Q&A: Deep Dive into the Occupational Therapy Program with Admissions

I'm going to start chronologically and say that before our students even officially start the program, we offer an optional boot camp over the summer for incoming students to help them with the transition to graduate school. We know that the transition's a pretty big one and we want to make sure that our students hit the ground running in August. This boot camp program gives students a chance to get to know each other, to meet the faculty, all of this before the program starts. And then it also eases them into our program at the University.
 
From there, once students officially start, our program is a 23-month program, which includes didactic coursework, fieldwork experiences and a capstone project. As first-years, in addition to the didactic coursework, students will also have three, one-week long fieldwork rotations, and as second-year students, they'll have two fieldwork rotations that total 24 weeks. The way those 24 weeks are split up is the second-year rotations are usually in two different 12-week rotations.
 
I think the thing that really makes our program stand out is the exposure that our students get during these rotations to different emerging areas of practice across the lifespan. For example, we have faculty and students working with local museums. They're working with nonprofits that provide home modification recommendations. And they also work at places like the Breastfeeding Resource Center.

We operate on a rolling admissions basis, and we always recommend that students apply earlier rather than later. The earlier you apply, the more seats and scholarships are going to be available. The OTCAS application usually opens at the end of July, and it takes OTCAS a few weeks to verify each application, which means we usually start reviewing applications in August, with our first interviews starting sometime in September.
 
When we receive the verified applications, the most competitive applicants are typically invited to interview within a few weeks. But even if you aren't invited to interview right off the bat, it doesn't mean that you won't get invited to interview a little bit later, since we do re-review applications regularly, just to account for any application updates that students might have added.
 
Once students have been invited to interview and they've completed both the faculty and admissions interview parts of the process, candidates can expect to hear back within maybe two to three weeks. Students are usually pretty pleasantly surprised by how quickly our process moves. And for some students it's amazing because they might know by the end of September, whether or not they've been accepted to a graduate school.

Here on the main campus at Salus we have a really great lab space called the CHER Lab, where students are taught adapted activities of daily living skills. Things such as toileting and bathing, just to name a few. We do have a cadaver lab on campus as well, which students find really helpful in reinforcing what they've learned during their anatomy courses.
 
We recently opened our Occupational Therapy Institute, or OTI, back in January of 2021. OTI provides free individual and group services, including direct one-to-one services for clients all across the lifespan. This is also really helpful for us, too, in that it also provides clinical experience for our fieldwork students.

Salus is located in a suburban area, so our students get the best of both worlds. We're about maybe 20 minutes away from the hospitals and medical centers in Center City, Philadelphia, not to mention all of the great museums, restaurants and entertainment values. On the other hand, we're also really close to great parks and trails and other suburban amenities. As someone who grew up in rural upstate New York, I think Elkins Park in the Philadelphia area is just a really great, comfortable and affordable place to live.
 
As far as campus itself goes, even though our campus is pretty compact, there's a ton going on. Students in the OT program are really active with SOTA, the Student Occupational Therapy Association, and we also have an OT Honor Society. Those are great organizations for students who want to join something specifically related to their profession. Salus also has affinity groups such as the Sexuality and Gender Alliance at Salus organization and the Black Student Union as well as interprofessional organizations, such as the National Perinatal Association Student Society. These types of organizations give students the opportunity to meet students from all the other programs we offer here at Salus.

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.

Once a student's application has been verified by OTCAS, it does take us a few weeks to review the applications because we get a lot. But from there, the most competitive candidates usually hear back within about a week or two about scheduling an interview. Currently interviews are being conducted online in two parts. First, students meet with a faculty member. This is a closed file interview, which means that the faculty member doesn't know anything about the candidate, except that they are interested in occupational therapy. This is intentional since we want the faculty member’s assessment of a student to be based purely on the interview and nothing else.
 
After that, candidates will meet with an admissions officer. Often, this is on a different day than their faculty interview. And this is the opposite of the faculty interview, in that the admissions officer will have read the candidate's application from start to finish. This admissions interview is more of a file review than anything else.

It's really neat in that it gives the candidate a chance to mention anything they may have forgotten to discuss during the faculty interview, which I like, because we know that students are understandably nervous during the faculty interview and maybe after sleeping on every single word that they said, they'll remember that they have something else to add. The interviews aren't meant to be scary or intimidating, and actually most candidates tell us they're relieved the interview seems really conversational.
 
After both the faculty and the admissions interview are done, the committee meets to review the files. They discuss the interviews, the academics and extracurriculars. And candidates can expect to hear back within two to three weeks after interviewing.

I'll just start with saying that grad school is a big investment, and we totally understand that. With that said, we think it's certainly a worthwhile investment, and that our OT department and the University as a whole are really committed to our student success. I think this is reflected in the 100% NBCOT pass rate and the 99% graduation rate that we have over the past four years.
 
While I suspect that most people listening to this podcast are interested in our MSOT program, we do offer a post-professional OTD program. It is designed for working professionals, but can also be started during the second year of our MSOT program for students who are interested. The post-professional OTD program is just really unique in that it offers three specialty tracks taught by leaders in their fields. We offer specialty tracks in remedial vision, low vision, and health and wellness. I think this is pretty unique compared to any other OTD programs out there.
 
The last point I would make is our faculty really make the program. In addition to just being genuinely kind, compassionate and caring people, they have so much experience in different areas of OT. From pediatrics, early intervention and school-based practice, to acute care, aging in place and adult rehab. To hands and upper quarter, health and wellness, mental health and community practice.
 
I guess I'm biased, but for all of these reasons and more, I think Salus is a great place for students to study OT.