Before I get going and prospective students start taking notes furiously, I just want to reassure everyone that the
requirements are all listed on our website, but I'm definitely happy to elaborate on a few of the requirements. The most obvious requirement is the application itself, which can be found at www.otcas.org. For students who used things like the Common app or the Coalition app when they were applying to undergrad, this is a pretty similar concept where you put your information into one place and it can be viewed by multiple schools.
The OTCAS application will include things like basic biographical information, it'll give you spaces to input your essay, the email addresses of your letters of recommendation authors, transcript information, and also experiences commonly found on a resume. Students will also need to send all of the transcripts to OTCAS and not to Salus for verification. So when students are adding information from their transcripts, they'll also need to select the courses they believe fulfill all of our requirements. I'm not going to list them here, but all of the prerequisites can be found on our website and have to be passed with a grade of B minus or higher.
I also mentioned earlier the letters of recommendation; we require three letters of recommendation. One should be from a teaching faculty member or a supervisor, and the other two should be from people with authority. This can include people such as an OT, other faculty members or work supervisors. But if you have any questions about whether or not a letter will qualify, you're welcome to reach out.
I also do want to point out that neither the GRE nor observation hours are required for the cycle, but you can certainly add this information if you have it. With that said, we definitely recommend that students shadow an OT if possible, or at the very least do all they can to learn about the profession because questions about the profession will definitely come up during the interview stages. Certainly we aren't trying to make anyone jump through hoops with the observation and profession research questions, but we just want to make sure that our candidates know exactly what OT is. We want to make sure that they know what they're getting themselves into.
As far as admissions tips go, we always recommend that students apply sooner rather than later. Again, we do operate on a rolling admissions basis. The earlier students apply, the more seats and scholarship dollars are going to be available at the time. Students also always ask us, what makes an ideal candidate? What can I do to make myself just irresistible to this committee? But there really isn't a cut and dry answer. The committee views files holistically and they like to see everything our candidates can bring to the table.
Of course, we want to make sure candidates are academically prepared, but certainly we care about things like their leadership experiences, their shadowing experiences, their interest in the profession, work and extracurricular involvement as well.