<p>NeonZeus, I am in awe of your vast knowledge in this area. Thanks so much for taking the time to simplify things :)</p>
<p>SUNY buffalo’s pharmacy is great? They charge you ALOT more than the other students attending regular majors and programs.</p>
<p>My oldest child is a P2 at Ohio Northern University in a 6 year, direct admit Pharm D program. He also tried to decide between pharmacy and some type of engineering. The AACP has a great website that lists all pharmacy schools in the US as well as the type of program offered. We used this information to then see if the school also offered bioengineering or chemical engineering (2 types he was interested in). I did just look at the AACP website, and saw that only 10 schools in the country offer direct admission to their pharmacy program out of high school. The good thing is that he is in the program and won’t have to take the PCAT.
He also considered the University of Toledo. They had a special program where high-stat students (29+ ACT) would receive direct entry into their pharmacy school with a qualifying gpa. This type is known as early assurance. Otherwise students have to take the typical route which includes high gpa, strong PCAT score, many extra-curricular and volunteer activities, etc.</p>
<p>Lurker, not sure if you’ll be able to answer this, but could someone with a pharmacy degree do pharmacology? Aside from the salary drop, wouldn’t the pharmacy degree qualify you to do research for a pharmaceutical company?</p>
<p>Pharmacology is different than Pharmacy. Eons ago I did my senior Honors thesis for Chemistry in a Pharmacology lab, choosing medical school instead of grad level PhD research. One friend did Bioorganic Chemistry for her PhD after undergrad Chemistry and another did his PhD in Physical Chemistry- both worked for major pharmaceutical companies for decades. A bachelors degree in any science usually is only sufficient for grunt work, not real research. The PhDs eventually may advance to management levels (in decades, not just a few years). The Pharmacy degree is a professional, not a research/lab degree like Pharmacology. Just as medicine, physical therapy and occupational therapy are professions and not research occupations without further education.</p>
<p>Definitely pay attention to Neonzeus’ post #20 remark about schools with a wider variety of majors.</p>
<p>Lilmelonred: It’s not unusual for there to be a tuition premium for majors that have a clinical requirement, such as pharmacy or nursing. Admittedly, the cost of a PharmD program is painful. When calculating total cost, you have to add up the cost of both the undergraduate years and the graduate years, and then deduct any scholarships. Estimating potential tuition increases is tough, since some state schools have been slammed recently with big tuition increases to reflect reductions in state funding. It’s a complicated process. US News doesn’t factor cost into its ratings of PharmD programs. That would be a good idea though.</p>
<p>KatCh: As mentioned before, the pharmacy is a clinical degree so it does not lend itself towards bench research in either academia or industry. For both of those fields, the “green card” is getting a PhD. With that said, there are many pharmacists that are involved in clinical research - researching drugs when they are being tested in humans (Phase I, II, III, IV of drug development with a higher tilt towards the latter stages)</p>
<p>I would think that pharmacy and engineering attract pretty different personality types. At least this has been my experience. The pharmacy career is more people-oriented, while the engineering career less so. This could make a difference on a daily basis in terms of what classmates are like. </p>
<p>(I was a teaching assistant in a PharmD program ages ago, and also started my undergrad in engineering so that is my taste of this! I also have a (research) PhD in Pharmaceutical Chemistry – most of my classmates are in the biotech or pharmaceutical industries or are professors. Just letting you know so you can judge the experiences behind my comment.)</p>
<p>It sounds like the OP’s son may need to follow a curriculum, at least initially, that would serve him well in more than one potential major – and get some real-world exposure, even through informational interviews or shadowing, to decide which field he’d really like.</p>
<p>That being said, there may be certain “weeder” or “gatekeeper” courses that a person in his position might need for one path but not another, and should at least recognize when enrolling (if the weeding process is different for the various possible majors). I knew a humanities major who enrolled in college calculus, simply for the love of learning and to fulfill a distribution requirement, who realized later that the course was meant to weed out possible pre-meds. That kid would have been better off in a section of calculus that was geared toward business students, where the goal was to impart some level of knowledge and let them move on, as opposed to weeding them out.</p>