Exam Master Launches Fee Assistance Program for PA-CAT Candidates
Covering nine core science subjects, the 240-item PA-CAT was developed to provide Physician Assistant program administrators and educators with objective and comparative data on the academic readiness of the candidates applying to their program. The standard registration fee, including the Prometric test center fee, is $228 per candidate.
Since the program inception, Exam Master has recognized that there will be some qualified applicants to Physician Assistant school who, through no fault of their own, may be classified as “economically disadvantaged” or who otherwise have special economic needs or circumstances. Over the past 18 months, the Exam Master team, in consultation with a variety of PA-CAT stakeholders, carefully evaluated options for fairly and accurately offering PA-CAT registration fee reductions (financial assistance) to eligible candidates. This fee assistance program needed to be objective, easy to understand, have clearly defined criteria, and be of sufficient value to participating PA-CAT candidates.
The fee assistance program for the PA-CAT meets these objectives and is available as of July 2022. In an effort to make the program fair and objective, Exam Master chose to base the program eligibility criteria on guidelines developed for the Scholarships for Disadvantaged Students (SDS) and Loans for Disadvantaged Students (LDS) programs. These are programs for which many PA-CAT candidates already have some familiarity.
Eligible candidates meeting the fee assistance program criteria are automatically eligible for a fee reduction of $50 per registration, with their total PA-CAT registration cost reduced from $228 to $178.
More information on the PA-CAT fee assistance program guidelines and candidate eligibility is available here.
According to Jim Pearson, CEO of Exam Master, “We decided that it would be better for the candidates as a whole if the fee assistance program was made available to all qualified candidates rather than limiting the available funds to a specific total dollar amount or total number of eligible candidates per year.” According to Mr. Pearson, “We felt it would be most impactful if we could do something for as many candidates as possible, even if that meant offering a somewhat lower fee reduction per candidate than were the program administered more as a limited scholarship fund.” Because a portion of the PA-CAT registration fee is a pass-through expense for the Prometric testing center costs, that portion of the fee was not eligible for fee reduction.
More information about the PA-CAT program generally can be found here.
About Exam Master: Exam Master is in the business of supporting education and training in the graduate health professions as well as providing licensure, certification, and board preparation resources for newly graduated and practicing health care professionals. Exam Master has been supporting Physician Assistant education since 2005 working with over 100 programs throughout the U.S. The PA-CAT program was launched in early 2020.