Anyone got accepted into pharmacy school w/o any work experience?

Started by khuship
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khuship

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Hi everyone,
I have been trying to find a job at a local pharmacy store but they all are asking for a little work experience. And I am about to apply for the pharmacy school at the end of November as soon as I get my PCAT score.
I want to know if anyone got accepted in Georgia pharmacy schools without work experience. I also tried to find a volunteer work but all they want is a little bit of experience in a drug store.
Any suggestion? :xf:
 
khuship said:
Hi everyone,
I have been trying to find a job at a local pharmacy store but they all are asking for a little work experience. And I am about to apply for the pharmacy school at the end of November as soon as I get my PCAT score.
I want to know if anyone got accepted in Georgia pharmacy schools without work experience. I also tried to find a volunteer work but all they want is a little bit of experience in a drug store.
Any suggestion? :xf:
Click to expand...

No worries friend, academia is a magical land where actual experience is valued less than a coffee at Starbucks. Many of your classmates will not have experience.
 
I know people with 3+ years of technician experience who got rejected after their interview, and I know plenty of people with no technician experience who got accepted after their interview.
 
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After spending a year in a retail pharmacy, it's not hard stuff to learn. If you have the grades in your chem and bio to get into pharmacy school, they can teach you how to enter scripts and handle insurance rejections during a rotation. It's not going to be very detrimental. They prefer to see the grades since that's a little harder to get...
 
khuship said:
Hi everyone,
I have been trying to find a job at a local pharmacy store but they all are asking for a little work experience. And I am about to apply for the pharmacy school at the end of November as soon as I get my PCAT score.
I want to know if anyone got accepted in Georgia pharmacy schools without work experience. I also tried to find a volunteer work but all they want is a little bit of experience in a drug store.
Any suggestion? :xf:
Click to expand...

If you want to try to work as a tech and they want some work experience, try working as a cashier or a sales associate first, so you have some experience on interacting with customers.

Try to find something you'd like to do at school, like being a lab assistant or a TA, if you don't want to work in a store.
 
I have asked for cashier position but they didn't need one...Last time I asked for hiring was 2-3 months ago. So, I am going to try one more time for both cashier and sales associate before I apply for the school. Otherwise if I don't get hired, I don't have to worry as u guys already told me it's not required.
Thanks.😍
 
Don't worry about a job atm. Worry more about getting in the school.

I've never had any work experience at all, and still got into my school
 
I've known several pharmacists - including one who graduated within the past 5 years - who never worked in a pharmacy AT ALL until they graduated.

😱

I COULD NOT have passed any of those classes without being at least nominally familiar with the names and classes of drugs! I actually did some volunteer work at a hospital pharmacy before I went back to school, so I would have some vague idea what I was getting myself into.
 
After my first try, I was told straight up that I was rejected because I didn't have any work experience. The irony being that I had been hired as a tech shortly after my application was sent in. And...2nd time was a charm.

Had I known...

"Oh, okay. Well, thank you. I have just one more question, though. Could you tell me what percentage of your early assurance students have ever worked in a pharmacy?.....Hello? Hello...?"

:meanie:
 
If I was an adcom member, this is something that I would change. Required pharmacy experience for at least 2 years. It's because of people lacking experience that the ACPE decided to put those damned introductory pharmacy practice experiences into place thus resulting in a 2 month summer vacation instead of a 4 month vacation.
 
I was accepted without experience. I think you just need to be able to justify why you want to go into pharmacy and be knowledgeable about the different opportunities that are out there for pharmacists. It can be helpful but its not a necessity.
 
I was accepted without any work experience, however, I wish I had worked for at least 6 months in a retail pharmacy as it would have definitely helped with learning the most common drug brand names/generics.

You'll just be a little behind the curve the first semester. It's definitely possible to get in w/o experience though.
 
Theta16 said:
I was accepted without any work experience, however, I wish I had worked for at least 6 months in a retail pharmacy as it would have definitely helped with learning the most common drug brand names/generics.

You'll just be a little behind the curve the first semester. It's definitely possible to get in w/o experience though.
Click to expand...

This.

When one of my biochem professors started talking about "ACE inhibitors" one day, I thought "acetylcholinesterase? But I thought those were spelled AChE. I wonder what he means by ACE."
 
Sparda29 said:
If I was an adcom member, this is something that I would change. Required pharmacy experience for at least 2 years. It's because of people lacking experience that the ACPE decided to put those damned introductory pharmacy practice experiences into place thus resulting in a 2 month summer vacation instead of a 4 month vacation.
Click to expand...

Which sounds brilliant in theory, except that a lot of people literally cannot get experience, because the market around them is so saturated.

I did my undergrad in a major college town, and had my job because I transferred in with the company. My major college town had a pharmacy school, so every pharmacy in the area was saturated not only by interns, but by legions of prepharmacy students. Unless you were extremely lucky, you weren't going to find a pharmacy job unless you were willing to drive 50 minutes each way.

