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Vignettes
of Successful Applicants |
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Here are some examples of successful applicants we have accepted into our program.
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Beth
Beth is a 28 year old geophysicist living in Nebraska who has decided that she is interested in more direct contact and service to people. While keeping her current job, she took the time to explore many different professions.
Physical therapy sparked her interest, as she saw how physics (a subject familiar to Beth) was applied in a clinical setting. She was intrigued with the combination of direct manual skills, the problem solving skills, and the interpersonal skills she saw at work with the PTs she observed. After gathering prerequisite information from several programs, she was heartened by the number of courses she had already taken, but was nervous about quitting her job to go back to school full-time to take those courses she still needed. Having always liked school, specifically the sciences, she decided to go for it.
Beth focused her efforts, taking the prerequisites in a crushing course load but still finding time to continue her once a week observational experiences at one, then another PT clinic. She took the GRE in October and started sending in applications to targeted PT programs in December.
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Sam
Sam has been interested in the profession of physical therapy ever since an injury required him to participate in a rehabilitative program. He majored in Human Science and Services at URI, graduating cum laude last year with a GPA 3.41. Prerequisites were taken at URI, Rhode Island College, and the Community College of Rhode Island; he demonstrated high interest and received high grades in all of the prerequisite coursework. Because he liked Chemistry, he took the advanced level Organic Chemistry course, often lingering after class to discuss concepts and applications of the material with the professor. Additionally, he took related courses that he knew would help him prepare for his profession, including Exercise Physiology and Abnormal Psychology. Sam was a member of a service fraternity, serving as President as well as the principle organizer of several service projects focusing on the surrounding community. Additionally, Sam observed a Physical Therapist for the required 30 hours at a local sports physical therapy practice, but realizing that PT was more than sports rehabilitation, also observed PTs working in nursing homes, primary schools, and acute care facilities. He was intrigued by the different roles Physical Therapists play in different settings, and could honestly see himself working in each of those settings. He summarized the variety of clinical settings and the number of hours spent at each setting in a listing on a single page, which he could then provide as a convenient reference source.
In preparation for applying to PT school, Sam called the American Physical Therapy Association and received a brochure in the mail indicating all accredited schools in the country. He called or wrote for information to be sent to him from 25 of the schools that offered the entry level degree. As the brochures came in, he studied each one, and was somewhat surprised at the range of focus of the different programs, as well as the range of different class sizes. Deciding that he learned best in a small group, he picked four programs, which he would apply to. URI’s program was one of those four, and the one that looked the most interesting to him.
Sam took the Graduate Record Examination during the summer after his junior year, but didn’t score as well as he would have liked, so he took them again during the following October scoring in the 85th and 57th percentile for the verbal and quantitative section respectively. In gathering his application packet together, he received glowing recommendations from his Chemistry professor, and from two of the PTs whom he observed. He obtained official transcripts from the three schools and arranged for his GRE scores to be sent directly to the URI PT Program as well as the three other “back-up” PT programs.
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Dominique
Dominique was fascinated by the rehabilitation participated by a good friend in high school who was injured in an automobile accident. She is currently a junior at URI majoring in Biology. When she enrolled as a freshman, she set her sights on URI’s PT Program as her goal. At that time, she joined the URI Pre-PT Club to familiarize herself with PT Program requirements, as well as network with her fellow pre-PT students. For the last three years, Dominique has been busy completing all of the required for her major, as well as ensuring that she has taken her PT Program prerequisites. She has done well in all of her coursework, obtaining a 3.6 GPA. She has continued to work at Jack’s (a local seafood restaurant) to help finance her education, and has continued participating in her youth group at her church throughout her undergraduate experience.
In addition to her undergraduate studies, Dominique had two volunteer experiences, which she arranged to be in local physical therapy clinics. During those experiences, Dominique paid particular attention to the physiology involved in the injuries that she saw treated in the clinic. After clinic hours, Dominique engaged the physical therapist in many discussions, trying to understand more fully the associations between the physiology she studied in school, and the basis for the treatments she saw applied in the clinic.
By the end of her junior year, Dominique will have taken all of the required courses for her major. Because she desires to apply to the URI PT Program through the “earl contingent admission”, she took the GREs in October of her junior year and scored in the 53rd percentile in the verbal and in the 65th percentile in the quantitative sections. Dominique applied to five schools.
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