Welcome to my OT blog!

Hi there! 

My name is Bethany and I am currently completing the second year of my occupational therapy master's program at the University of Southern California. I have created this blog in order to share my OT experiences, with two specific goals in mind. One, I distinctly remember searching up statistics on OT applicants, to compare and see if I even had a chance of getting into OT school. I remember getting discouraged when I would see applicants post on forums such as Student Doctor Network with 4.0 GPAs and 1000s of hours. I remember thinking to myself that I would probably have to apply for 5 years in a row in order to get into OT school because my stats were nowhere near theirs. So my first goal for this blog is to give a more realistic and informed perspective about getting into OT school. I will be sharing my own application experience, as well as my peer's and my professor's application experience. I will also be interviewing our USC admissions team about the application process. Through all of these, I hope to walk you through the application process and share helpful tips. I would also love to answer more specific questions if anyone wishes to comment on these posts!

My second goal for this blog is to share more about OT in general, as I personally wish I knew about OT earlier in my life. I didn't learn what OT was until junior year of college, and I think OT is still not known by many. I will be writing posts about what OT is, as well as reviewing popular movies and movies about disability through an OT lens, in order to bring greater understanding and awareness to OT. I am extremely excited to begin, and I hope that this blog is helpful to you somewhere along your OT journey, whether its learning more about OT or applying to OT school!

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My Application Experience

I think what most people are interested in are what statistics do you need to get into OT school, so here are mine: Undergraduate school: UCLA Major: Psychology, BA GPA: 3.4 GRE: 150 Q 154 V 4.0 Writing Volunteer hours: 250 See? No crazy stats here! I remember my relief when I got almost the minimum score for verbal on the GRE (the minimum for SJSU is 153). I remember feeling that my GPA was a bit low, compared to the 3.6 "average" I would see online. I didn't list my pre-requisite GPA because every school has different prerequisites, but I believe I had an A in all of my prerequisites except for anatomy I got a B. That being said, I always encourage applicants to not compare stats because every applicant is so different! I feel that schools really do look at you holistically, so it is hard to say you will or will not get in just based off of how your stats compare to others.  Here are the schools that I applied to as well as my admissions decisions: USC: accepted SJSU: a
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Interview with USC Admissions

I had the privilege of interviewing Dr. Kristin Nxumalo, who is a member of our admissions team here at USC. I interviewed Dr. Nxumalo in order to gain some insight into the admissions process, and I was pleasantly surprised by a lot of the things she shared with me that I can't wait to share with you! One of the first things Dr. Nxumalo and I discussed was how admissions truly are holistic. In my post about my personal application process, I believed admissions were holistic, and so it was great to hear Dr. Nxumalo confirm. Dr. Nxumalo stated that many people believe USC to be into impressive GPAs and GREs, but the personal statement and short answers are weighted just as heavily because USC truly wants to get to know the applicant as a whole. I think this should be a great comfort to anyone who feels the numbers on their applications are not impressive enough for OT school. A couple of my classmates had GRE scores below USC's minimum, but they were still accepted! So work har
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Movies Through an OT Lens

This is just going to be a fun blog post, compared to my other posts about admissions! I thought we could understand disability and OT more through analyzing movies together. I noticed that there are many movies that have characters with disabilities, but it isn't always apparent. For example, I watched all of Forrest Gump without knowing that he had autism spectrum disorder. But I would argue that Forrest Gump portrays a lot of what OT is about, which is living a meaningful life. Forrest Gump doesn't see himself as disadvantaged, and so he pursues an independent lifestyle with things that are meaningful, such as his work and his relationships.  Another movie that came to mind when I was thinking about disability was Nemo. Nemo had a shortened fin, which prevented him from being a strong swimmer. This was a source of shame for him, as he runs into obstacles throughout the movie such as not being able to touch the boat or stop the tank filter in order to help his friends escape.
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