foreign my name is Dr kins I'm the administrative clinical coordinator for the doctor of physical therapy program at UNLV in my role I am the chair of the admissions committee and I also help coordinate clinical education for our students each of our students goes on four clinical rotations where they go out to the community and learn in hospitals in Outpatient physical therapy clinics alongside a licensed physical therapist so the requirements to be accepted to the UNLV doctor of Physical Therapy Program are that students must have completed their bachelor's degree the bachelor's degree can be in any field you like we certainly have a lot of students who apply with kinesiology degrees but we would consider a bachelor's degree in any area of study students must have at least a 3.0 overall GPA they must also have at least a 3.0 prerequisite GPA students need to sit for the GRE examination and Report those scores to the online application portal we use the physical therapist centralized application system or called PT Cass so students will apply through that online portal students also need to complete 100 hours of observation with a licensed physical therapist in at least two different Physical Therapy settings so that's 100 total hours divided amongst at least two different settings students also need to complete the graduate college application the UNLV graduate college application so those are the primary requirements to be considered for the program so in addition to the other prerequisite requirements students do also have to submit three letters of recommendation two of those letters need to come from a licensed physical therapist the third letter can come from perhaps a faculty member at your University or perhaps an employer um some of the prerequisite coursework that students need to take to be considered for the program there are 11 prerequisite classes those are one year of biology so two semesters of biology one year of anatomy and physiology with Labs one year of chemistry with Labs one year of physics with Labs one year of psychology and one semester of Statistics at UNLV the common courses that a student might take to fulfill these requirements are biology 189 biology 196 or 197 kin 223 and 224 chemistry 121 and 122. physics 151 152 psychology 100 and then any additional upper division psychology class and then finally statistics many students who are connect Kinesiology Majors will take can 200 for this requirement but you can take a general math stats as well so the application cycle for UNLV Physical Therapy it starts each new cycle starts in July so on July 1st you can start to fill out your application via the online application portal your application will be due by November 1st each fall the admissions committee will review your file and we will select around 100 applicants to invite to campus for an on-campus interview s are typically held the last two Fridays of January after which we will accept 48 students to each incoming class es start typically during the first week of June each year during the first year of the program students will start during the summer and they will take Anatomy over the course of the Summer where they will perform a gross dissection of a human cadaver they will learn all about the musculoskeletal system during Anatomy over the summer during the fall and the spring of the first year they will complete the foundational classes for physical therapy these include things such as exercise physiology therapeutic exercise foundations which is examination and assessment skills they will also learn about pathophysiology and to have a good background to enter into their first clinical rotation the first clinical rotation occurs during the student's second summer in the program so students will go on a six-week clinical affiliation in an orthopedic Outpatient Clinic um they'll return to campus in the fall of their second year where they will learn primarily the rehabilitation component so during the first year they learned the anatomy and the basic um biological science of the human and then they'll learn how to rehab the different conditions during the second year so they'll learn Orthopedic Rehabilitation skills neurologic Rehabilitation pediatric Rehabilitation geriatric Rehabilitation and also cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation at the completion of the student's second year in the program they will advance to long-term clinical rotations and they will complete three long-term clinicals over the course of the third year these clinicals range in length from 10 and a half weeks to 12 weeks and the students will perform one clinical rotation in each of the following settings they will go to an acute care hospital they will go to either an inpatient Rehabilitation facility or a skilled nursing facility and then they will perform one more outpatient affiliation it's during the second outpatient rotation where students might have the opportunity to select a specialty area practice to learn more about so a student might choose a specialty like pelvic health or Women's Health Pediatrics vestibular therapy some type of specialized therapy but students will have the opportunity to to explore specialty areas of practice as well at the completion of the clinicals the students come back to campus they complete their research project and we can talk a bit about their research projects as well they complete the research projects and then they graduate they graduate with a doctor of physical therapy degree which allows them to then sit for a national board exam to become a licensed physical therapist in whatever state they end up deciding they want to practice in so when students graduate from our program they enter into clinical practice in a lot of different settings many students will go into Orthopedic outpatient clinics these are your typical private Outpatient Clinic where they see post-operative conditions musculoskeletal type injuries many students will work in hospitals in acute care hospitals they might work in Inpatient Rehab facilities skilled nursing facilities long-term care facilities there are also different areas of practice like schools so PT's working school districts working with children all the way from you know preschool up until graduation from high school PT's also work in specialized areas of practice in areas like women's health vestibular Balance Therapy cardiopulmonary therapy Pediatrics so there's a number of different settings that students might work in after they graduate so there are a lot of research opportunities when students are in our program some of the current research Labs that the department houses is a biomechanics lab a gate and balance lab looking at most of the time patients that are at fall risk patients that have neurodegenerative diseases things like Parkinson's disease Alzheimer's disease muscular sclerosis things like that that put them at more risk for a fall we also have a neuroplasticity lab where the researchers look at the effects on the central nervous system after patients have had Strokes or cardio cerebrovascular accidents and they look at the effects of therapy and how blood flow in the brain and how activity in the brain changes after stroke so that's really interesting students can be involved in research while they're in our program so all of our students conduct a clinical research project so they'll work with a faculty member in The Faculty member's lab they'll start their projects during their first year in the program over the course of the second year in the program is where they typically collect all their data and on the during the third year of the program the students often have a chance to present their work at Regional national conferences and at the end of the program the students will present a professional presentation which is similar to a doctoral defense of dissertation defense in addition to the research project students also have the opportunity to take part in service learning projects so these are projects that are partnered with different agencies and Foundations around town that are trying to improve Access to Health Care in and around the Las Vegas area yeah so some of the most important things for someone who's just starting their undergraduate career to think about as far as how do I prepare myself to be a competitive PT student when the time comes certainly do well in your classes the classes that we talked about as being prerequisites we'll look strongly at the scores that you get in those classes so apply yourself plan your schedule appropriately and and work hard in those classes other things you'll want to do is familiarize yourself with the profession of physical therapy so there's a couple ways you can do that the first I would look into attending some of the meetings or perhaps even joining the pre-physical therapy Honor Society that's here on campus the name of this Society is Lambda Kappa Delta and you can find their contact information on the registered student organization website another thing that I would do is familiarize yourself with the application portal so ptcast.org is something that you should go on and the important thing why you'd want to do this is you can learn first what are all the programs that are out there that offer PT programs so there's over 240 programs that offer a physical therapy degree in the U.S and on this website you'll be able to look and find out who the point of contact is if you have questions about the program the cost of the programs what are the average grades of the students who get accepted to the program you'll also be able to see a list of prerequisite classes that are required for each program so it's a really great resource and then I think the third resource that I would have students check out is first I would go to the American physical therapy association's webpageapta.org this you can learn a lot about you know just what does a physical therapist do is this a career that I might really be interested in and if you're not convinced at that point that physical therapy is for you and maybe you're thinking about another realm in health care another really great resource to use is the Bureau of Labor Statistics so this is their website is bls.org and on that website you can go and research any healthcare career you could possibly imagine and you can learn about the educational requirements that you will need to enter into that field you'll learn things about the job outlook in the future so important for a student is will I have a job when I graduate and you can find all of that data and much more on that website [Music]