The Interview

The day started with check-in at 8:30 and a program presentation at 9:00.  We had an opportunity to visit with current first year students before the presentation and I learned a lot about the schedule and what to expect with the workload.  After the presentation my group had a Q&A session with students where we were able to ask questions and learn even more about the program.  After this I had my interview.  I have to say that it was nice to have the interview right away, but after having a chance to talk to students because I didn’t really have a chance to get nervous and I think that helped a lot.  Plus, the interview was over and I was able to focus on the rest of the morning.  I didn’t really know what to expect with the interview.  I mean, it’s an interview so there are always things that are given, but I had heard a few horror stories from previous students so I didn’t know what to expect.  There were two interviewers; one was faculty and the other a PA from the community.  This year they decided to go a different route with the questions and asked all the students the same 15 standardized questions.  I felt that the questions were fair and pretty much just different ways of asking “tell us about yourself”.  The first question of course was why do you want to be a PA, and even though I was ready for the answer, I wasn’t sure how in depth to go so I rattled on a bit and was hoping they would ask follow up questions if they needed, but they didn’t really and just moved on to the next question.  I feel like I answered each question honestly and just tried to be myself.  The interview itself didn’t see to take too long, and afterward we had a student presentation that talked about the program from the student’s perspective and of course it made me fall in love with WSU even more.  After the presentation we had a tour which was led by one of my physics classmates from a couple years ago!  She is such a cool person and she was very helpful.  She said it took her a couple of tries to get in, and the main reason was because she didn’t have patient care experience.  She said that if she would have had even a certificate, like a C.N.A license, it would have bumped her up into the acceptance pool because just having a license gives you an extra 10 points.  This made my heart skip!  The one area I was lacking in and the most worried about, might not be as dire as I first thought!  I mean, even if I don’t get in I still have a job lined up to gain that experience, but it would sure be nice to be accepted this year and not have to go through another year of applying. 

After the tour we had a short wrap up session where we had the chance to ask any other questions and then we had a little personality assessment we had to fill out and we were done!   Now comes the longest two weeks of my life – waiting until the week of the 28^th to stalk my mailbox.