Admissions FAQs

The correct term is PA or Physician Assistant. There is no apostrophe; there are no plurals (it is not: Physician’s Assistant; Physicians Assistant).

Our program is 27 months long, or seven semesters. New cohorts matriculate in August of each year.

• Click here to view all admissions requirements.
• There are no waivers, substitutions, or exceptions to any of the published admission requirements including, but not limited to:
  • GRE – You must take the GRE in 2020 or later
  • No MCAT or PA-CAT substitution for the GRE
  • No waiver of the GRE if you have a graduate degree
  • We do not require CASPer
  • Seven-year time limit on all prerequisite requirements: 2018 or later, no exceptions (Fall 2017 is not acceptable)
• The Admissions Director and Admissions Coordinator are solely responsible for interview invitations; faculty members are solely responsible for admissions decisions.
• CASPA requires that ALL course work completed or attempted since high school MUST be listed on your CASPA application. This includes international course work. Failure to disclose all course work attempted is subject to your being disqualified for admission consideration or having an offer of admission revoked.

While GPA, clinical experience, and recommendation letters are important factors, our evaluation considers the entire application to form an impression of you. Meeting or even exceeding the minimum requirements may or may not result in an opportunity for an admissions interview. As you submit your application materials through CASPA, use your personal narrative to give us the best picture of who you are - your motivation to become a PA, the experiences that contributed to your goal, your philosophy of achieving the goal to become a provider. Your work experiences, patient care experience, and community contributions are also opportunities for you to describe your various interests.

Dates for any planned open houses will be posted on the Wingate PA website. You may email us any time with questions, including a transcript review. Applicants interested in attending the Wingate campus, please email JoAnn Smith; applicants interested in attending the Hendersonville campus, please email Susan Lance. 

The choice of your undergraduate major has no bearing on an admissions decision. So long as you complete the nine prerequisites at a regionally accredited institution and fulfill the other requirements, you are eligible for consideration. 

We require that one of your reference letters be written by a health care provider (MD, DO, PA, or NP), and one by a college professor or college academic advisor.  Excellent letters come from reference writers who have known you for more than one year in a capacity other than job shadowing, and can write about qualities that have been identified as standard for individuals entering the medical profession. Some examples include: adaptability, critical thinking, integrity, personal maturity, resilience. Each letter should highlight some of these qualities and specific experiences so that when combined, the admissions committee can get a complete impression of your character. Please provide this information to the individuals who will write letters for you.  If grades/GPA are included in the recommendation, context should be provided to help interpret them. 

CASPA requires a minimum of two references and allows a maximum of five. We prefer to see a minimum of three letters, and strongly advise varying the “venue” of your reference writers. For example, your application will be strengthened, and a more complete picture obtained, by letters from your place of employment, school, civic organization or volunteer site, rather than four letters from providers in the practice where you work.

While we look at each applicant’s overall GPA and overall science GPA, we do not have a minimum required to move forward in the admission process. If you are a recent college graduate who has taken no post-baccalaureate coursework, your undergraduate record will be the only education we have to consider. With the increasing size and strength of our applicant pool, our critical approach to filtering candidates includes taking into consideration your undergraduate record regardless of how long ago it occurred. However, significant post-baccalaureate coursework taken at a four-year institution in a rigorous course load can go a long way in remedying your academic reputation. 

We do not have minimum scores set for the GRE; however, we consider scores in the 50th percentile or higher in verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, and analytical writing to be competitive. The exam is used as part of your overall application package to gauge your performance on a standardized online exam. Good performance on the GRE, along with improvement of your academic record with post-baccalaureate courses, if necessary, will strengthen you as a candidate. 

We accept courses from any regionally accredited community college, college, or university, either online with virtual labs or in a traditional classroom and lab setting. It is to your advantage to take as full a course load as possible each semester to demonstrate your capacity for the challenging PA program curriculum.  

Retaking courses to improve your grades is considered a positive action – an indication that you are willing to do what it takes to be as strong an applicant as possible. For example, if you earned a C in one of your prerequisites at the college or university level and repeated the course to earn a better grade, we would accept the better grade.  We strongly recommend retaking the course at the same type of institution as you did originally (for example, if originally taken during your undergraduate education, then retake at a four-year institution). 

