Pit Stop

I really wish I would've started this a long time ago. I'm just backtracking right now, and hopefully I will be caught up soon. Today I wanted to talk about my experience with PT schools so far. I have only actually visited one of the schools I am applying at. Mostly because they were the only ones who were willing to really work around my schedule instead of the other way around.

Last summer when I was in the process of switching my major to physical therapy, I decided to try and visit some of the PT schools in Michigan (CMU, Wayne State, UMich-Flint, GVSU, Oakland). I looked at websites, sent some emails, and made some phone calls. In the end, most of the schools gave me the dates of their physical therapy seminars which almost always conflicted with some important thing in my life. Central, however, was willing to schedule a private, personal tour of their physical therapy school and also take a look at my grades and see what I needed to do before I applied. Awesome, someone was taking the time to make me want to go to their school instead of just going because I had to!

So Holly and I packed up the car and headed to Mt. Pleasant to check things out. I was a little nervous when I got there simply because we had been told meet some guy named Clint in some lobby in some building. I had no idea what he looked like and no way to get a hold of him other than just sitting around waiting for him to show up. There were a couple other people in the lobby, and, even though I was tempted to ask which one was Clint, none of them really looked like a Clint, so I figured I would just wait for said Clint to come find me.

Well find me, Clint did, because no sooner than the minute I had given up hope and was ready to just hit up Soaring Eagle and gamble my woes away, Clint showed up and introduced himself. He was a very tall man (not that that is really relevant to the story, but he was.) We followed him back to his office where he started pulling up all sorts of facts and figures about PT. Probably one of my favorite facts he brought up was the stress level of physical therapists. Turns out that in a CNN Money article ranked physical therapy as the #2 least stressful job in America (You can find the article here!)

Next came the tour part. We got the grand tour when it came to the Health Sciences Building at CMU. The building itself was under construction as they were adding another wing or something. It was a really neat place though. Clint showed us a bunch of the rooms (The ones that weren't occupied at the time, anyway). They had a pool for hydrotherapy and a bunch of rooms with models and stuff. The rooms were pretty up-to-date technology wise, and apparently they have this really awesome virtual reality lab, but we weren't able to go in it since it was being used. All in all, I really enjoyed the building and facilities.

I'm sure the other schools have really great facilities and really great people, but just the fact that CMU took the time to make it about me really made me feel great about the program as a whole. One thing I've been spoiled with at Ferris is the fact that I can always get a hold of someone when I need to talk to them, so that has become a pretty important aspect of my grad school search.

Just in the last week or two, I was feeling a little down about my chances of getting into schools, so I decided to email a few people. I included my resume and all my stats and asked the advisors if they could look at my stats and my resume and see what they thought. Well, aside from the schools that didn't respond, I got a pretty typical response from everyone, "We get hundreds of requests such as this. At this time we can't really help you. Good luck." Ok, well that's nice and everything, but didn't sit well with me.

When CMU's email came back, it was really simple, "Ted, please call me today. Here is my direct line: (989) something something something" Signed by none other than the famous Clint! By now, I'm seriously starting to love this guy. After playing some phone tag for a day or two, I finally got a hold of him and we had a really honest chat about my application and what I can do to improve it. Obviously, he said my weakest point was my GPA. I knew I needed to work on that, but when you have 100+ credits, even a 4.0 in a class barely budges the GPA. I told him I was retaking some classes and he said that would really improve my stuff. When I told him my GRE score, he got REALLY excited and exclaimed "That's LEGIT!" It was the highlight of the phone call for sure. He finished the phone call by saying that I could give him a call anytime I needed anything. Not only did he say these things, but he sounded very genuine when he said them. He made me feel a ton better about grad school (for that day anyway. I'm generally a nervous wreck when it comes to getting into grad school.)

I didn't really mean to make this a post bragging about Central or anything, but they are the only ones who have taken the time to make me want to go there. So if anyone out there knows Clint, give him a big high five for me or something. Hopefully, I'll be able to get into Central! The application is due October 17th for that school, so Fire Up Chips!

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