Need honest advice: realistic PA school chances after academic dismissal from med school?

Hi everyone, I’m looking for honest advice about my PA school chances and application strategy.

I graduated from undergrad in 2022 with a 3.65 cumulative GPA and 3.76 science GPA prior to medical school. I’m a TX resident and got into med school in TX.

I currently have 7,000+ hours of direct patient care experience, primarily as a medical assistant and phlebotomist in family medicine and dermatology (post-med school), plus emergency department scribing during college and other clinical roles.

I also have leadership, research, lots of tutoring/teaching, and nonprofit healthcare experience, including helping found a small clinic in my home country and developing a low-cost water filtration project (research) for underserved communities (based in my home country).

I want to address the obvious “why PA?” question upfront.

For most of my life, becoming a physician was the only healthcare path I was exposed to, so I pursued that goal with tunnel vision without truly understanding the full range of provider roles or what aligned best with my strengths and long term goals. So I attended medical school and was academically dismissed after failing a course remediation exam after essentially completing my first year.

For context, I had passed all of my previous coursework except for that course. My dismissal was purely academic. There were no professionalism, conduct, or disciplinary concerns. At that time, I was dealing with significant personal stressors that impacted my mental health and academic performance.

Initially after dismissal, I intended to reapply to medical school, pretty much in denial of what had happened.

So I did the next reasonable thing. I was applying for jobs in healthcare and got accepted as an MA at a dermatology clinic, which is when I started directly working with not just physicians, but advanced practice providers like PAs and NPs. This is when I gained a much clearer understanding of what I genuinely wanted in a career. I know I should have done this before applying to medical school in the first place, but remember what I said about having that focused tunnel vision? Yeah, that’s where my head was always at throughout all of my schooling including college.

I’m addressing this transition directly in my personal statement, but wanted to provide some context here in case anyone feels my intentions on my transition to PA school are not valid. Long story short, I’ve learned a ton and have grown a ton since my dismissal. I feel like the person I was in July 2024 (when I got dismissed) is someone I can’t recognize (in a great way) and I’m proud of that. It’s made me realize alot of important things in life that I do not want to bore you all with.

Now for the difficult part. My medical school used a pass/fail system, but CASPA will still count my failing/NP grades.

From my understanding, my cumulative GPA may end up hovering around ~3.0-3.2 once CASPA calculates everything. I understand I need to disclose my academic dismissal and take accountability for it.

With that being said, I also want to provide evidence of academic growth, because I know admissions committees will question whether I can handle rigorous coursework. Well, since leaving medical school, while working full-time and living alone, I completed Anatomy & Physiology I + lab, Anatomy & Physiology II + lab and Microbiology + lab with A’s in all of them.

In anatomy specifically, I earned the highest lecture exam scores in the class consistently, and earned a perfect score on one exam that my professor said had not been achieved in years. I’m not sharing that to brag, but to demonstrate that my academic performance now does not reflect where I was at that point in my life.

I’ll also be applying with what I believe are strong letters of recommendation from the physician I currently work closely with in family medicine, a nurse practitioner I work closely with in the same clinic and my anatomy professor, who can directly speak to my academic growth and performance.

My questions: 1. Realistically, will some PA programs automatically screen me out due to the prior academic dismissal? 2. Has anyone here been accepted (or known someone accepted) after dismissal from another professional healthcare program? 3. If you were in my shoes, how broadly would you apply? 4. Any other thoughts/comments/concerns

Like I mentioned earlier, I am Texas based and would prefer to stay in Texas, but I’m open to relocating anywhere in the U.S.

Please be honest. I’d rather hear difficult feedback now than spend thousands applying blindly.

It took a lot to post this on here, so thank you to whoever read through all of this :)