Advise a prospective student please.

[marcj]

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Hello all! Firstly, I hope everyone had a great time during the holidays. I gave my girlfriend an engagement ring, so it was pretty exciting for us.

Now for the reason I'm posting; I'm a 27 year old psychology student at University of North Florida. I have a 2.78 cumulative GPA, with a 3.5 GPA in science (bio,bio2,human bio, microbio, anatomy, physiology, etc.).

I was pre-med up until mid '09, and decided to change my major to psychology in order to finish my degree at the fastest rate possible when I found out my son was on the way.

My goal is to earn a Ph.D in a health care field, and recently met a few Pharmacy students who were admitted with a GPA close to mine, and no references, etc., which has me thinking the admission process to a pharmacy program may be a little more forgiving than that of medical schools.

Should I finish my 4 year in psychology, and then apply for pharmacy programs, or should I just change my major to biochem? I was behind with my pre-med coursework, hence I changed my major to psychology, so I'd obviously be taking a few steps back going biochem as well.

I wouldn't mind finishing up a Ph.D program in psychology, however, I don't see that being an outstanding form of job security based on the whole demand aspect.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. 😎

 

[rxlea]

Hello all! Firstly, I hope everyone had a great time during the holidays. I gave my girlfriend an engagement ring, so it was pretty exciting for us.

Now for the reason I'm posting; I'm a 27 year old psychology student at University of North Florida. I have a 2.78 cumulative GPA, with a 3.5 GPA in science (bio,bio2,human bio, microbio, anatomy, physiology, etc.).

I was pre-med up until mid '09, and decided to change my major to psychology in order to finish my degree at the fastest rate possible when I found out my son was on the way.

My goal is to earn a Ph.D in a health care field, and recently met a few Pharmacy students who were admitted with a GPA close to mine, and no references, etc., which has me thinking the admission process to a pharmacy program may be a little more forgiving than that of medical schools.

Should I finish my 4 year in psychology, and then apply for pharmacy programs, or should I just change my major to biochem? I was behind with my pre-med coursework, hence I changed my major to psychology, so I'd obviously be taking a few steps back going biochem as well.

I wouldn't mind finishing up a Ph.D program in psychology, however, I don't see that being an outstanding form of job security based on the whole demand aspect.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. 😎

PhD in Psychology = useless

unless you're in academia. Psychologists are on the outs, my friend 🙂 There are whole conversations about it in other forums 🙂

However, if you can finish out the psych degree with close to straight A's, I would do that. You can take some of the pre-reqs while you finish out your psych degree. If you can, you can even string out the degree another year to give you more time to finish the pre-reqs. Any other pre-reqs you can finish post-bac. Pharmacy schools don't necessarily care WHAT degree you have, just as long as you did well in it. You want to try to get your cumulative at the very least up to a 3.0. You are also going to need some experience in the field through work or volunteer experience. You need to do some EC's. Keep in mind you are also going to need some strong LOR's with that GPA so get to know your intructors, preferably a science professor.

But, overall, you do have a decent shot if you do those things.

 

[UES Girl]

Hello all! Firstly, I hope everyone had a great time during the holidays. I gave my girlfriend an engagement ring, so it was pretty exciting for us.

Now for the reason I'm posting; I'm a 27 year old psychology student at University of North Florida. I have a 2.78 cumulative GPA, with a 3.5 GPA in science (bio,bio2,human bio, microbio, anatomy, physiology, etc.).

I was pre-med up until mid '09, and decided to change my major to psychology in order to finish my degree at the fastest rate possible when I found out my son was on the way.

My goal is to earn a Ph.D in a health care field, and recently met a few Pharmacy students who were admitted with a GPA close to mine, and no references, etc., which has me thinking the admission process to a pharmacy program may be a little more forgiving than that of medical schools.

Should I finish my 4 year in psychology, and then apply for pharmacy programs, or should I just change my major to biochem? I was behind with my pre-med coursework, hence I changed my major to psychology, so I'd obviously be taking a few steps back going biochem as well.

