Which school?

I know I wanted to stay in NYC. I used the American Physical Therapy Association website to give me a rundown of all the schools - location, tuition, accreditation, pass rates, amount of clinical weeks, application dates and class size. The site lists all the schools that have PT programs under prospective students tab.

I took all the info, included the schools prerequisites and dropped it in a excel spreadsheet. I started to edit out the schools that I wasn't really interested in. This is the original list of schools that I could take public transportation to from NYC: Columbia, Hunter, LIU, Mercy, NYIT, NY Medical College, NYU, Stony brook, Downstate and Touro.

I removed Columbia and NYU from my list based on tuition. It was my impression that they don't give much aid and more than $100K in loans is hard for me to justify. Columbia was eliminated because I graduated from an ivy league for my bachelors so there is no allure to go to a top notch school for PT. After talking with my two supervisors from my volunteer experiences and reading blogs, the school you attend does not matter as much when getting a full time job. School matters because you get the opportunity to have clinical internships with the hospitals that these schools are affiliated with. Looking at the less expensive schools, I am fine with their affiliations if it means less loans. It is also more important how you perform during your affiliations because often it could lead to a full time job when you graduate (if there is slot available.)

I eliminated NYIT and NY Medical College purely because of location. They were more than a 1.5-2 hour commute from NYC.

Mercy was a part-time/weekend school. I didn't want to work and attend school - and I am very fortunate enough to have this option. Physical therapists are autonomous in the work field. Personally, I feel responsible for getting the most out of my education so I can treat to the best of my abilities. I need to commit myself to school. Work on top of school would definitely split my focus.

I kept Stony Brook because I considered begging my aunt to let me sleep in her basement in LI for the next 3 years during the school week and come home to NYC for the weekends. 

My final list was Hunter, LIU, Stony Brook, Downstate and Touro. Next on my list to do is visit the schools and note my impressions of the faculty, pass rates, style of teaching, preparation for licensure exam, clinical affiliations assignments and class size.

Here is my excel spreadsheet. Its a little hard to read but hopefully you can make out the info.

Why the switch to physical therapy?

I worked in specialty retail for 7 years, mainly small shop operations like a museum, a sports organization and then a catalog. I never worked in a large organization like Macy's. I hear its nice place but it was not really an option for me. I liked helping vendors, designers and clients interpret their vision into viable money making ideas, in a sense, my job was creative. However, this was only 5% of my time. The rest of the time I toiled with excel spreadsheets, wrote contracts and dealt with invoices. Unfortunately, this is the part of the job that I was never really good at and didn't particularly like.

After 2 years at every job, I was unhappy. I would work obscene hours for all my employers and they would value my work. On the most part, I worked with good people so my environment was fine. But I didn't like the idea of spending the rest of my life behind my computer for 10-12 hours a day for someone else that was not my family. I started to daydream about what else I could do for work.

It was not a person but a yahoo article that inspired me to look into physical therapy. I think the headline said something about paying careers with a good outlook. It was an article that was sensitive to the hard financial times. Since this is not an interview, I feel the need to be honest that my inspiration came from an online article that I read after I closed my yahoomail. This is not what I say to people when they asked why the big switch because it sounds flaky. But it's the truth. Inspiration comes in weird ways. However, I read this article shortly after and liked what it had to say.

I think this was a good attempt at a first post. Hopefully, I won't wait a year to get to the more helpful info like applying to schools in NYC.