Mandatory experience isn't the answer, anyways, since experience doesn't have the same meaning across the board. I pretty much ran my pharmacy (as much as a tech can, at least), whereas one of my classmates literally did nothing but stock shelves all day as a technician.

If you want to make IPPEs something that you can test out of, like Precalc and basic english in undergrad, that's something I could get behind.
 
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CynicalIntern said:
Which sounds brilliant in theory, except that a lot of people literally cannot get experience, because the market around them is so saturated.

I did my undergrad in a major college town, and had my job because I transferred in with the company. My major college town had a pharmacy school, so every pharmacy in the area was saturated not only by interns, but by legions of prepharmacy students. Unless you were extremely lucky, you weren't going to find a pharmacy job unless you were willing to drive 50 minutes each way.

Mandatory experience isn't the answer, anyways, since experience doesn't have the same meaning across the board. I pretty much ran my pharmacy (as much as a tech can, at least), whereas one of my classmates literally did nothing but stock shelves all day as a technician.

If you want to make IPPEs something that you can test out of, like Precalc and basic english in undergrad, that's something I could get behind.
Click to expand...

That's an intriguing idea. Rather than test out (how do you properly test for experience?), maybe having a system where if you prove you have so many hours of experience you can opt out? I could definitely get behind that.
 
owlegrad said:
That's an intriguing idea. Rather than test out (how do you properly test for experience?), maybe having a system where if you prove you have so many hours of experience you can opt out? I could definitely get behind that.
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I thought IPPEs usually had checklists of things you have to complete and be able to do during those ~100 hours or so. So you'd have to be able to show you are good enough at each of those tasks listed.
 
crazybob said:
I thought IPPEs usually had checklists of things you have to complete and be able to do during those ~100 hours or so. So you'd have to be able to show you are good enough at each of those tasks listed.
Click to expand...

That's true, although my IPPE site does not have us work on those at all, he simply signs the forms at the end.

So I guess you would need to be able to prove you have the required number of hours (I am thinking like a form your boss would sign?) and show you have the required competencies, although I am not sure how you would prove this. Seems like it would be time consuming for whoever is in charge of this program. Unless maybe your pharmacist can sign for both your hours and your competencies? Maybe too much room for dishonesty though.

It's not perfect, but something like this would be nice for those of us that do not rely on the school for all of our exposure to pharmacy.
 
CynicalIntern said:
Which sounds brilliant in theory, except that a lot of people literally cannot get experience, because the market around them is so saturated.
Click to expand...

Sounds like a good key not to get into pharmacy then. I think experience should be a requirement so you know more about what a pharmacist actually does before you go to school thinking "6 years then 100k+ a year, sign me up."
 
If you've never worked in a pharmacy before, when you tell the adcom it's your dream and your passion, clearly you are full of ****. Honestly, how can you try to explain that it's something you want to do if you've never experienced it?

I know that there are many students out there who have zero experience, so please, what did you say to the adcoms to persuade them?
 
Ackj said:
If you've never worked in a pharmacy before, when you tell the adcom it's your dream and your passion, clearly you are full of ****. Honestly, how can you try to explain that it's something you want to do if you've never experienced it?

I know that there are many students out there who have zero experience, so please, what did you say to the adcoms to persuade them?
Click to expand...

I can only speak for myself, but when I am asked why pharmacy, I say it is because of my time at a grocery store. The pharmacist's base pay was higher than the store manager's. I figured I could work there 20 years and maybe one day be the store manager or I could go back to school, get a degree that no one can take away from me, and earn a decent living that way. No nonsense about dream or passions, blah, blah, blah. I have never had a bad reaction to that story (not to my face anyway). It is my opinion that anyone conducting interviews really wants honest answers, so that's what I give (dressed up a little, I admit).

I don't know why anyone would say that working as a pharmacist is their dream. Huh? What a boring dream. My dream is to be a skydiving ninja-firefighting-policeman who does freelance photography on the side. But pharmacy seems like a good job as well and I wouldn't know where to start trying to be a ninja, so I think I will stick with it. It's good to have a backup plan though.

Pretty much the only wrong answer that I can come up with to "why pharmacy" involves hoping to one day be the biggest diverter of CII's in the history of diversion. Anything short of that should be fine. 😉
 
The tech market is saturated, people. Not the pharmacist market (which probably is as well, but not the point). You think the pharmacist market is saturated? Assume there are 20-30 pharmacies in the city. (This is probably low, but it depends on how far you constitute the city) Each one can probably staff itself with 4-8 technicians/interns. That's 240 available technician positions. Now take three classes full of pharmacy students who aren't on APPES - That's 300 students. You've successfully filled every single technician opening. This doesn't factor in an entire pre-pharmacy program that probably has 500-700 students and career technicians who aren't students and live in the area. And any community colleges that may be in the area (and offer that fancy technician degree) Oh, and by the way, Walgreens just cut hours across the board.

