I was thinking of going into pharmacy. I’m aware it is not a major kind of like med school and you can major in anything.
However, how do I go into the 6 year pharmacy school thing? Do I just major into any science like biology or chemistry that mostly fills my pre reqs? I’m looking to do 2 years at a college near me (GMU) and then go onto pharmacy school at UCSF, UNC, or Minnesota.
I know some students do 4 years at undergrad then 4 at pharmacy. If I do only 2 however, how am I affected? Will my chances of admission be lowered? Do I not get an undergraduate science degree?
I am not very familiar with this path so I may be wrong about some things… But with the 6 year programs it is basically an accelerated program, which means you spend 3 in undergraduate 3 in Pharmacy School. If you are willing to give up your social life and you are a good student you may be a match because the course load is increased so you graduate earlier. If you want to have a good time in college do the traditional 4+4.
If you think you are up to it then I strongly suggest the 3+3 (6 year) program. I forgot to mention in my last post that you will also get an undergraduate degree to fall back on if you don’t make it through pharmacy school.
Well, the six year PharmD programs are actually 2 years (~60 credits of prerequisite courses) at the pre-professional or undergrad level and four years at the professional level. And not every PharmD program awards its students a bachelor’s degree as well. You need to check with each pharmacy school your’re interested in to see whether or not that school does award BS degrees in addition to PharmD’s.
Quiet Type gives excellent advice. Please note that the Top10 Pharmacy Schools are extremely competitive to get into, and often give very little merit aid. The top 10 are looking for excellent grades, rich community involvement and excellent essays. This is a professional program that takes a lot of work to get into. If finances are an issue, I would strongly encourage you looking into your state school that offers a pre-pharmacy curriculum, and if possible, also has a pharmacy school. The state pharmacy schools are well represented in most states. (UGA, Auburn, MUSC, MCV, Tennessee, KY, Ohio State, Purdue, etc.) In addition, there are many “small school” pharmacy schools that can offer good financial aid like Mercer, NEOUCOM, Butler, etc.
If I were you, I would not focus so much on a BS degree. You either commit to completion of the PharmD or you don’t. If you don’t, you will have a BSPharm, which is pretty useless in today’s job market. However, there is absolutely no reason to do a 4 year BS degree prior to Pharmacy school, its a waste of money–unless you want a PhD, which is the research type degree in Pharmacy.
Each school has different undergraduate requirements, with similar core subjects. Make sure to evaluate the programs you are interested in, and complete the core. Note–when applying to a college as an undergrad, you can say you are “BS Bio or BS Chem” in order to get into college (knowing you are trying to complete pre-reqs for pharmacy school), or in some of the big state schools that have pharmacy programs, they allow you to designate “Pre-pharmacy” which enables you to get special advising on how to get into pharmacy school, and access to special programming in the pharmacy school so you gain exposure on the profession of pharmacy.
@ultimablade There are some accelerated 3 year PharmD programs - they’re accelerated by continuing classes and rotations all year long with no summer break. AFAIK they still require the same general prerequisite courses as the four year programs.
There’s not really a time limit on the ~60 credits at the undergrad level, it’s just that at 15 credits per semester, that’s four semesters, which is usually two academic years.
If you take a look at that link I provided above, it discusses the accelerated programs and the general admissions requirements for pharmacy schools.
I’m scared of majoring in chemistry or biology because I’ve read numerous stories about how bad the job market is for those science degrees.
Is there no major I can go into that if I don’t get into pharmacy school I can fall back on?
I was only looking at UCSF, UNC, and Minnesota because they’re top schools. I guess haven’t thought about the whole thing realistically yet. I never got involved in high school because I could never find a ride anywhere and I was stuck at home while my mom was at work all day. I want that to change in college and I want to get involved more. I also would like to do much better in school than I’m doing now.
On the other hand, I’m hearing that pharmacy is becoming a saturated market now. Not good news since my other choice was going to be computer science and I feel like thats saturated too. I swear every other person i know is going into computer science.
So are you saying I have no other realistic options aside from in state schools? Do pharmacy schools really not give out many scholarships? I read on a thread in the law section that almost all law schools give out merit aid based on high aid and GPA.
Generally speaking professional degree programs (Veterinarian, Medical, Pharmacy) do not give much in scholarships.
Also, state public schools have a purpose to educate their own residents. Why should California’s residents’ hard earned tax dollars pay for a Virginia resident to attend their public school?
Some pharmacy schools have scholarships for certain minority groups such as African-American, Cambodian, Laotian, Hmong, Vietnamese, Hispanic.
Well that sucks. I was really looking forward to going to California. Always wanted to go there lol :(. I might have a shallow chance at Minnesota because I could live off campus with family there but otherwise I guess VCU is my only choice.
The link that Quiettype posted, make sure you look at pharmacy school tuition P1 to P4 for every school, the out of state tuition is always higher than instate, except private schools.
People get so hung up on name and prestige.
You need to keep the amount of debt reasonable. Once you are in the professional phase of the pharmacy program you will need to take out loans, for tuition and living costs, your last year when you are on rotations you might also need a car. But for the prepharmacy part you need to keep costs low because you can only borrow $5-6 k on your own and the rest of the money will have to come from fed and state grants and aid/merit from the school.
So when you look at a school that costs $20k or $30 k, for each of your first two years, how can you afford it?
Now if you go to a school where you could get enough merit or need based aid to cover tuition, then your loan and work earnings could probably cover room and board.
As long as you can pass your national exams after pharmacy school, it doesn’t really matter where you go, CA or MN, OH or VA. But you do want to go to a school that prepares its students well for the exam.
If you’re already in process with your undergrad degree and don’t necessarily have all the prerequisites, you might as well finish your 4 yr degree…however, many pharm schools (if you have the pre-requisities) don’t require you to have a 4 yr degree. My daughter however, was almost done with her undergrad and there was no reason not to gon on and graduate. The school she is going to, however, would have considered her without a bachelors.