I've come to a cross roads

[Mattador]

Hey everyone, brand new to the forums here! I have a question that I was hoping you intelligent folk could answer for me. I recently received my BA in Mass Media Communications, after bouncing around several different majors (Psych, Justice Studies, Social Work, then Comm). Basically I had no idea what I wanted to do and just went with Comm because I had already been at school for 5 years and just wanted to graduate. Now that I have, I'm thinking I may want to try and become a Physical Therapist (seems to have steady pay and constant work). Am I screwed? Would I have to completely re-do my undergrad? Or is there a test I could take to get me into a grad school to become a Physical Therapist? Sorry for the long winded message, any and all help would really make my day. Thank you so much!

[commcomm]

That's quite a crossroads!

The degree of "screwed" will ultimately depend on your coursework as an undergrad. My partner is graduating with her doctorate in physical therapy in a few weeks- I am in mass comm- and there has been little, if any, overlap in our undergrad coursework. She had to have all kinds of health-esque prerequisites in order to be admitted to the physical therapy program. In fact, her undergraduate degree is pre-physical therapy. If you've taken a lot of social science type classes, you may be missing a lot of the hard science courses that physical therapy programs require.

My advice would be to look into a few physical therapy graduate programs that you are interested in and find out what prerequisites they require. That should give you a good idea as to what you would need on your transcript before having a chance of being accepted.

You may already know this - but physical therapy is in the process of evolving from a master's program to a doctoral program. For my university's program, this has meant going from a 2-year program to a 3-year program. Not all programs have switched over- but many have.

Physical therapy programs typically require GRE scores, no special test is required. You do have to take physical therapy board examinations after completing the graduate coursework and clinical rotations.

Edited April 30, 2012 by mrpbn7