Advice - Engineer to Pharmacist with low GPA

[flyingdiver]

Hello everyone, I’ve been reading this forum for quite some time as I have been considering a career change to Pharmacy. I’m hoping to get some advice on my situation.

As mentioned, I’m considering Pharmacy as a new career. I graduated with my BS in Computer Science in 2001 with a GPA of 2.23 and since then I have had a very successful career as a software engineer in the defense industry. This year I just graduated with my MS in Computer Science from a top tier engineering school with a GPA of 3.78. I have determined that engineering is not what I want to do for the rest of my life and have always wanted to be a Pharmacist.

Obviously all of the required Pre-Pharmacy coursework is not part of any Computer Science curriculum so I’m in the process of enrolling at a local college for the courses I would need (Biology, Chemistry, Anatomy & Physiology, etc…). I have taken all of the required Math, Physics, Statistics, and General Education courses typically required for Pharmacy School admission however.

I’m just wondering how big of a problem my undergraduate GPA is going to give me. I got mostly As and Bs in the Pre-Pharmacy courses but did badly in a lot of the upper-level engineering classes that have no relation to the study of Pharmacy at all. Will an admissions committee trash my application for getting Fs and repeating courses such as Differential Equations, Artificial Intelligence, Computer Architecture, etc…? It just seems really unfair that some 400 level upper-level Engineering Math courses that I did horrible in will factor into my Math GPA even though they are not at all required for Admission to a Pharmacy School.

Without question I plan to ace the Pre-Pharmacy courses I am going to take and plan to ace the PCAT. Will admission committees focus more on my recent grades and ignore the unrelated grades? Will my MS in Computer Science with a GPA of 3.78 help?

Thanks in advance…

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[FLPharm2Be]

After reading your post, I can totally sympathize with your situation. I, too, was an engineer for a couple years and quickly realized that it was not the career for me in the long term. I also had to take bio, a&p, and organic... My engineering gpa is pretty low, too. But I did really well in the pre-reqs that ive taken post-graduation and that has really helped my gpa, despite already having 140+ credits. With that, I received 1 interview so far. And you are in a better situation than me since you have a graduate degree with a great GPA. I really think you should go for it.

 

[PharmHopeful3]

Not that I'm an expert, but I think you have a good chance at most programs despite your undergrad gpa. Your MS gpa and pre-pharm classes should make up for it.

Some schools (UF specifically, but probably others as well) re-calculate your gpa to only include pre-pharm classes. In that case your gpa should be very competitive and all the additional education can only help!