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pharmacy school-something you wished you knew sooner
Started by howyoudoin450
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+1
I wish I had known my tuition would be raised 15% each year despite a declining job market.
++++1. i am thinking of applying to starbucks soon. why the hell did i waste so much time in school #$#(&%
Wish I had volunteered at a retail pharmacy to truly grasp how mundane work can be.
Amen to that. Ridiculous!
Not that I expect them to change tuition based on the job market but increasing tuition every year has gotten old.
Sort of wish I had known I wouldn't match to a residency, probably would have done some things differently.
The more experience you have working in a pharmacy setting the better it is for you in terms of understanding the profession, the medications, dosage forms, different strengths, brand/generics, counseling points, insurance issues, networking, etc. If you don't have experience in a pharmacy before pharm school starts then make it a top priority to obtain a position in a pharmacy ASAP for as many hours as you feel comfortable taking on....and use your summer wisely to work as many hours as you can to learn while "on the job."
Oh yeah multiple in fact.
I can second this notion as someone who spent a year as a pharm tech at a retail chain, and volunteered only to switch career paths.
I was so sure of myself too...🙄
Didn't UF have huge spending cuts from the state. You guys still get to do pharmacy school much cheaper than someone who went to private school (i.e. me).
Over 22k for tuition annually now, how much less is that then yours?
JEEZUS !!! Its a state school!! . I thought it would be around 10k.. maybe 15k tops. My P4 tuition was around 25k.. Students at a state school about 2 hours away from me pay 8k a year..
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My state school is also 22-24k per year. I haven't checked out the tuition increases yet.
You sure about that? Most of the state schools I'm familiar with are running 9 to 10k per semester. I'm sure that there are a few affordable holdouts, but most have increased tuition to the point that the market allows. Both to maximize revenues but also to make up for shortfalls/cuts in public funding.
My state school is also 22-24k per year. I haven't checked out the tuition increases yet.
Well I don't feel bad for paying 23k a year for tuition then.. I was bashing myself for not going to a state school.
You are absolutely right. I just checked Purdue's website (the school I was referring to) and they raised their rates to 10k a year. I was so sure it was around 8k when I last checked.
UGA is still cheap. 😀
Plus, we're well ranked and boast a high NAPLEX passrate with a pretty big campus body. Cost in living in Athens? 4 bed 2 bath, 400 bucks in total w/ utilities.
Go dawgs 😎
Do you mean 10K per semester? That's what this chart seems to say: http://www.purdue.edu/bursar/FeeRates/2012-2013/2012-2013_page2.html#WL_Pharm
I wouldn't consider 8K per semester to be all that cheap: http://www.rx.uga.edu/images/pdf/bulletin.pdf (page 10). It's certainly better than some, though.
Haha, how can I be so stupid.I shouldn't be allowed to work as a pharmacist.
That makes me feel so much better. I didn't overpay for school
What's the cheapest pharmacy school in the country?
My state school tuition is almost $28k/yr. Just tuition. Living at home with an hour commute each way is brutal, but with these kinds of loans, I can't justify anything else at this point 🙁
Don't know. I would guess somewhere like South Dakota.
Montana looks cheap. http://www.health.umt.edu/schools/pharmacy/ImportantStudentInfo.htm
21 K a year here.
To answer OP's question, no. Everything worked out perfectly and I wouldn't change a thing because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today...
To answer OP's question, no. Everything worked out perfectly and I wouldn't change a thing because I wouldn't be doing what I'm doing today...
Rutgers is like $26k with tuition, room, and board. USP is $46k with everything and no scholarship. =(
luckily I got a scholarship..doesn't help that they fine for everything though.
luckily I got a scholarship..doesn't help that they fine for everything though.
When you post your in-state tuition figures here, us OOS chumps die a little inside 🙁
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It was Puerto Rico the last time I checked. Around 5k a year maybe. ACPE fully accredited. Spanish speaking is required tho.
Sent from my PC36100
Sent from my PC36100
what did you pay when you were first year? i went from ~17k first year to ~22k third year.
About 15k. The first tuition hike didn't seem so bad, but year after year adds up. 🙁
If pharmacy is such a screwed field, why are soo many more people electing to go to pharmacy school.
There are soo many "pre-pharms" in our freshman class, and I'm sure countless more I don't know..sure many of them will drop, but a lot won't.
I feel so bad for them, but I don't want to go SDN on them.
Can a pharmD practice in another country? Maybe all the excess grads can shove off to Canada
There are soo many "pre-pharms" in our freshman class, and I'm sure countless more I don't know..sure many of them will drop, but a lot won't.
I feel so bad for them, but I don't want to go SDN on them.
