Health care experiences, access to care, and health outcomes improve for minority patients when medical providers share concordant race and/or ethnicity. However, current physician assistant (PA) demographics are not comparable to their patient populations. As an example, African Americans represented 4.5% of PA providers in 2019, while the U.S. Census Bureau estimated the U. S. African American population to be 13.4%. Hispanics represented 8.6% of PA providers, while the Hispanic population was estimated to be 18.3% (Bureau of Labor and Statistics, 2019; United States Census Bureau, 2019). PA educational programs serve as gatekeepers to the PA profession by selecting the students who will eventually become providers. Through logistic and multiple regression analysis, this dissertation examined the association of admissions factors (submission of demographic information, cumulative undergraduate GPA, GRE scores, patient care experience hours, socioeconomic disadvantage status, application fee waiver redemption, criminal background check requests, total application fees) with progress of minority PA candidates through the application process. Participants were PA candidates who engaged in the Centralized Application Service for Physician Assistants (CASPA) application process during the 2019-2020 admissions cycle. Findings of this dissertation indicate the PA candidate pipeline suffered a disproportionate loss of URM candidates between establishment of CASPA accounts and application submission. Results show the majority of URM PA candidates did not submit GRE scores, which was a factor resulting in higher attrition during the CASPA process. Fee waiver redemption was associated with increased numbers of CASPA programs designated by candidates to receive applications. However, waivers were redeemed by only 3% of URM PA candidates despite 63.5% selecting one or more indicators of socioeconomic disadvantage. Results do not support criminal background check requests as a significant barrier to URM PA candidate completion of the CASPA process or the number of programs designated to receive their applications. These findings have the potential to inform admission and administrative leadership of opportunities for improvement as they address URM disparities in the PA admissions processes. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://bibliotheek.ehb.be:2222/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]