The College of Mount St. Joseph's Doctor of Physical Therapy Program lasts 3 years (summer, fall and spring), and is equivalent to 9 semesters.

100% of Mount St. Joseph DPT graduates have passed the national examination.

We do not have starting salary data for Cincinnati physical therapists, but you can check the American Physical Therapy Association.

Students who graduated from the Mount’s DPT program and passed the national examination have gotten physical therapy jobs.

The current physical therapy job market is excellent. The program regularly receives job notices, which we post on our department job board.

You can choose any major, but we recommend students pick an undergraduate major in an area of interest. We frequently ask prospective students, “What would you study if you didn’t choose physical therapy?”

Required courses for admission to the DPT include:

1 year each of:

• Anatomy
• Physiology
• Chemistry, and
• Physics, all with labs

1 course each in:

• Ethics
• Sociology
• Psychology, and
• Statistics.

Yes, just indicate the expected completion date on the prerequisite form . Any invitation to DPT will be based on you successfully completing these courses.  If you're unable to complete, or fail (below a C), a prerequisite course, acceptance would be revoked.

We consider this on a case-by-case basis. If you've been working in a field similar to the prerequisite course in the past 10 years, we will accept the course.  For example, we would accept chemistry from a commercial chemist, and psychology from someone working as a counselor.

We require official course catalog descriptions for all prerequisite courses. Typically, the descriptions are in your college’s course catalog for the appropriate year. Contact your registrar to get copies of catalogs. Most colleges and universities also offer online catalogs, so you can copy relevant catalog pages, and circle or highlight your prerequisite courses. You may also “copy and paste” the prerequisite course descriptions in a Word document. Please separate courses from different institutions with the name of the institution as a title.

Psychology:

Any course listed in your institution’s psychology department/program will fulfill the psychology requirement. We suggest a lifespan or developmental psychology course but don't require it.

Sociology:

Any course listed in your institution’s sociology department/program will fulfill the sociology requirement. We suggest an introductory course. However, if your institution does not require you to take an introductory course first, then any sociology course will fulfill the requirement. Additionally, some anthropology courses will fulfill this requirement. Finally, we do accept passing CLEP exam scores for sociology in place of a traditional course. If you have concerns, please contact the DPT program at (513) 244-4890 before enrolling in a course.

Ethics:

Many institutions do not have an ethics program/department. Typically, these types of courses are found in the philosophy program/department. You may take any type of ethics course, for example, healthcare ethics, business ethics, bioethics. If the course has ethics in the title, it will most likely fulfill our requirement. Sometimes courses from theology/religion programs will also fulfill this requirement, as long as a significant part of the course is ethics. For example, a course in moral decision making may suffice. If you have concerns, please contact the DPT program at (513) 244-4890 before enrolling in a course.

Neither exercise physiology class nor lab will substitute for the physiology part of the A&P requirement.

No, you may take a series of courses titled Anatomy and Physiology, or you may take a course in Anatomy and another in Physiology. As long as all courses have labs, it does not matter which type your institution offers.

Some schools will fit a whole year of material into 2 quarters instead of 3. If this is the case, we will accept 2 quarters instead of the standard 3. However, you must contact the DPT program before applying to confirm that your 2 A&P courses are equivalent to a full year of content.

Yes, the Mount’s DPT admission requirements include submission of the Graduate Record Exam. Prospective students should scores sent directly to the College of Mount St. Joseph (our school code for PTCAS is 7749). We waive this requirement for Mount undergraduate students.

The DPT program uses the GRE score as one element of the admissions process. The overall GPA, prerequisite science GPA, and interview all factor into our decision making process.

The program requires 80 clinical observation hours.

No. However, you must have a minimum of 20 hours at each of two distinctly different clinical sites. Therefore, the maximum split between hours at the two sites would be 60 hours at Clinic A and 20 hours at Clinic B. Most students have divided hours close to 40/40 and 30/50.

If you choose to observe at more than two sites, you may have less than 20 hours at one of the sites. For example, Clinic A = 40 hours, Clinic B = 30 hours and Clinic C = 10 hours. In this way, you still meet all of the requirements: the total 80 hours, in at least two different practice settings, and a minimum of 20 hours in two distinctly different sites.

Yes, your observation hours may come from volunteering, or from a paid position. However, they still must include work from 2 distinctly different physical therapy clinics or facilities.

No. You must complete the clinical observation hours and documentation by the application deadline.

You must provide some documentation for your hours. If you didn’t document them as you were doing them, you may summarize your total hours at each clinic/facility on the form. However, you must contact your supervising therapist and get his/her signature and license number on the form, confirming that you did indeed complete the hours.

No. You may provide a letter or other form documenting your observation hours. However, we do ask that you fill out the clinical summary page (page 2) so that we can more easily see your total hours at various facilities. Please note that any clinical observation form or letter must be signed by a licensed physical therapist.

We do not offer physical therapy scholarships, but some healthcare organizations provide tuition reimbursement in exchange for service committments.

Tuition and fees can be accessed by clicking here.

Students enrolled in the Mount’s DPT program will complete 42 weeks of full-time clinical internships, in addtion to part-time internships. Our program maintains full-time clinical internship contracts with over 300 facilities. Students are required to perform at least one clinical internship outside the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky/Eastern Indiana area. Part-time internships all occur within the Greater Cincinnati-Indiana area.

Yes. Students must pay tuition during their clinical internships. Costs of travel and lodging for clinical internships outside the local area are also the responsibility of the student.

No. Students are not paid for their clinical internship time. These educational experiences are an extension of the Mount's classrooms, deisgned to enhance the students’ application of knowledge and skills.