Can a pharmD practice in another country? Maybe all the excess grads can shove off to Canada
If pharmacy is such a screwed field, why are soo many more people electing to go to pharmacy school.
There are soo many "pre-pharms" in our freshman class, and I'm sure countless more I don't know..sure many of them will drop, but a lot won't.
I feel so bad for them, but I don't want to go SDN on them.
Can a pharmD practice in another country? Maybe all the excess grads can shove off to Canada
because they are either oblivious or ignoring the fact that this profession is currently on the decline.
Thousands of people graduate every year with law degrees, business degrees, psychology degrees, journalism degrees. All of which are gutter degrees.
Hopefully something will happen in pharmacy that will separate the waterboys from the Olympians. 😎
I don't know what the statistics are showing, but I do know that people are only going to be living longer, which means there will always be old people who need drugs!
It's always good to know where the best #2 bathroom is. The worst part is the best is always the hardest to find so you don't learn the secret until way to late in pharmacy school.
you're grossly oversimplifying the situation here. how does this affect reimbursement, workflow, and overall quality of life for a pharmacist?
lol I learn that in P-2 year..this is a underrated post
Being 5 rotations away from graduation - Here are my some but, probably, not very popular thoughts:
Don't let pharm school consume you and despite what professors and academia people want you to think - school is not everything. The generic all-about-pharmacy-member-of-a-100-orgs people are so bland and boring to be around. There is a world outside of school and while of course you want to be successful, you need to pursue things that in the long run will make you happy and make you an interesting person to be around, inspirational and just wholesome overall.
I have a good friend who is an MD but also a professional musician who plays in an amazing band and has this marvelous shows all over the city. They (his band) are captivating to listen to! He is mega successful career wise but individually too. This is the kind of person I want to be. Despite pulling as much as 90 hrs on certain rotations, I stuck with my contemporary dance lessons and will come out of pharm school a dancer (a new skill for me) and a pharmacist.
Also, don't let your health go. Keep up with your exercise and fitness and healthy diet - some people get so stressed/depressed that between gorging on sugar while cramming for finals and slacking off on your regular exercise, suddenly you are 15-30 lbs heavier by the P4 year. And I'm not trying to judge ( the opposite), I am only merely trying to encourage you to take care of the most important person in your life and his or her health - you.
Don't let pharm school consume you and despite what professors and academia people want you to think - school is not everything. The generic all-about-pharmacy-member-of-a-100-orgs people are so bland and boring to be around. There is a world outside of school and while of course you want to be successful, you need to pursue things that in the long run will make you happy and make you an interesting person to be around, inspirational and just wholesome overall.
I have a good friend who is an MD but also a professional musician who plays in an amazing band and has this marvelous shows all over the city. They (his band) are captivating to listen to! He is mega successful career wise but individually too. This is the kind of person I want to be. Despite pulling as much as 90 hrs on certain rotations, I stuck with my contemporary dance lessons and will come out of pharm school a dancer (a new skill for me) and a pharmacist.
Also, don't let your health go. Keep up with your exercise and fitness and healthy diet - some people get so stressed/depressed that between gorging on sugar while cramming for finals and slacking off on your regular exercise, suddenly you are 15-30 lbs heavier by the P4 year. And I'm not trying to judge ( the opposite), I am only merely trying to encourage you to take care of the most important person in your life and his or her health - you.
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Also, looking at some of my attendings right now ( This is probably foreign to some but at my hospital, it's a common and accepted practice to refer to clinical pharms as attendings when they are on a service), I realize what probably most people don't realize going into school or don't like to think about:
With med school there is a lot more homogeneity - you graduate -> you are an MD -> you have a baseline success.
With pharm school - that's not necesserily guaranteed. It's really very individual based - I seen my preceptors in their late 20s have mega successful careers and I seen people have not so hot ones. It seems much more individual oriented and on you as a final product coming out of school.
I also am amazed with the disparity of education and knowledge base within a class based on the rotation experiences you are getting - seems like some rotations are very padded-water like ( a classmate recently shared she moves boxes and does nonpharmacy like stuff during her rotation in a community setting) and others while make you work like a slave are priceless. Make sure you get good rotations and figure out what is it you want to do with your life, so that you can get adequate rotation experiences and expand your knowledge base.
With med school there is a lot more homogeneity - you graduate -> you are an MD -> you have a baseline success.
With pharm school - that's not necesserily guaranteed. It's really very individual based - I seen my preceptors in their late 20s have mega successful careers and I seen people have not so hot ones. It seems much more individual oriented and on you as a final product coming out of school.
I also am amazed with the disparity of education and knowledge base within a class based on the rotation experiences you are getting - seems like some rotations are very padded-water like ( a classmate recently shared she moves boxes and does nonpharmacy like stuff during her rotation in a community setting) and others while make you work like a slave are priceless. Make sure you get good rotations and figure out what is it you want to do with your life, so that you can get adequate rotation experiences and expand your knowledge base.
