Are you interested in a career helping people, but not at the place in life for 7 years of college?  PTAs are licensed healthcare assistants to physical therapists who attend a two-year community college and earn an Associate's Degree.  PTAs team up with PTs to help patients with their treatment plans.  There are 11 PTA schools in North Carolina.  The American Physical Therapy Association has lots more info on the PTA part of the team.  https://www.apta.org/for-ptas

Doctors of PT are educated with a 4-year college degree and a 2-3 year Doctorate in Physical Therapy.  DPTs are experts in the neuromusculoskeletal system.  Any type of undergraduate degree is acceptable; however a suite of science courses are  general pre-requisites to DPT school (2 semesters of biology with lab, chemistry with lab, physiology with lab, anatomy & physiology with lab and 1 semester of statistics).  So if you're thinking about DPT school, get going on your science classes in high school and college!  DPT programs all require volunteer-observation hours in a variety of professional PT settings so that you ensure you know what you're getting into.  If you need help setting up observation hours, contact our association.  There are 10 DPT programs in NC, all accredited by the Commission on Accreditation for PT Education.