CASPA Video Tutorial Section Two: Academic History

CASPA Video Tutorial Section 2: Academic History

Hello everyone. My name is Kanwal Ali, and I'm a physician assistant student pairing up with Power Up The PA Life Community to present this step-by-step video tutorial for completing your CASPA application.

This is part two of a five-part CASPA video series walking you through every step of your CASPA application from start to finish!

In this video, we will go over the second section, academic history. Below is a transcript of this video edited for clarity.

Contents hide

1 Academic History

1.1 Colleges Attended

1.2 Transcript Entry

1.3 Review and finalize transcripts

1.4 Standardized Tests

1.4.1 View all posts in this series

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Academic History

This section is short but extremely important because it is where you must order all your school transcripts and input all your educational information.

The first section is about high schools attended. As you can see, I have my high school information already entered. There will be a button here prompting you to add a school. This is how it will look if you input the school, location, and year you graduated.

Save your school information, then confirm that you have reviewed everything. Once this is done, there will be a green checkmark, and it'll be completed.

Colleges Attended

Next is colleges attended. Here, the same steps apply. You would input all the universities that you have attended.

You will have to enter the degree type, the year you earned the degree, your major, or if you were a double major. If you have a minor, you will need to enter that here, along with the college's term system and so on.

Once you have reviewed this information, you can check this off. You will then be prompted to add any additional information that you may have.

Transcript Entry

Next, you will complete the transcript entry. After you've listed all the colleges you have attended, you will be prompted to order transcripts for each school. There are several ways to do this.

You can do this electronically or via mail. Most schools accept transcripts electronically. Previously, there were two companies: Credential Solutions and Parchments, that have now merged.

Once you have chosen your transcript solution, there will be a prompt. It will say “order,” and then you will follow the steps and contact your school. The transcript service provider will be sending your transcripts to CASPA. You will not get your official transcript. It goes directly to CASPA.

You must enter your class information and grades in this next section. Or, if you prefer, a professional transcript entry service is available for purchase, which I used. At the time of my application, this was $75.

It saves a lot of time. If you're a student going through this whole application cycle and you're working and have so many classes to enter, it will take a lot of time. So, by using this service, the professionals at CASPA, once they have received your transcripts, will input all the information into the system for you. You will have the option to review it later.

Review and finalize transcripts

This is where you'll be able to see all the information that they entered. If there are any errors, you can correct them here. Once you have reviewed the information and confirmed that everything looks as it should, you can finalize your transcript.

If you were to do all the transcript entries yourself, you'd have to individually enter the course code, title, subject, credits, and grade.

CASPA has its own system of converting your course credits to a final grade. The system will automatically calculate this for you.

If you are missing prerequisite courses, CASPA will provide a prompt based on your chosen schools’ requirements.

Once you have all of this completed, you'll finalize your transcripts and then move on to the next section

Standardized Tests

If you have a GRE score or an MCAT score, this is where you'll be inputting this information.

Since I did not take any additional standardized tests, I was able to skip past this section. To add a score, you will need to provide your test id, score, and test type. You can add as many as you like.

If you're planning to take a test, you can enter the date you are scheduled to take the exam and return to CASPA later to update this information.

Once you've done this, you can review this information, and this section will be complete.

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Kanwal Ali PA-S

Hometown: Brooklyn, NY Degree: B.S in Psychology at CUNY Brooklyn College PA Program: University of Pittsburgh Hybrid At the time of the 2021 CASPA cycle: PCE = >2,200 hours HCE = 1,000 HCE Community Service =~1,000 hours Experiences: Certified phlebotomy and EKG technician at a GYN clinic, then a primary care clinic. Psychopathology Internship - working with psychologists in an outpatient psychiatric center to assist patients primarily suffering from severe schizophrenia. Crisis Counselor with the Crisis Textline NYU Langone-Brooklyn Branch as an ED volunteer Shadowing: Emergency medicine PA Neurology PA at a private clinic Memberships: American Red Cross Disaster Action Team and Mass Care Team - responding and volunteering to assist with disasters or shortages of resources in our region - and Healthcare Heroes initiative, which distributed food and supplies to hospital workers throughout the different boroughs Outside PA: I love to constantly learn new things and recently taught myself to crochet and am doing small projects like pillows, scarves, hats, and keychains. I am also a newly licensed real estate agent! My next goal is to be part of the New York State Association of Realtors. I wanted to use my time before PA school to become financially literate and knowledgeable moving forward in life.

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