Being 5 rotations away from graduation - Here are my some but, probably, not very popular thoughts:
Don't let pharm school consume you and despite what professors and academia people want you to think - school is not everything. The generic all-about-pharmacy-member-of-a-100-orgs people are so bland and boring to be around. There is a world outside of school and while of course you want to be successful, you need to pursue things that in the long run will make you happy and make you an interesting person to be around, inspirational and just wholesome overall.
I have a good friend who is an MD but also a professional musician who plays in an amazing band and has this marvelous shows all over the city. They (his band) are captivating to listen to! He is mega successful career wise but individually too. This is the kind of person I want to be. Despite pulling as much as 90 hrs on certain rotations, I stuck with my contemporary dance lessons and will come out of pharm school a dancer (a new skill for me) and a pharmacist.
Also, don't let your health go. Keep up with your exercise and fitness and healthy diet - some people get so stressed/depressed that between gorging on sugar while cramming for finals and slacking off on your regular exercise, suddenly you are 15-30 lbs heavier by the P4 year. And I'm not trying to judge ( the opposite), I am only merely trying to encourage you to take care of the most important person in your life and his or her health - you.
couldn't agree more with either of these. I had a few pre-pharmacy school hobbies that i've gotten more serious about as well as some post-pharmac school hobbies that i've also started to do that i absolutely love. during pharmacy school a lot of us are in the age range where we are still maturing both professionally and personally. it's important to find things you are passionate about besides your career to become a happy and complete individual.
I definitely hope so. I like to believe that it is happening now after meeting a lot of different pharmacists ranging from absolute genius to downright lazy and wonder how the heck they got accepted to a pharmacy school.
Wow, 28k a year in-state? That is ridiculous. My total tuition & fees per year is around 7k/semester or 15k/yr. That school better be an elite school or have crazy connections.
I wished they made having prior pharmacy experience mandatory "per se" similar to medical school so more people know what they are getting themselves into. Maybe pharmacy would not be in such a mess and entering pharmacy only knowing about the 6 figure starting salary?
Makes me remember about a news report awhile back about a TSU pharmacy lady that got kicked out for failing classes and going into pharmacy to feed 6 of her kids.
Double amen. My tuition went up 2-3% but that all went to undergraduate aid. Professional/graduate students don't benefit at all from the increase. 🙁
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Its the fees, not tuition, that screws with people. Oregon State's tuition is way higher than Oklahoma's but the fees at OU are so outrageous that it costs roughly the same to attend both.
I wished I had day traded (on the stock market) during those boring ass lectures... I could have gotten good at it and ended up paying off my tuition (or at least some of it) by trading.
I think the sooner one realizes that they are not a special snowflake, the better. Your family and friends, even school professors, will always praise you when you get into pharmacy school, graduate, get licensed, get a job, etc, but there will always be challenges. Don't ever let the praise make you let your guard down so you think you've 'made it' or can relax on easy street. You'll only set yourself up for an epic fail.
But, as a grain of salt to consider with this is that pharmacy school is no longer the appropriate setting to necessarily go 'all out' in every single aspect of life like you did in undergrad. The next level of judgement (after P school admissions) is going to be from the real world, so be prepared to change your strategies and work-focus to reflect that .
Decide as soon as you can what your priorities are. For example , I knew that I was not interested in pursuing further academic training or clinical residency. The time and hassle that I saved by not joining student orgs and not focusing on grades not only helped my development as a person, but left me with more than enough energy to focus on the things that mattered for my future career - networking, developing customer service and people skills, and getting recognized as an extra hard worker.
It's possible to do everything, but then by the time you're 30 you realize that you missed out on developing yourself and becoming more of a 3 dimensional human being instead of just a collection of academic, organizational and workplace achievements.
Dont spread yourself too thin. Focus on one specialty (ie: clinical specialty, academic baller, master networker, customer service / corporate skills, etc) and excel at it . That's how the greatest people have succeeded in their lives, is by pursuing something with repeated focused effort.
Being a member of every organization and getting a 3.5 gpa and 'putting in your hours' in your IPPEs and weekend internship just leaves you with a list of 50 mediocre things to put on a resume. Become a master at something and you will be highly sought after. For me, this meant putting in minimal effort on grades and school orgs and focusing on work experience, networking, and doing more work for my IPPE's and APPE's to develop future job skills. It will be different for everyone.
I should have married rich like my best friend Annie. School sucks and working sucks even more.
Only thing I like doing is spending money and laying on the beach. My friend Annie gets to do that everyday for the rest of her life and she never step foot in college.
Man I wish I was as smart as her!
