<p>I am a senior in HS. My question is can the pharmacy prerequisites be done at any school, even if the school doesn't have a pharmacy track or pharmacy school? I know that medical school works like that but is pharmacy the same? Thanks.</p>
<p>It varies. Some pharmacy schools require that prereqs be done at their own school, since they only accept applicants from their own school. When my kid was applying, UCONN and Duquesne announced they had just started this. Toledo’s School of Pharmacy was another school that only accepted students from its own university. </p>
<p>Others will accept applications from others. A few pharmacy schools require that applicants already have a B.S., some pharmacy schools will accept you into their pharmacy program as freshmen (0-6 programs), and some require that students apply to the upper level pharmacy programs as sophomores. Some schools require a PCAT test (like the MCAT for med school) as part of their application for the upper level classes.</p>
<p>Pharmacy applications require a ton of research, since there is such a wide range of application requirements. If you are going to try to apply to a 2+4 program and plan on trying to apply to several schools, my recommendation is to be very careful about prereqs. My kid weighed applying to other schools, and learned that the prereqs varied so greatly that it would have been very difficult to get prereqs for different programs and still apply as a sophomore. Keep in mind that pharmacy schools do not accept AP classes to meet pharmacy prereqs. One of my kid’s friends didn’t apply to a 2+4 program until she was a Junior, using the extra year to get more prereqs for other schools in place. My kid’s pharmacy school is a 2+4 program. There are students in his class who did 2 or 3 years at other universities, and a few who even earned B.S. degrees before applying to the School of Pharmacy for the PharmD program. There appear to be a lot of premed applicants who aren’t getting into med school, and try to fall back on pharmacy school. Of course, the pharmacy schools are competitive too.</p>
<p>If applying to a 0-6 program, plan on getting applications in early if the school has rolling admissions. Once spots start to fill up, it can become even harder to get admitted.</p>
<p>Good luck! I’m so excited my kid will be graduating with his PharmD this year!</p>