physical therapist assistant?

The schooling for PTA involves getting an associate (two-year) degree from a program accredited by the American Physical Therapy Association, successfully completing the clinical fieldwork component with an actual patient caseload and passing a registration examination.

One interested in the allied health field such as PTA should be strong in the sciences (i.e. biology, chemistry, physics, "general" anatomy & physiology).

For general career information: http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos167.htm

This site is supposed to have accredited programs for PTA: http://www.apta.org/PTAEducation/ and can click "Find a PTA Education Program", then click "program type" and then PTA or such.

With regard to schooling, please avoid those private overly priced For-profit schools such as devry, ITT tech, strayer, university of phoenix, capella, art institute, kaplan, pima medical institute, argosy, brown mackie, everest, sanford brown, westwood, ashford, grand canyon, walden, keiser, ashworth, concorde career college and others as they are merely out to "make a profit" (** and their course credits usually do NOT transfer to other schools).

These consumer sites have a lot of negative posts by former students of those private $$ for-profit schools, and please heed the students' warnings:

- http://www.ripoffreport.com/

- http://www.pissedconsumer.com/

- http://www.complaintsboard.com/ and can search.

For U.S. colleges: http://www.utexas.edu/world/univ

try looking it up on the net and/or make an appointment to see or ring one and discuss it with them.