Pre-Physician’s Assistant Pathway (27 credits of Math/Science courses)

The pre-requisites for physician assistant programs can vary.  It is important for students to determine the specific requirements for each physician assistant program they wish to apply to, in consultation with a pre-health advisor.   Most physician assistant programs require the following courses:

• BIO103/BIO104 General Biology I & II (pre-requisite for microbiology)
• BIO105/BIO106 Anatomy and Physiology I & II
• BIO216 General Microbiology
• CHE110/CHE111 General Chemistry I & II
• CHE210 Organic Chemistry
• MAT115 or MAT120 Biostatistics or Statistics
• One semester of a writing intensive course

Other recommended and/or required courses:

• BIO312 Genetics
• CHE211 Organic Chemistry II
• CHE421 and CHE422 Biochemistry I and II
• MAT133 Calculus I with review and/or MAT181 Calculus
• PSY100 Psychology
• Medical terminology (can be taken online)

Other Requirements:
Schools require between 500 – 3000 hours of relevant patient care experience (paramedic, EMT, nurse, ER tech, CNA, etc).  The GRE (graduate record examination) is required by some schools.

Grades:
Physician Assistant programs are highly competitive.   While most schools require a minimum GPA of 3.0 to apply, a higher GPA is necessary to be considered.  The national average science GPA of students entering into a Physician Assistant program is 3.3.

You can use the following file as a guideline to organize the prerequisites of the schools you are interested in  (PA_SchoolComparisonSpreadsheet_WCSU). The information for all accredited PA schools is found here https://paeaonline.org/our-programs.

Additional Information: The Connecticut Academy of Physician Assistants maintains a website for all programs in Connecticut. Their website is https://connapa.org/pa-programs/

Pre-Physician’s Assistant Pathway Sample Four Year Plan

*Students who did not take pre-calculus in high school are encouraged to take MAT133 Pre-calculus during the summer prior to the start of this program.

Taking multiple lab sciences in a semester can be very challenging. You may wish to reduce your course load and take some courses in the summer.  Speak with your advisor about this possibility.