<p>I'm planning to study pharmacy but I have no clue which colleges have a strong pharmacy program?</p>
<p>Does anyone know what colleges (in US or Canada) are well known and recognized for their pharmacy program?</p>
<p>There are no schools that have a "prepharmacy" curriculum - it is mostly like medicine in that one has to take a number of prerequisite courses. Here is a list of the US News Rankings that gives you an idea as to the strength of each pharmacy school as seen by the academic community.</p>
<p>Search</a> - Pharmacy - Best Graduate Schools - Education - US News and World Report</p>
<p>To apply to the pharmacy schools, I don't need to get a bachelor's degree, right?
As long as I get the prerequisites done, I can enter the school of pharmacy, or is it not so?
What would be the minimum number of years I would have to study to become a pharmacist?</p>
<p>Most schools of pharmacy are 2 + 4, although there may still be some 0-6 schools. There are a few schools that appear to want students to have earned their BS before admission to their PharmD program (ie, a 4+2 program). </p>
<p>A 0-6 pharmacy program admits you as a freshman into the pharmacy track. A 2+4 program means that you take prepharmacy classes and then apply to the upper level pharm-D program. The process will vary from school to school, but most pharmD programs will require an extensive application, an interview and the PCAT test. Applications are very, very competive. Work in a pharmacy is recommended. When my kid was doing research two years ago, we heard that typically there are several hundred applications (we were hearing numbers like 800-1000 from schools like U-Kentucky and Pitt for 100 spots in the pharmacy class). </p>
<p>Prepharmacy classes typically include a year of bio, a year of chem, a year of organic chem, calculus, physics, statistics, and economics -- there can be some variance among schools which will need to be factored into your prepharm program if you're going to apply to several schools to increase chances of being accepted to a pharmD program. The pharmD program also is more costly than a prepharm program, so you should check out the tuition jump for it.</p>
<p>You do not need a bachelors to be admitted, though many schools now prefer that as a positive element of the application. When I applied to pharmacy schools, I had to take several extra courses just to satisfy the prerequisite requirement because they are not standardized. It was a very unpleasant and laborious process, considering that the school I matriculated at didn't use all of the courses I took. However, that is always a chance you have to take for the sake of options.</p>
<p>A lot of the schools that have 2+4 pharmacy programs have a conditional or preferred admittance program for high school seniors. In other words, you can be accepted to the undergraduate school and as long as you maintain certain GPA's and complete all prerequisite courses, you are then admitted to the pharmacy program itself. By doing this, you bypass the competition for those relatively few open spots in the pharmacy school itself.</p>
<p>However, each school is different in its criteria and you need to look at each program individually. For example, at Pitt, if you are accepted into the Conditional Admission program out of high school and maintain a 3.25 GPA (overall and all science courses), successfully complete all prerequisite courses, you can then transfer over to the School of Pharmacy. The nice thing for this program is that it does not require taking the PCAT if you have the Conditional Acceptance. All other applicants must take the PCAT. Pitt accepts 54 freshmen into this program, so it's rather competitive. By the way, there are only 108 slots per year for the School of Pharmacy. Other schools have similar programs and some require the preferred admit student to still take the PCAT, others do not. Michigan has a very similar program, but theirs is called the Preferred Admission program. (I don't recall if they require the preferred folks to still take the PCAT or not.)</p>
<p>Also, several pharmacy schools are not 0-6 or 2+4 and only accept people that already have a bachelors. Ohio State and WVU, for example.</p>