<p>I want to become a physician assistant. I am confused about what I should be majoring in. I am going to go to University of Florida for college. I am considering Biology as a major also, but i'm still not sure!!</p>
<p>The quickest way to do it is to attend a college that offers a 5 year program, starting from high school.</p>
<p>For a program that you transfer into, I imagine any natural science or health care oriented bachelors major can work as long as you complete all of the pre-requisites.</p>
<p>In a word, no. Pre reqs are very different and include a lot more chemistry (usually a year of general, another of organic, and a semester of biochem).</p>
<p>Conventional wisdom would be that if you are able to get into a nursing program, graduate and pass the test, you are better off going for a Nurse Practitioner degree than a Physician’s Assistant. It will be a much smoother transition.</p>
<p>I believe many people applying to Physicians Assistant grad programs had originally intended to apply to med school, but couldn’t make it work, or decided they couldn’t handle the debt and the years of slave labor.</p>
<p>My daughter is a junior in HS right now and wants to be a PA. I love the idea of a 5 or 6 year direct admit PA program. Does anyone have a list of schools that offer this option?</p>
<p>My daughter is also looking at a BS in nursing - which definitely will get you the patient care hours required to get into a PA graduate program. It won’t give you the pre-requs you need to enter though. The flip side is doing a bio or chem major (or anything really) as long as you take the chem, A/Phys, math pre-reqs…you’ll graduate with the right classes but may struggle to find employment that gets you 1000 hours of patient care time.<br>
My daughter is definitely a people person and wants the patient care time in either the ER or family practice or peds - def not interested in research, which a good deal of bio majors end up doing.</p>
<p>KpKelly - I don’t know where there might be a list, but you can look at Duquesne University’s program as an example of one. When we went to an open house when she was a Senior, someone tried to talk D into it instead of nursing. D has a friend in the program, who is happy with it. At Duquesne at least though, keep in mind that it’s not a feasible backup plan to transfer into nursing if the PA program doesn’t work out since the nursing program usually doesn’t have transfer openings.</p>