CASPA Crash Course
Remember the dreaded Common App for college applications? Meet Common App’s nasty big brother, CASPA.
Short for Centralized Application Service for Physician Assistants, CASPA is exactly what it says it is: a one stop shop for all of your PA school applications. A vast majority of schools will run their application cycles through CASPA. Your CASPA application is where you input all coursework, upload transcripts, turn in letters of recommendation, log HCE and volunteer hours, and submit/pay for applications. In this article, we break down all of the components of CASPA, what they mean, and what to expect when the 2025-2026 application opens late April 2025.
Personal Information: This section is one of the best places to get started with your application. It will ask for basic demographic information such as your name, age, marital status, address, veteran status.
Academic History: This section is where you will manually enter all of your coursework, grades, GRE scores, and school transcripts. Be prepared to be asked about all academic coursework from high school through college or other graduate programs. This is also where you will designate courses that are included in your Science GPA vs Cumulative GPA. To see where you stand before completing this section, calculate your science GPA using our PA School Application Tracker
Supporting Information: The section where you make yourself stand out and is perhaps the most involved in all of CASPA. Supporting Information includes:
Evaluations: Also known as letters of recommendation, CASPA requires each applicant to submit a minimum of 2 references and a maximum of 5. Our advice: go for quality over quantity. An applicant with 3 outstanding and personalized recommendations is likely a better candidate than one with 5 sub-par recommendations. When you have secured your recommenders, you will input their emails to this section to have a secure link sent to their email to fill out the evaluation form. Important note: as the applicant, you do not get to see the final recommendation once it is submitted, as you waive your right to view finalized recommendations as a part of the submission process.
Experiences: This is where you input your HCE, PCE, research, teaching experience, non-healthcare related work, extracurriculars, volunteer hours, and shadowing. This is truly one of the most important sections in CASPA and most of your time should be spent refining the descriptions of your roles, responsibilities, and projects so that they are tailored towards showing that you will be a great PA. We recommend using strong action verbs and concise descriptions to showcase exactly what you did and learned from each role.
Achievements: This section is home to all scholarships, awards, grants that you received from high school onwards. This is also the most appropriate place to discuss research recognitions. You can add more achievements after you have submitted your application if they arise (ex; your research article gets published in a journal, or you are awarded a new grant), but you cannot change the descriptions of the awards you have already submitted.
Licenses and Certifications: This section includes any professional licensure you hold, such as a teaching license, EMT/CNA/Paramedic certification, ACLS/PALS, or BLS certifications. You will need your license numbers and expiration dates on hand for this section, as CASPA does ask you for these.
Personal Statement: AKA what every applicant dreads, the personal statement is designed to be general, as it is sent to every school. Each year’s prompt is some variation of: ‘Please explain why you want to be a PA’. The personal statement has a strict character limit of 5000 characters (spaces included). Many students find this the most challenging part of the application, as the question is vague and can take you in 101 different directions. At Your PA Story, we believe this is the part of your application that gives you the space to express what makes you YOU. Even if you already have a clear vision of who you are and who you want to be a PA, getting those sentiments into <5000 characters is challenging at best. We offer Personal Statement Reviews as part of our PRN or Comprehensive packages to help you get focused, individualized feedback and crush the Personal Statement section.
Memberships: Use this section to showcase professional organizations of which you are a student or professional member. One great organization to join as a pre-PA student is the American Academy of Physician Associates (AAPA). Pre- PA student membership is $50 annually and provides a wealth of resources about the profession, legislation updates, and the application process. Certain states also have pre-PA student memberships, so search for your state organization to learn more. Joining these organizations before you are a PA-S shows a commitment to the profession before you even begin formal medical education. If there are additional organizations that you participate in that you would like to showcase, this is also the best spot for those.
Program Materials: Each program will have its own separate essays and materials to submit through CASPA. Many of these are more school - specific prompts, such as “What makes ____ program a good fit for your PA education?” or “How do you uphold the values of ____ school?”. These are the essays that you will want to make more specific rather than general, as often schools use these to determine if applicants fit their school’s mission. In addition to the program materials, some schools will later send out an additional Supplemental or Secondary Application to candidates whom they are interested in interviewing down the road. Be sure to check if any of your schools send these out and keep them in the back of your mind.
Cost: Although offical cost for this application season will not be published until the 2025-2026 application opens at the end of April, last year’s application fees were $184 for the first program and an additional $61 for each additional program. The average applicant will apply to 10-12 schools, making the up front cost of submitting CASPA around $800.
So, there you have it! The condensed version of what it takes to submit the CASPA application. As a pre-PA student, this process was so overwhelming that I had to keep everything organized to keep from losing my mind, so I created the PA School Application Tracker, which is now available for digital download through www.yourpastory.com. With sections that mirror the CASPA application, it helped keep me organized and focused on where I stood as an applicant vs what I still had left to work on. Head over to our webpage to learn more, and happy application season!