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4 Months Left Before Applying - What should I be doing?
Started by kizoxef
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Do you have any leadership experience? If not, you could try to look into the various volunteer positions at the hospital or some other extracurricular activities.
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Try to shadow different types of pharmacists (at places that will let you shadow). Some companies have policies on what you have to do before you are allowed to shadow a pharmacist, so you'll have to look into that.
If you can work in the pharmacy at the hospital where you volunteer, see if you can get a tech license and get hired and trained to start working. IMO, you can learn a lot more as an employee than you would from shadowing and/or volunteering.
Do you have any more pre-requisites to complete? Have you looked at other schools you may want to attend? If so, are you going to try to take additional courses if you have not yet completed the pre-reqs for those schools?
Have you considered where you are going to live and whether or not you'll work when you're in pharmacy school?
When you're volunteering, is it at inpatient or outpatient or somewhere else? How much interaction do you have with other healthcare professionals?
What kinds of previous work experience do you have? Have you had jobs where you had to supervise someone?
I know this seems like a lot of questions, but I'm just trying to have a better idea about your background.
I would recommend it if you feel that you can handle it and enjoy it. If you have work experience as a tech and they discuss something in your classes that relates to your work experience, you may find it easier to learn and more interesting to study. That makes pharmacy school more enjoyable, IMO.
Have you considered any upper level sciences courses, such as molecular cell bio, biochem (for majors), etc? Or are you focusing on finishing your major first?
If you can find an employer that would be willing to work with your class schedules with labs and exams, it could work out well for you to work while you are in school. Just remember to not take on more than you can handle. That's important. Extra money is one thing, but you can't let it get in the way of school work.
That's great. If you work as a tech, you can be more involved and learn from bringing your own decisions into the conversation if you are directly involved, and you can see how that would help, or you can learn about what you're forgetting to consider.
Being a leader of any sort would be a good experience and I'm sure you can learn a lot from that.
It's nice to have hobbies that aren't related to pharmacy, so it'll make for interesting conversations with classmates, and at interview on parts where it seems appropriate.
Tech experience is not required, but it can only help you - in so many ways besides just admissions. That said, life is all about choices. It is not a "wrong" choice to do something besides work as a tech.
I'm not sure how the interviews at UK are, so I'll let people at UK or ones who have applied to UK answer that.
Having tech experience and being able to discuss what you have learned is valuable. If you can pick up on exactly what the pharmacist does every single day, then you could also discuss what you learned from that and also what the pharmacist does in that setting. If you have a pretty good idea of what a pharmacist does and you can explain why you want to be a pharmacist, it'll be good.
Impressive GPA and PCAT are a plus,, but you have to remember the interview is important. You have to consider what you'll say and how you'll say it.
This is my opinion and feel free to not read it, but if you work even part-time as a tech and still study for the PCAT, you could ask people at work about what they did to study for the PCAT and what helped them. So then you can get an idea of what helps some people and what doesn't, so you can try to focus your studying to what helps you the most.
I'll second this. It's cool that you want to get an accounting degree but if getting into school is your priority then those upper level sciences will look much better than a bunch of business classes.
At UK, there is a group interview portion (4 interviewers and 4 applicants) and an individual portion. I felt like my tech experience was extremely helpful during both portions, but I would have been screwed during the group interview without it. I don't want to go into too much detail, but they asked us hypothetical questions about issues facing pharmacy and I made some sort of reference to my tech experience in almost every answer I gave. There was one guy in my group with zero pharmacy experience and he was like a deer in the headlights. When the inevitable "why pharmacy" question comes up, having first hand experience to rely on gives your answer more weight too, IMO. I don't want you to think you can't get in without working as a tech, because people do it all the time (especially with stats as good as yours), but there is no doubt it gave me an advantage.
I don't like posting on my phone very much. This post took like 10 minutes
Research, and more research! I wasted a lot of money on my application such as applying to schools that I wasn't serious about. I only knew about SDN half-way through my application process, if I had known sooner I probably would have saved some $. Apparently you're more prepared than I was but it's still benefitial to find out more before you start your cash burning road.
Your GPA and sGPA are pretty solid. I'd say if you can, get a little more volunteer in different aspects of pharmacy. If you can volunteer in an industrial pharmacy, go ahead and do it.
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I'm just going to throw this out there, but upper level science courses are not needed to get into pharmacy, especially with the poster's 3.9 GPA and solid science GPA.
I think if he wants to get a degree in something other than science, more power to him...it also might help him stand out more from the other applicants.
Science is never a bad thing to major in, but the idea you need to be a science major to get into pharmacy school or medicine just isn't true.
Not only that, but accounting is *really fundamental* for business in general. He could certainly use this knowledge within pharmacy.
Obviously anything beyond the minimum prerequisites is technically "not needed." But any advisor will tell you how good upper level biochemistry/biology/chemistry classes look, especially if they are relevant to what you will be studying. It shows a certain amount of dedication to the field you are going into that you just can't achieve by taking business classes.
Not only that but I can't see how going into pharmacy school without taking any sciences for over a year can be a good idea. Just my opinion.
Your adviser is correct. A bachelor's in anything will look good, and business is just as advisable as the hard sciences.
Ask the schools yourself. I'm sure most will concur.
I'm not really sure how much experience a person actually gains from volunteering, so it's hard for me to fully answer that. As a volunteer, are you allowed to do more than just observe? Are you able to get involved in the process of filling prescriptions? Do you handle phone calls from patients, nurses, doctors, etc.? Do you get a feel for what it's like using their computer system? Dealing with insurance issues? Order entry? Talking to patients? Techs do all of those things and more on a regular basis (depending on the setting, hospital vs. retail) and I think that experience, in addition to helping with the interview, should either solidify your interest in pharmacy or help you to realize it isn't for you. I honestly see that as the main benefit of tech experience, and it isn't really something you can learn by reading about pharmacy or possibly even by shadowing.
It helps to have it from someone who can discuss how you are as a person and be very specific. Just knowing your name and face doesn't mean you'd get the LOR that you might want. If the professor knows what kind of student you are and what your interests are, that helps IMO.
If you're involved in clubs, ECs, research, etc, then the prof can probably see more about what all you do.
