Pick an Experience Start by identifying the meaningful experience.

1. Pick an Experience Start by identifying the meaningful experience. An obvious choice would be to choose a PT experience that motivated you to pursue the profession. However, the prompt does not specify that this needs to be clinical or PT-related, so dont limit yourself to these types of experiences. Consider the following examples of potential experiences that you can write about: Overcoming hardships/adversity Living with a disability Caring for family with a disability or chronic illness Volunteer experience Medical missions Research Working with a particular patient case Leading a team/Working with others Teaching/mentoring 2. Identify How the Experience Changed You Once you have a few potential experiences, you will also need to identify how the experience influenced your personal growth, such as attitudes and perceptions. If you cannot identify the change in your personal growth, then this experience should be ruled out. Maybe you worked with someone you disagreed with, but you learned to understand and accept a different perspective. Perhaps your experience as a caretaker helped you appreciate the difficulty of everyday tasks for someone with a chronic illness or disability. Or maybe your work with underserved communities helped you understand healthcare disparities and has motivated you to provide care in these communities. 3. How Does this Experience Affect You as a Future Physical Therapist? One key point to remember is that youre applying to physical therapy schools with this essay. Therefore, you ultimately want to bring this response full circle and address how this change in perspective equips or motivates you to become an excellent physical therapist. Consider a few questions as you address this final part of the prompt: Did this experience influence some of your professional goals? How has your change in perspective influenced the way you will approach patient care? Does any of your response relate to the APTA Core Values?