Melissa Sedor

I often refer to Penn College as the "hidden gem". We are nestled in Williamsport. But when you enter a beautiful well-kept campus, it makes you forget you are near a city. Our hidden gem offers top notch programs unique to our institution.

Our value is our hands-on training. Our program definitely has lots of lectures, which you need for the foundation of learning, but we incorporate many labs for hands-on training. Taking a lecture and putting it into action is essential for our students to be prepared for their clinicals. When they are out on their clinics, they are capable of starting an IV, drawing blood, or suturing a laceration. The preceptors will be more inclined to allow them to do these skills rather than just watch.

I enjoy seeing our students succeed. Whether that be success on a test, a competency, a clinical rotation, or their board certification exam. Nothing is more rewarding than watching our students put into place what we have taught them.

Potential students want to know what our selection criteria is. PA programs are notoriously difficult to get into. Not only do your undergraduate science courses have to be top notch, BUT your overall GPA also matters. We also have a National CASPer exam our applicants take instead of in-person interviews. Finally, our students need healthcare experience hours before being selected into our program.

Any student can memorize a PowerPoint lecture, but we ask them to understand it and then apply it. We go beyond the classroom and apply clinical applications to what we teach in our various lab spaces.

I would have to say visiting our students during their clinical rotations and seeing them loving life. After a rigorous three semesters of didactic study, our students are exhausted, and their brains are fried. They then go on their clinical rotations and everything they learned with us begins to make sense. They may still be a little sleep deprived, but the mental exhaustion is replaced with remembering why they entered the medical field and their faces glow!