Which school to choose - USC, UCSD, UOP, or Chapman??

I am new to this forum, but have browsed it quite often, so I have a question that has been bothering me for a while.

I am a junior in high school & want to be a pharmacist (100% sure). I am doing college tours this week and have so far been to UCSD and Chapman University. I am visiting USC and UOP in the next few days as well. I have a 3.97 GPA (unweighted) and I have a lot of volunteer hours, and I earned the Gold Award. I currently volunteer at the local hospital and am looking to shadow at my local pharmacy.

I obviously haven’t applied to any of these schools yet, but I don’t know which one I should go to. My parents want me to go to either UOP or Chapman because of the accelerated PharmD programs, which guarantee you a spot into their pharmacy programs. My mom went to UOP with the accelerated program, so she definitely wants me to go to either of them.

However, I really want to go to USC or UCSD. I really love the campus at UCSD, and I have wanted to go to USC since I was in middle school. However, they don’t have a guaranteed pharmacy program, so it would probably take 7-8 years to get my degree, whereas if I went to UOP/Chapman, it would take 5-6. I know UCSD only takes 60 applicants, and USC’s application process is really intense (essay, interview, mini discussion, etc.)

If anyone out here is either currently attending one of these schools or has attended one of them, could you please help me out? Give me advice?

The UOP Accelerated Pre-Pharm Advantage program does not “guarantee” admission into the actual pharmacy college even if you meet the GPA requirements. After your second year of pre-pharm, you are screened through a writing sample, 3 recommendations and an interview. Not all pre-pharm applicants are accepted. Also the tuition without room & board for the two undergraduate years $40,822 per year and the pharmacy years is $65,721 (not including some additional pharmacy incidental fees for technology, etc.) because there are 3 semesters in each pharmacy year. Room and board is estimated at approximately $17,000 per year. (See http://www.pacific.edu/Documents/finance/student-accounts/14-15%20Annual%20Cost%20Sheet.pdf). Also, the UOP Accelerated program does not include a bachelor’s degree which may be important later if you decide to get an MBA or other non-pharmacy graduate degree.

The USC TAP pre-pharm program requires that you complete your bachelor’s degree and maintain a 3.2 GPA throughout the 4 years before you receive “priority admission” (but not guaranteed) to the USC School of Pharmacy (http://pharmacyschool.usc.edu/programs/pre/tap/). So basically you will need to meet the requirements, pay > $40,000 for tuition per year plus $13K average room and board for 4 years while getting your bachelor’s degree (http://www.usc.edu/admission/undergraduate/firstyear/prospective/needbase.html) BEFORE you might get into the USC School of Pharmacy where the tuition & fee costs are approximately $52,000 per year plus $13K average room and board for 4 more years while getting your PharmD degere (http://pharmacyschool.usc.edu/programs/pharmd/pharmdprogram/cost/).

So unless you are offered a huge financial aid package that doesn’t have to be repaid or your parents have the means to easily support you in those programs, you’ll probably want to be pretty sure that pharmacy school is your main goal and you would screen through after your 2nd year in college to get into the pharmacy graduate school.

Chapman’s program is also a “conditional guarantee” into their school of pharmacy, meaning that you still have to apply to the school of pharmacy after your 3rd semester at Chapman, take the PCAT exam, and pass through a 2nd interview by multiple CUSP faculty to finally be accepted into the pharmacy school.

A bachelor’s degree from UCSD would be much less expensive if you are paying in-state tuition. UCSD has a BS in Pharmacological Chemistry which would be a great undergraduate degree for pharmacy and many other careers. You would still have to apply to a graduate pharmacy school, but with much less debt behind you.

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You might also want to check out getting licensed as a pharmacy technician and getting a part time job in a pharmacy rather than just shadowing in a pharmacy. Our DS who is now a PharmD started that way in high school. He was 16 and stayed in his California high school, but took the GED and the PCTB exams (studied on his own with a book from Barnes & Noble) just to meet the licensing qualifications and then easily got part time work that fit around his school and sports schedules. It gave him a good idea about whether or not to choose pharmacy as his major.

(DS graduated in 2013 with a BS and PharmD with a minor in business administration from Northeastern University in Boston. He is currently licensed in CA and MA and working on a medical information team in the pharmaceutical industry. Northeastern is one of 10 universities that has a true guaranteed zero-6 year PharmD program (it ie a year-around program which includes a bachelor’s degree as well as a PharmD for incoming freshmen) —guaranteed acceptance meaning no test, no interview, as long as you maintain a 3.0 GPA and no grade less than a C.)

If you are looking for a guaranteed freshman entry 0-6 accelerated PharmD program, check out the following schools (not sure which of them besides Northeastern also includes a bachelor’s degree) :

Florida A & M University
Massachusetts - Boston
Northeastern University
Ohio Northern University
Rutgers University
St. John’s University
St. Louis College of Pharmacy
University of Findlay
University of Rhode Island
University of the Sciences

Hope this information helps!