Advice Please!? How to Strengthen my Position?

[style4591]

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Everyone ,

I appreciate your advice!

My ultimate goal is to capture the strengths of my background to make a convincing argument to an Admissions Committee.

To illustrate, my City Planning academic & professional background has had me analyze demographic trends and public funds expenditures. My current MBA can be applied to: Managed Care Pharmacy, Pharmaco-Econimcs, Pharmaceutical Industry or Community Pharmacy (Management of a Chain or Ownership of my Own Shop)

Thus, which angle could I make the best argument for? I want to suit my future work/volunteer experience around the best argument for admission.

Do you think it sounds “bad” if I want to go into Managed Care, Pharm. Industry or Pharmaco-Economics? Do committees prefer to see a practitioner?

Do you think it is best to take this angle to strengthen my chances for admission? If so, must I get work—volunteer experience in this environment OR can I simply work as a pharm tech in a community pharmacy?

I honestly value everyone’s opinion! Thanks so much!

 

[pharm B]

I guess the question you should answer first is:

Why do you want to be a pharmacist?

That should dictate your approach to admission. If you're genuinely interested in the business or industry parts of pharmacy, then I think it would be a lie to tell an adcom that you're just rarin' to go to be a patient-seeing pharmacist.

 

[diastole]

I agree with the above poster. I think you will do a better job making the sale if you are more concerned about what you want to do as a pharmacist rather than presenting what you think they want to hear. If you really want to go into the business side of pharmacy, then do it. Not everyone is going to be working with patients. I think that the adcoms understand that. If you think you might want to work in a community pharmacy then get some experience with that. I'd be less concerned about an angle than about being passionate and sincere.

 

[Passion4Sci]

Good question!

I think that if you want to make a point that you only want to do X kind of pharmacy (And you have the education already that would make such a career viable), then having some experience with Y kind of pharmacy could only HELP your 'angle.'

Being able to say, "You know, I worked on the patient-side of the fence, and I really feel that my strengths lie in the business administration and pharmo-economics aspect..." is better than not being able to draw on the experience, whether paid or not, with a retail or clinical setting w/ pt's.

My wife told me a similar story from her law seminar. The proctor-type-dude went around the room asking people what kind of law they wanted to do and more importantly what kind they DON'T want to do. At the end, he pointed 3 people out and said to them, "You are the only 3 people that passed that test." Apparently, T14s look down on their prospective students already having closed a certain type of law off in their mind before even starting law school.

In this way, not having any experience with community pharmacy, for example, and just closing yourself off from it might look bad to an AdCom. Hard to say, since pharmacy isn't law, and I'm not on an AdCom, it just seems better to say, Yes I have done this, and I'd prefer to do this other thing.

 

[pharmerinthedel]

Forgive me if I'm wrong and jumping to conclusions. Based on your previous post it sounds like you still have two years or more of science pre-reqs to take. If that is the case, it might be best to get started on those courses and get yourself PTCB certified. The PTCB isn't that hard and studying for it will give you a good overall idea of how a pharmacy works and what a pharmacist does.

The challenge for most successful students applying to pharmacy school isn't their math/science GPA or PCAT scores, but the intangibles that you were asking about. Based on your two posts, I would guess that you will do extremely well in front of an interview committee and probably do not have to worry too much about making a good impression and appearing intelligent, thoughtful, and well rounded. At this point you should try and figure out if science is in your blood or not. Six years is an awfully long time to spend doing labs if you find that you hate them. For instance, this fall I'm going to have to dissect a human cadaver for A&P - ew!