Advising Course Plan - Health Sciences Major - Physician Assistant Interest
Those interested in pursuing a career as a Physician Assistant (PA) should plan on completing a common core of prerequisite course work (*), obtaining patient contact hours (some of these hours under the direct supervision of a PA who will, subsequently, be willing to write you a letter of recommendation), and taking the GRE. Some requirements may differ from the ones listed below depending on the PA program in which you may be interested, so please make sure to look at various graduate program requirements for different universities. You will want to begin looking at universities’ requirements during your 1st year as an undergraduate to better prepare you for graduate programs. Of course, you will need to make sure you satisfy all the Health Science (HLSC) major requirements listed in the course catalog (the plan below should allow you to do this).
Most PA programs require at least a 3.0 GPA, with exceptional programs expecting at least a 3.3. Many programs will use the Centralized Application Service for PAs (CASPA) for application submissions:
https://caspa.liaisoncas.com/applicant-ux/#/login
| First Year | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Fall | Units | Spring | Units | Summer | Units |
| BIOL 141P1,* | 1 | BIOL 142P1,* | 1 | Plan on setting up opportunities for patient contact hours. | |
| HLSC 119V | 1 | PSYC 101S1,* | 1 | ||
| FSEM 100 (unless transfer student)1 | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective or recommended course1,2 | 1 | ||
| General Education requirement1 | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course)1 | 1 | ||
| 4 | 4 | 0 | |||
| Second Year | |||||
| Fall | Units | Spring | Units | Summer | Units |
| HLSC 2011 | 1 | HLSC 2021 | 1 | Plan on setting up opportunities for patient contact hours. | |
| CHEM 141P* | 1 | CHEM 142P* | 1 | Take the GRE in preparation for PA school applications - by the end of summer before Fourth Year. | |
| BIOL 301 (HLSC elective)1,* | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective or recommended course1,3 | 1 | NOTE: If you take HLSC 375, HLSC 376, and HLSC 377 and you’ve been taking 16 credits per semester up to this point, then you will need to make up 1.5 units (i.e., 6 credits) at some point across your junior & senior years in order to complete the required 128 credits to graduate. | |
| General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective | 1 | ||
| 4 | 4 | 0 | |||
| Third Year | |||||
| Fall | Units | Spring | Units | ||
| Junior Seminar must be taken during this year. | HLSC 4981 | 1 | |||
| CHEM 201 (HLSC elective)1,* | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective or recommended course5 | 1 | ||
| HLSC 375 (HLSC elective; recommended)1,* | 0.5 | PUBH 376 | 0.5 | ||
| Junior Seminar or General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective or recommended course1,4 | 1 | Elective | .5 | ||
| Elective | 1 | MATH 125Q | 1 | ||
| 3.5 | 4 | ||||
| Fourth Year | |||||
| Fall | Units | Spring | Units | ||
| HLSC 4991 | 1 | PHIL 316V (or equivalent; HLSC elective; or other Personal & Social Responsibility course (R, E, W, D, J course)) | 1 | ||
| General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective or recommended course1,6 | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective | 1 | ||
| HLSC 4111 | 1 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective | 1 | ||
| PUBH 377 (HLSC elective; recommended) | 0.5 | General Education Requirement (A, B, H, L course) or elective | 1 | ||
| Elective | 1 | ||||
| 4.5 | 4 | ||||
| Total Units 32 | |||||