit the CASPA website and review our information about physician assistants. Please be aware that many programs require 75-100 hours of shadowing and/or prior experience in medicine.

Standardized Tests

The MCAT, DAT, OAT and GRE are now completely computerized and are administered multiple times during each application year, from late January to early September or later. Several face-to-face and online study courses are available for each exam. The HPAC chairman will be glad to discuss these with you:

Medical and Dental School Admission

Texas medical schools have now gone to a “rolling admissions” policy. By Oct. 15 of your application year, any Texas medical school may offer you a seat if you have done any of the following:

Admissions continue from Oct. 15 until each medical school has filled its entering class. However, the majority of offers for medical school admission are made in November and December. Fewer than 20 percent of seats remain to be filled after that. This means that the HPAC must have visited with applicants and completed their HPEs well in advance of Oct. 15.

The HPAC will interview every applicant during the spring semester only (no exceptions) of the application year (usually spring of your junior year). The interviews will be conducted beginning in late February and concluding prior to the end of that semester.

All evaluations will be completed and submitted by the chairman during the summer so that each applicant to any health professions school can be considered for admission at the earliest possible time for each particular school. Applicants must also have taken any required standardized tests and submitted their completed applications as early as possible.

Optometry, Podiatry, Chiropractic and Physician Assistant Admission

Students interested in these fields must also apply through the HPAC in the spring of their application year in a manner similar to medical and dental school applicants. Please visit with your advisor for more information about the application procedure.

Health Professions Organizations

Check out this list of professional health organizations to get more information on your areas of interest.

Health Professions

Health Professions Reference Information

The health professions reference room is in Room 002 of the Cavness Science Building, which can be found on the campus map.

Be Realistic About the Entire Process

Because schools are inundated with thousands of applications, they can afford to be picky. They look at entrance exam scores, overall GPA, science GPA, prerequisite courses, upper level science courses, test scores, community service and extracurricular activities. A deficiency in any of these areas may hinder your chances for admission, so prepare well in advance and have a “Plan B.”

In our experience, no one from ASU has ever entered medical or professional school with less than a 3.0 cumulative GPA. If your overall GPA and/or science GPA is lower than 3.0, you need to get special permission from the chairman before applying.

Pre-Health Timeline

Need some guidance about what to do each year of school? View this Pre-Health Timeline.

Pre-Health Timeline