im interested in the pharmacy field but im scared i will fail in it. i recently graduated as a business major with a 2.94 gpa and thinking about going back to a local community college and completing pharmacy pre reqs, now that i got the motivation and aspiration to be a pharmacist. Im wondering how common is it that people dont get into pharm school or get in and fail. what are ur thoughts of this decision..
There are definitely a lot more prepharms freshman year of undergrad then there are by junior/senior year. Well 1100 students applied to my school last year and around 80 were accepted out of those 1100. So 9 out of 10 were not accepted out of those applied but many of those students may have applied to multiple schools. If you have a strong application with a balance of high scores/experience/volunteering/good interview you will get into some school, might take couple tries and applications to a few schools.
You shouldn't let fear of failure be the basis for your decision but you also have to be realistic and truthful with yourself. Some people are just not science people and takes all their energy to just pass a chemistry/biology course, maybe get a B if they are lucky. They may desire to be a pharmacist but you have to be able to understand and apply the science of pharmacy.
It sounds like you are deciding whether you should start down the prereq road for pharmacy, so you have plenty of time to get volunteer experience, pharmacy technician experience, meet pharmacists to write recommendations and practice interviewing skills. The fact that other people failed at it really has nothing to do with whether you will succeed or fail. Your abilities and drive will determine that for you.
Start taking some prereqs and see how they go for you...
And to answer your last question, if you can do well in the prereqs you will be able to handle pharmacy school. You will have to study harder for long term retention but it will be doable with your success in the previous material.
Good luck. And if you do decide to pursue pharmacy, remember it easier to inflate your prereq GPA if you ace the lower division courses, it is important to do well in the upper division courses but if you aced the lower stuff you have more room to play with in your GPA just in case.