I wouldn't mind finishing up a Ph.D program in psychology, however, I don't see that being an outstanding form of job security based on the whole demand aspect.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. 😎

I just spent 20 minutes writing a detailed constructive review of your post, only to have it all erased accidentally. 🙁

Congrats on your engagement nevertheless ! 🙂

 

[crazybob]

Hello all! Firstly, I hope everyone had a great time during the holidays. I gave my girlfriend an engagement ring, so it was pretty exciting for us.

Now for the reason I'm posting; I'm a 27 year old psychology student at University of North Florida. I have a 2.78 cumulative GPA, with a 3.5 GPA in science (bio,bio2,human bio, microbio, anatomy, physiology, etc.).

I was pre-med up until mid '09, and decided to change my major to psychology in order to finish my degree at the fastest rate possible when I found out my son was on the way.

My goal is to earn a Ph.D in a health care field, and recently met a few Pharmacy students who were admitted with a GPA close to mine, and no references, etc., which has me thinking the admission process to a pharmacy program may be a little more forgiving than that of medical schools.

That is true for many schools. But some can seem very competitive. Just check with the schools to see if you would have good chances of getting accepted. If you really want to attend a school, then give it a try. If you don't apply, you have a 0% chance of being accepted. If you apply, well your chances are always greater than 0%.

Should I finish my 4 year in psychology, and then apply for pharmacy programs, or should I just change my major to biochem? I was behind with my pre-med coursework, hence I changed my major to psychology, so I'd obviously be taking a few steps back going biochem as well.

If you finish your 4-year psychology program, it will show that you can stay committed to one program without changing your mind in the middle of it. If you change to biochem, then you might get questions about why you changed from psych to biochem. Some people might even ask you how you can be sure that you'll finish pharmacy school without changing your mind.

I wouldn't mind finishing up a Ph.D program in psychology, however, I don't see that being an outstanding form of job security based on the whole demand aspect.

Any advice is greatly appreciated. 😎

I know one guy in my class who finished his Ph.D. in analytical chemistry before starting pharmacy school. He told me that during his last year of his Ph.D., he decided that he didn't want to go into research, manufacturing, or academia that would be related to a Ph.D. Instead of dropping it and focusing on going to pharmacy school, he finished his Ph.D. and also applied to pharmacy school and got accepted. In my opinion, he's been a good student in pharmacy school.

 

[marcj]

That is the most annoying thing ever; getting logged out for inactivity while you're writing a big response. I usually copy my response if it's more than a few lines for that very reason.

 

[UES Girl]

That is the most annoying thing ever; getting logged out for inactivity while you're writing a big response. I usually copy my response if it's more than a few lines for that very reason.

Well just to re-iterate briefly:

If I was to constructively critisize your application I would say:

- overall GPA, one of the things that matters, needs to be raised. As of now, it doesn't meet 2.8 requirement that lot of schools pose. But it looks like you are doing really well in your pre-reqs and are on the right track, so continue doing well to bring it up. 🙂


Another weak area is that you need something to show to the admissions comittee that you are comitted to the field of pharmacy. Adcoms are usually faculty or staff members of the school, so they are looking for people that show that they are interested in pharmacy over other health fields and have explored the field to determine that it's a right fit for them in terms of career goals.

Look into:
* joining an academic organization or pre-pharmacy club
* shadowing a pharmacist or perhaps even becoming a tech/getting your tech certification and looking for a job, even if it's just over the summer and etc
* maybe seeing if you can get involved with your local pharmacy schools - like help out pharm students organize various health fairs/public clinics and etc - I know in our school pharm students always welcome volunteers
* seeing how you are doing so well in science pre-reqs, maybe in the next year or so when you are taking slighly more intense labs like ochem, you can perhaps get involved in some sort of pharmacy-related research project ? Some people at our school did some drug-design related research for example.

Just don't make a mistake of thinking pharmacy process is a lot easier than medical process 🙂, you still have to be a great desirable applicant for pharm schools just like you need to be a desirable applicant for medical schools. Hope this helps.