None of your courses “transfer” to Wingate University. You will need to submit official transcripts to CASPA for all courses you have taken since high school. CASPA verifies your coursework prior to sending your application to us. When your application is reviewed, we will make a determination of your completion of our prerequisites, and whether they are within our time limits, based on CASPA’s verification. After admission to the PA program, you will be required to submit official transcripts to us for your bachelor degree and all prerequisite courses which will become part of your permanent record. 

As soon as you are confident that all of our requirements (including clinical hours) will be fulfilled by January 15, 2025 we encourage you to submit with CASPA. Any requirement that is in-progress will be noted and we will communicate directly with you until completion. Please note that the only requirement that can be pending after January 15 is the conferral of the bachelor degree. Since we use a “rolling” admissions process, there are more interview slots and seats available in the program during the early part of the cycle rather than the later part of the cycle. It is to your advantage to submit as early as possible.

Pending requirements will not delay our review of your application materials or the scheduling of any interview. There are exceptions to scheduling an interview with pending requirements, which include, but are not limited to: 

• Whether the pending prerequisites will affect the applicant’s likelihood of achieving the required minimum 3.20 GPA on our six science prerequisites; and
• Pending GRE retake to improve scores to a more competitive level.

For the 2023-2024 application cycle, we received a total of 775 verified applications for both campuses. 

The Wingate University PA Program offers one program at two campus locations: Hendersonville, NC and Wingate, NC. One cohort matriculates each August and progresses simultaneously through the curriculum. The program uses synchronous distance education (SDE) to provide one academic experience for all students regardless of location. Students have the opportunity to interact with each faculty member in person, as professors travel frequently between the campuses throughout each semester. All hands-on instruction is taught in-person by faculty on each campus.

You must choose only one campus when applying to our program through CASPA.

The Wingate PA Program Admissions Committee may, in rare instances, offer accepted or waitlisted applicants a seat within the program on an alternate campus (Wingate or Hendersonville). This uncommon practice may occur if the committee recognizes waitlist inequity between campuses, and is only offered to highly qualified candidates at the discretion of the committee. Applicants may decline the alternate campus offer and choose to maintain their current status on their current campus.

For applications to the Wingate University PA program, the CASPA portal will open on April 25, 2024, and close January 15, 2025. Applications must be verified by CASPA on or before January 15, 2025 in order to be considered for admissions.  We will begin to receive verified applications for review in May or early June. The applications will be reviewed in the order of submission to CASPA. Each applicant will receive a personal email from us with details of our review. Interviews generally begin in September and continue into February. We interview approximately 8 - 14 students per session, and the process takes about 2-3 hours, which includes an individual meeting with a faculty member and a Q&A session with current students. No later than three weeks after the interview, each applicant will receive an email with the decision: admit, wait list, or deny.

CASPA calculates an overall science GPA with every science course you’ve completed since high school. We do not have a minimum GPA on this overall science. Your science prerequisites GPA are calculated choosing courses from your reported classes that satisfy our six prerequisites. The minimum GPA for these six science prerequisites is 3.2. If you have retaken a prerequisite, we will use the better grade, not an average of the two grades. Additionally, if you take a higher level of the subject and receive a better grade, we will use the higher grade.  For example, if your grade was higher in Organic Chemistry II, we will use it instead of the lower grade earned in Organic Chemistry I. 

If you are beginning to plan for PA education and are not coming from a health care or medical background, you may consider earning a certification at a local community college as a CNA, EMT, phlebotomist, pharmacy technician, etc. While certification is not a requirement in order to obtain direct patient contact, it can certainly open doors for you. A medical assistant or a medical scribe are also good positions to gain clinical hours. These are just a few examples; we do not post a list of positions because we don’t want applicants to be limited as they consider the best route for them. If you have questions as to whether what you are planning to do will count toward clinical experience, just email to ask. We accept compensated and volunteer clinical experience but prefer most of your hours to be compensated. Shadowing or observation are not accepted as clinical experience, but they are valuable experience and will add competitiveness to your application. Additionally, hours accrued for academic credit are not counted toward fulfilling the 500 hours. The minimum of 500 hours must be earned by January 15, 2025.