I’m currently a junior in high school with plenty of time for planning, but I’m starting to stress out because I don’t know what to major in or where to go. I really want to do some kind of pharmaceutical research and development like at Eli Lilly. I live in southern Indiana and it’s always been kind of a dream of mine to work there in Indianapolis. I really need to stay in state for financial reasons. I’m going to take the SAT this spring and the ACT eventually, and my GPA is about 3.8. Any advice about admissions or college in general would be great! Thanks!!
It is a bit early but for the foreseeable future pharma doesn’t look to be a great place for a science career. The past almost decade has been an absolute bloodbath of layoffs of scientists. Pharma has also been investing in research outside the USA and many companies, Eli Lilly especially, are huge at outsourcing and hiring contractors rather than employees.
What being a contractor mean is that you have to work through a middleman that will eat up a huge chunk of your pay and often provide no or significantly substandard benefits like paid time off, health insurance. In addition you can get a phone call at any time telling you that’s it you are terminated for whatever or no reason and probably not get any sort of severance.
My grad school lab did a lot of research very relevant to biotech/pharma but I ended up in the food industry and am very glad I did. I wouldn’t touch pharma with a 10 foot pole. Thank goodness I didn’t get a PhD in medicinal chemistry.
If you really want to work at Lilly go into management or sales but R&D you will wreck your life!
In terms of Medical or Pharmaceutical Research you have great options. I can attest to the connections at IUPUI in Indianapolis and the campus is in the heart of the city where you are near the Medical Mecca of the region, Lilly also recruits from there.