Abstract
Excerpt: Do you remember what it felt like to make the transition from high school to college—that feeling of walking into a 300-seat auditorium and realizing you were not the big fish in a little pond anymore? It was really exhilarating and scary all at the same time. In my biology class, I remember one of the first things that my professor asked our class was “How many of you want to be doctors?” As you can imagine, about 90% of the classroom raised their hands. He smiled and quite matter-of-factly stated that only 10% of us would actually make it to that point. He was not that far off. In 2017, 39.26% of the students who applied to medical school actually matriculated, while in 2015, according to the most recent available data from the Central Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA), 31.94% of physician assistant (PA) students that applied actually matriculated.1,2Table 1 shows the actual number of students who applied versus the number of students who matriculated.