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Kraena Pre-Health
Career Library

Therapy & Rehab

Physical Therapist (DPT)

Restores movement and reduces pain after injury, surgery, stroke, or chronic disease.

Years after high school

7

Degree

DPT (Doctor of Physical Therapy)

Entrance exam

GRE (most programs)

Median pay

$102,760 national median for physical therapists (BLS, May 2025).

What the job is actually like

You spend the day physically working alongside patients — guiding exercises, doing manual therapy, measuring progress. Sessions run 30 to 60 minutes, so you build real relationships over weeks or months. Settings range from sports clinics to hospitals to home health.

The path

  1. 014 years undergraduate with prerequisites (anatomy, physiology, physics, statistics)
  2. 02Observation hours across multiple PT settings
  3. 03GRE for most programs
  4. 043-year Doctor of Physical Therapy program
  5. 05National Physical Therapy Examination

Good fit if

  • You want long, hands-on relationships with patients and to see them visibly improve
  • You are interested in biomechanics and movement
  • You want a doctoral-level clinical career with generally predictable hours

Think twice if

  • The debt-to-income ratio concerns you — it is the most common complaint in the field
  • You want to work primarily with medications and diagnostics

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All salary figures here are median annual wages from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Outlook Handbook, May 2025 — the most recent full national dataset. 'Median' means half of workers earn more and half earn less. Three things to keep in mind: (1) pay varies enormously by state, city, setting, and experience — a nurse in California and a nurse in rural Alabama earn very different salaries; (2) training lengths are typical, not guaranteed, and programs differ; (3) these numbers change every year. Always verify current figures at bls.gov/ooh before making a decision. For context, the BLS median wage for all U.S. occupations was $50,980, while healthcare practitioner and technical occupations had a median of $86,530 — one of the reasons health care is such a stable field.