Deadlines, deadlines, deadlines. When you’re applying to PT school, you have to keep track of so many. A few involve PTCAS and many more involve the PT programs themselves.
The PTCAS deadlines can be found here, but in general, the 2023-2024 admissions cycle opened on Jun 15, 2023 and will stay open until June 2024.
Program deadlines are a little more complicated. These can be found here, along with the following notice:
APPLY EARLY! Many DPT programs have multiple deadline dates (i.e., preferred, priority, or early decision) or operate on a rolling admissions process. The deadline indicates when your materials must arrive at PTCAS (and not at the program). You should e-submit your application as soon as it’s complete and NOT wait for PTCAS to receive all of your transcripts or references.
Disclaimer – This summary information is provided as a service to applicants. APTA, PTCAS, and participating programs strive to maintain accurate and current information on all PTCAS web pages; but are not responsible for any errors or omissions. Admission requirements are subject to change.
What gets confusing is that there are several types of deadlines. Let’s go over them:
- Final deadlines – these are pretty self-explanatory. This is the final day you can submit your application for each school.
- Soft deadlines –PTCAS support wrote in an email to me, “A soft deadline typically refers to a flexible deadline that can be extended or adjusted based on certain circumstances. It is more of a tentative or suggested deadline rather than a strict one. A hard deadline, on the other hand, is a firm and non-negotiable deadline that must be met. It is a deadline that cannot be extended or adjusted without serious consequences.”
- Priority deadlines – PTCAS notes that these are “deadlines you must apply by to guarantee a chance of your application being reviewed.”
- Preferred deadlines – These, according to PTCAS, “allow you ample time to go through submitted application documents and provide timely follow up to check on missing documents.” In reality, these schools seem to take students early and are telling you to apply early.
- Early decision deadlines – Again from PTCAS: “Early decision refers to Get an Admission Decision Earlier. Applying to college early means your application will be due earlier — usually in November — than regular applications, which are generally due in January. Kindly note that the current application cycle 23-24 does not have early decisions.” It seems that PTCAS did away with early decision in 2020.
A larger distinction to make is whether or not a school has rolling deadlines, which according to one program, “indicate that the academic department will review applications as they are submitted, rather than after a set deadline. The department will continue to make admissions decisions until the program is full. While there is no absolute deadline, the Office of Graduate Admissions encourages you to submit your application materials as soon as possible, as earlier submission facilitates earlier decisions.”
Whether or not a school uses rolling admissions cannot be found in the PTCAS chart, so you’ll have to dig a little deeper on the program’s website to determine if they have rolling admissions.
It is important to apply early to PT school. As you’ve probably noticed, PTCAS can take a long time for you to complete, and then it takes a long time for PTCAS itself to verify your application. They also have occasional glitches and gaps in customer service response time. PTCAS explicitly recommends that you submit your application 6-8 weeks BEFORE the deadline, something that was repeatedly echoed during the virtual application fair I attended in April.
Note that you can submit your PTCAS application in time for your first set of deadlines, and then add additional schools afterwards as long as you keep in mind that you cannot change the bulk of what you’ve already submitted. PTCAS also notes, “You can submit your application before your transcripts, references, and/or official test scores are received by PTCAS.”
Remember to double check all deadlines with each school and note that deadlines take place at “11:59 PM ET on the deadline date.”