People shouldn't apply to pharmacy school if the market is already saturated? Cool, guess we should just shut down the next two classes to fix the market.

Only people who currently work in pharmacies should get to apply? I have worked with plenty of people who fill that requirement that I would trust to fill a garbage truck, much less a prescription. And heaven forbid the amount of abuse that people will use in that system. How do you enforce the girl who worked in the Cosmetics Counter at Walgreens who tearily-eyed convinced her RXM to sign the waiver as her supervisor so she could say she "worked in a pharmacy"
 
I agree with some of the above posters about the difficulty of finding a tech job in a city with a pharmacy school. I became certified as a pharmacy tech but could not find a job at a pharmacy for the longest time. I eventually had to take a student job at my school just to pay the bills. I was able to shadow an independent pharmacist for about 3 months, but I didn't spend as many hours there as I would have if I worked there.
 
Theta16 said:
I agree with some of the above posters about the difficulty of finding a tech job in a city with a pharmacy school. I became certified as a pharmacy tech but could not find a job at a pharmacy for the longest time. I eventually had to take a student job at my school just to pay the bills. I was able to shadow an independent pharmacist for about 3 months, but I didn't spend as many hours there as I would have if I worked there.
Click to expand...

Did shadowing a pharmacist help u getting into the school?
 
khuship said:
Did shadowing a pharmacist help u getting into the school?
Click to expand...


It was talked about during my interview. Ultimately though, it's no substitute for actual work experience in a pharmacy. PM if you want to know more about my pharmacy school admission process.
 
Another solution is to volunteer in pharmacy - usually hospital pharmacy. I did about 100 hours of volunteering in hospital pharmacy, and that counted as pharmacy experience.
 
janeno said:
Another solution is to volunteer in pharmacy - usually hospital pharmacy. I did about 100 hours of volunteering in hospital pharmacy, and that counted as pharmacy experience.
Click to expand...


I asked about volunteering at CVS and Walgreen but they said they already have enough staff.
I think I should try hospital pharmacy for volunteering.
Thanks.
 
khuship said:
I asked about volunteering at CVS and Walgreen but they said they already have enough staff.
I think I should try hospital pharmacy for volunteering.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Volunteering at a retail pharmacy is out of the question, unless MAYBE it's associated with a low income health clinic. The hospital is a better bet.
 
crazybob said:
When one of my biochem professors started talking about "ACE inhibitors" one day, I thought "acetylcholinesterase? But I thought those were spelled AChE. I wonder what he means by ACE."
Click to expand...

:laugh:

I thought I was the only person who initially thought that!
 
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khuship said:
I asked about volunteering at CVS and Walgreen but they said they already have enough staff.
I think I should try hospital pharmacy for volunteering.
Thanks.
Click to expand...

Hospitals usually have volunteer programs where you can choose different areas to volunteer in. I volunteered in a pharmacy this way.
 
WarpDinosaur said:
Actually I was wondering...for all you guys who got in without any experience where did you get your recommendation from a pharmacist? Were all your other stats phenomenal?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I worked at a grocery store. The pharmacist there gave me a recommendation. My stats were competitive, but not phenomenal.
 
WarpDinosaur said:
Actually I was wondering...for all you guys who got in without any experience where did you get your recommendation from a pharmacist? Were all your other stats phenomenal?

Thanks
Click to expand...
When I was applying to pharmacy school, none of the schools I applied to required a pharmacist LOR. I had zero experience, but I had a 4.0 GPA and a 98 PCAT. I got accepted to all the schools at which I interviewed, but ended up going to grad school instead.
 
J DUB said:
I shadowed for a day or two.....😀
Click to expand...

I shadowed for 1 hour at a small retail store in my hometown, and then 3 hours at another retail store close to a hospital the next day. So about a total of 4 hours shadowing, and that was the only pharmacy experience I had before starting pharmacy school.
 
I wasn't required to get a pharmacist letter either. I had shadowed at 4 or 5 different practice sites and had just been hired as a tech but had only been on the job for a few weeks when I interviewed. I had high stats (4.0 prereq GPA and 99 PCAT) and had no trouble gaining Early Decision admission at my state school (Top 10 university). There were others in my class in the same situation who also got in easily.

I'd also like to point out that the idea that you need work experience in the field is not universal in the health care professions. Most people who become dentists, physicians, optometrists (etc) have no related work experience. So clearly, it's not essential for admission to/success in professional school. Most pre-professional students get by with shadowing...
 
Honestly...having no work experience does not weigh into effect on your acceptance. It helps in the long wrong (with drug identification and compounding, etc)...but overall it is all about the grades and scores for admittance.
 
I think it will depend on the individual school. Some schools look more at the overall person than just the grades. Though good grades are still important to getting in. Dig around a bit on your schools of choice and see what you can find out about their admissions process if it concerns you. But yeah, lots of people get in every year without work experience.
 
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