Biggest factor and biggest regret of your Pharm School

[deleted437652]

As someone who has been accepted to two schools so far, what did you weigh the most heavily, and what did you wish you weighed more heavily?
The biggest factors I'm trying to weigh are cost, faculty, and location.

Sorry if this is technically a pre-pharm question. If so, feel free to move it

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[rxlea]

Cost, faculty, rotations, reputation.

 

[Lubeckd]

My school is pretty good, but the tuition could be better. Glad they give scholarships though lol...

 

[BidingMyTime]

As someone who had 3 choices, I went with #1 location & #2 reputation. I didn't really consider cost & faculty....but then I went to school in the dark ages when all colleges were more reasonably priced. I have absolutely no regrets about the choice I made, but if I were going to school today, definitely cost would have to be considered, since so many colleges have become crazily priced. I think faculty is only important if you are going into research--most colleges have a mix of great professors, good professors, & horrid professors.

Edited to add, the colleges I had considered had a equitable rotations, so that really wasn't a consideration. I would certainly avoid a college that wanted you to find your own rotation!

 

[deleted437652]

As someone who had 3 choices, I went with #1 location & #2 reputation. I didn't really consider cost & faculty....but then I went to school in the dark ages when all colleges were more reasonably priced. I have absolutely no regrets about the choice I made, but if I were going to school today, definitely cost would have to be considered, since so many colleges have become crazily priced. I think faculty is only important if you are going into research--most colleges have a mix of great professors, good professors, & horrid professors.

Edited to add, the colleges I had considered had a equitable rotations, so that really wasn't a consideration. I would certainly avoid a college that wanted you to find your own rotation!

The price difference, as best as I can tell, is between $20,000 to $30,000 between the two schools. Not a lot, but not something to sneeze at.

Reputation seems hard for me to gauge. On one hand, UA is the far older, more established school, but one of the pharmacists I was working with (in CA, who is a bit older) wanted me to make sure UA had a Pharm.D program. I don't know if that speaks to just her, or if schools from other states really do put you at that much of a disadvantage in applying for jobs in California. UCSD on the other hand is still new, and whose reputation is still growing. That same pharmacist said that a few years ago they sent a pharmacy student her way who was terrible, and hardly new anything. The recent students though were extremely smart. So I can see how their reputation will be influx for the upcoming years, likely for the better.
UCSD, the newer school, I believe has good rotations set up. I can't find any information directly about it though. It is about 10 years old now, so not brand new, but certainly not one of the old established schools.

Thanks for the input so far, y'all!

 

[lactonerx]

weather/location, years accredited, tuition/cost of living

 

[mustang sally]

Biggest factor(s): location, reputation
Biggest regret: the cost!

 

[Sparda29]

Biggest factor: only school I was accepted to, took a risk on being in the inaugural class, it paid off.
Biggest regret: taking out too much in student loans. I should have just taken out the minimum needed to pay tuition instead of the maximum living expenses etc.

 

[Angela1234]

I deeply regret going to pharmacy school at all. I'm not sure what I would have majored in instead because the job market is awful for nearly every career. Some of the reasons I became a pharmacist was so I could live where I wanted and pick what type of pharmacy I wanted to go into. I don't want to be a pharmacist bad enough to live thousands of miles away from everyone doing a job I'm not even interested in doing.

 

[deleted437652]

Agh. So after two weeks of wracking my brain, trying to choose between both, I find out I had my numbers wrong the whole time. Now the difference is $45000-$55000 cheaper for UA. I had pretty much decided on UCSD too, and now I need to reconsider yet again.