Hi! My name is Nidhi Patel-Joshi & my journey to becoming a physician associate (PA) hasn't been exactly straight forward.

This page is created in the hopes of helping pre-PA students on their journey whether they share similar path as me or not. After battling with a lot of personal struggles, I was ready for a change from pre-med to pre-PA at the age of 24, which was after finishing undergraduate and going to a Carribean medical school for a year. I really didn’t know anything about the PA field & after much research, when I finally decided to pursue this route, I didn’t find anyone who I can relate to. Blogs and Instagram has helped me connect to many people that have helped me, so hopefully I can be of help to some of you.

Since you’ll probably wonder about the stats: 

HCE 810 | PCE 7000 | shadowing PA 348; shadowing MD 100 | volunteering 440

2016-2017: CASPA calculated sGPA 2.84 overall 2.94

2018: 1st time applying; 33 schools. 3 interviews. 2 waitlists. [tried to get the GPAs above 3.0, shadowing & pt care hours] sGPA & overall 3.07 last 60 3.82

2019: 25 schools. 1 interview & denied. [finished my MPH, got CHES certification + same efforts as last year] sGPA & overall 3.08 last 60 3.7

2020: 32 schools. 4 interviews. 4 acceptances. [repeated 2 Cs from undergrad science classes]

sGPA & overall 3.08 last 60 3.7. Total 264 units (this becomes important in calculating GPA more on this in another post!)

GRE 297 😬 (most of my schools didn’t need GRE, some waived it with MPH)

2021: started a 33 month PA program at USC in California in August.

2024: graduated USC PA program with honors in May and started working as a family and street medicine PA at a FQHC in July!

This has been, hands-down, the hardest thing I’ve ever done. To pick myself back up, rejection after rejection, and think of ways to improve my application in different categories was challenging. 

Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions, need help editing personal statement, mock interviews or just want to chat about different possibilities in medicine! I try my best to help as many people as I can for free, in return that you also help out fellow human beings on this planet. 

& remember, If I can do it, you can too! No matter how hard it may seem in the moment.

-Nidhi Patel-Joshi PA-C, MPH, CHES