When I started this post, I was trying to come up with a number so this could be titled, The Five Things You Need to Know About CASPA, but I couldn’t because once I started to write about it, I would think of new things that I wanted to cover also. Today, I am going to go over the main things that will help create less CASPA stress but I want to encourage you to check out The Pre-PA Club Facebook group where thousands of pre-PAs are asking and answering questions for one another. Alot of the questions are good ones that pop up every application cycle and make sure to check out my Youtube video All About CASPA - How to Apply for PA School! It’s a really great resource to have!

CASPA GPA

All of this is explained in the CASPA FAQ that they have online and I highly recommend reading through the entire thing, it is definitely worth your time. It can still be a little bit confusing until you're actually applying on the CASPA website though. However, if you are still confused, make sure to check out my Youtube video where I go through a CASPA walkthrough and give tips for PA school. and Everyone seems to be most concerned about GPA. CASPA calculates a bunch of different GPAs, like a whole page worth. The main ones you need to be concerned with are you overall and your science GPA. Here is a post I wrote that can help you determine your CASPA. In this post, you can break down how they calculate your CASPA GPA. In regards to GPA, the main point I want to emphasize is that every single grade from every single course you have ever taken goes into your CAPSA GPA. No courses are averaged. If you retook a class and your school “replaced” the grade, CASPA will not do that. They will see that you took O Chem three times and got an C, B, and an A. They will not average these grades together, they just count them all in the calculation. Most schools are going to take that highest grade into consideration. There are a few that will say we want your initial attempt but that's not very common. Every grade goes into the GPA calculations.

How to Calculate Your CASPA GPA

CASPA does not calculate your GPA until you've submitted your application. So there is no way to know exactly what your CASPA GPA will be before you submit. Once you've submitted and it's been verified and they go through all your coursework, that's when those GPAs are calculated. You'll be able to go back into your application and see that. For a lot of people, their CASPA GPA is less than what they expected. It may be different than the GPA that's on your transcripts because, if you did repeat courses, a lot of schools like universities will not include that first attempt in their calculations. This can be a shock to a lot of people and that's why I do recommend trying to figure out if you can with the GPA are ahead of time and that blog post I mentioned has a GPA calculator where you can plug in your grades.

We can do this for you at The PA Platform. We have a Pre-PA Assessment service where we do GPA only and try to estimate that for you with an interactive Excel document. Just don't be surprised if your GPA are different and most likely lower. Every once in a while, someone’s CASPA GPA will be high which is awesome but for the most part, it’s a rude awakening for a lot of people and can even take you out of the running for a program if your CASPA GPA drops you below that 3.0 mark.

Can my GPA Improve in the Same Application Cycle?

The second point I want to make about CASPA GPA is after you have been verified, they WILL NOT recalculate your GPA again for the application cycle. Let me try to explain this. Let's say that you're currently taking classes, and your semester is about to end. You've already submitted your application because you wanted to get it in for schools that had a July or August deadline, but you're thinking that if you wait for other schools that have a later deadline, you can submit these courses and it will boost your GPA. That's not how it works. Those GPAs that come up and your initial application will be the ones that are calculated and sent to the schools. It doesn’t matter how much new coursework you add, your CASPA GPA will not be recalculated until the next application cycle. This is something to think about if you are applying to a future cycle, especially when it comes to spring and summer courses because CASPA opens in April but if you submit in April and you are waiting for the spring semester to finish up, those new classes and grades will not be included until NEXT April when you apply again.

Some schools will allow you to send them an update and say, ‘I completed XYZ course’ and take that into consideration but some schools will not, they strictly go by what's on your application. That's really important because it messes up a lot of people and I see this over and over coming up in the Facebook group and the discussions.

What Carries Over Cycle to Cycle?

Another question that I'm getting is about GRE scores and what carries over. Remember that hypothetically anything that you enter, will carry over as long as it's not a letter of recommendation or your personal statement. Letters of recommendation have to be submitted every single cycle and your personal statements should be entered every cycle. If you've sent a GRE a score to a specific school (because each school has their own code), if you sent your transcripts, if you've entered experience, hypothetically that should all be there every once in a while, there are issues and CASPA has to reset something and it all gets lost. You can't bank on that and CASPA shouldn't be the only place you have your information, but usually things carry over.

CASPA does not currently use anything like InnerFolio to save letters and so that's something to take into consideration too. Important to note, those letters have to come directly from the letter writers they cannot come from you and they're submitted electronically. I've written letters for people, first I have to sign in and then I had to answer some questions on a scale about the person — their work ethic and whether you recommend them— then you upload the letter and it sent into CASPA.

You can add more programs if you want to apply to more perks after your initial submission, and you can add more experiences. If you are getting additional hours, have switched jobs, or shadowing more, volunteering more, you can. You cannot edit an old entry for experience but you can add a new one which will get sent out to the programs as an update — whether or not they look at that is going to be program specific, so you may want to shoot them a separate update, let them know that you are still working towards this goal, that you're still available, and that you are ready and willing to come in for an interview.

Something that is new on The PA Platform is the PA programs map. Go there you will see that we have a map now this interactive as every state and every program listed right now it just has their contact information, we will be slowly going to be adding more info as people tell us what they think is going to be most helpful, but that makes it super easy for you to find the email address, phone number and website link. That is a tool that you can use, just to reach out to those schools and give them those updates if you need to, those are the main basics that I've been seen issues with as far as CASPA goes right now.

If there is something that I missed or something you want more information on, let me know in the comments below! Thank you for reading. If you would like to listen to this in a podcast format, you can do so here.