Application season is expensive and exhausting — and supplemental (secondary) applications are a big reason why. Each one is a school-specific form on top of CASPA, usually with its own essays, its own deadline, and its own fee. If you’re applying broadly on a budget or a tight timeline, it pays to know which schools skip that step entirely: this page tracks every PA program with no supplemental application, live.
Live snapshot (Jul 16, 2026): 152 PA programs have no supplemental application, 168 require one, and 17 do not clearly state it.
How to use this in your application strategy
No-supplemental programs are genuinely “one and done” — submit CASPA and you’re in the review pile, which makes them efficient additions to a broad school list. But don’t let the absence of a supplemental be the reason a school makes your list: fit, prerequisites, PCE requirements, and outcomes matter far more than one saved essay. And for schools that do require supplementals, budget time for them up front — many programs won’t review your file until the supplemental is in, so a late secondary quietly costs you your place in a rolling-admissions line.
This list updates itself
Most “cheapest/best/lowest” PA school posts were true the day they were written and quietly wrong a year later. This one is different: the list above is generated live from the PA School Finder directory every time the page loads. Program details are verified from each program’s own official pages and CASPA, and accreditation status is checked against the ARC-PA weekly — so the rankings, counts, and figures you see are current as of today, not the day this post was published.
Build your full school list
One data point never makes a school list. Combine this with state, GPA, patient care hours, deadlines, and PANCE pass rates using the free PA Program Match tool — or paste your stats into PA Program Match AI for a free competitiveness score and a personalized read on where you stand.
