Questions about upgrading courses (for PT school but OT input welcome!)

[PTPTPT]

Hi there!

I'm looking for courses to upgrade my GPA in case I don't get off a PT waitlist this year.

1. My undergrad university doesn't have the best selection of late summer courses, so I'd like to hear about Athabasca courses you'd recommend or that at least weren't a terrible experience! There's a bunch that interest me but I've heard mixed reviews about Athabasca in general, like just having to study a whole textbook on your own, lack of academic support from your tutor, etc.

2. Does it really matter what courses I take to upgrade? I know some PT schools want your upgrading courses to be 3000-4000 level, but if ORPAS does the calculation, will each PT school even see what courses you took? (Although we do have to send a transcript to each university, so...)

3. Can you take courses on Athabasca that you essentially already took at your undergrad uni? For example, taking undergrad stats at your uni and then taking Athabasca stats - because you already know the content. If you're allowed to retake courses, I don't see why you couldn't do this...I just don't know if that'd be seen as trying to be sneaky.

Thanks in advance!

[PLT]

22 hours ago, PTPTPT said:

Hi there!

I'm looking for courses to upgrade my GPA in case I don't get off a PT waitlist this year.

1. My undergrad university doesn't have the best selection of late summer courses, so I'd like to hear about Athabasca courses you'd recommend or that at least weren't a terrible experience! There's a bunch that interest me but I've heard mixed reviews about Athabasca in general, like just having to study a whole textbook on your own, lack of academic support from your tutor, etc.

2. Does it really matter what courses I take to upgrade? I know some PT schools want your upgrading courses to be 3000-4000 level, but if ORPAS does the calculation, will each PT school even see what courses you took? (Although we do have to send a transcript to each university, so...)

3. Can you take courses on Athabasca that you essentially already took at your undergrad uni? For example, taking undergrad stats at your uni and then taking Athabasca stats - because you already know the content. If you're allowed to retake courses, I don't see why you couldn't do this...I just don't know if that'd be seen as trying to be sneaky.

Thanks in advance!

Hey! 
 

I can’t answer your second and third questions, but as for your first one, I took NUTR331 (Nutrition for Health) at Athabasca and it was interesting and quite easy from my experience (but my undergrad was very heavy in physiology, biology, and chemistry courses so I probably had an unfair advantage compared to other students). The course is a self-paced course that you have to finish within 6 months. It took me 2.5 months to finish while I was taking 4 other courses (and that speaks volumes of how easy I found it). Although there is a book you need to purchase/study, the main material you need to study is organized in notes written by the instructor, and the information that I personally studied from the book was only the “learning outcomes” that were expected of me but not mentioned in the notes. The instructor was very friendly, answered emails (and was open to phone calls too) very quickly, and was overall very helpful in guiding me to the material that is important for exams (although I’m not sure the instructor stays the same throughout the year). I don’t know if they changed the grading scheme, but when I took it (Oct. 2019- Dec. 2019), the grade was split between a midterm, a final, and 2 assignments. The exams were easy and straightforward and had some questions directly from the weekly quizzes (the quizzes were optional and didn’t count towards the grade), and the assignments were also very fair. Overall, I highly recommend NUTR331 cause it was 1) easy to get an A+ 2) interesting 3) a 300 level course that universities counted towards the sGPA.

When I was looking for courses to take at Athabasca, I got in touch with a physiotherapist that also took extra courses to update his GPA, and he recommended another course at Athabasca which was HADM369 (Health Policy in Canada), I personally didn’t take it, but his feedback about it was that although he found it tricky (a lot of essays), the instructor graded easily. 
 

I also took 2 online courses at Thompson Rivers University. Let me know if you’re interested and I’ll send my feedback on them!