Financial advice for low GPAs

[wesleyb]

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cpga: 2.63
BS in Biology
no PCAT score (yet)
3 years of retail pharm tech experience
1.5 years of long-term care tech experience
9 months volunteering at Brigham & Women's in Ambulatory Radiology
recommendations from:
Director of Pharmacy at LTC
Pharmacy Supervisor at LTC
Director of Volunteers at Brigham & Women's in Boston
Professor at undergraduate school

Just looking for advice. I applied to MCPHS Worcester and Touro University this cycle.

I got my rejection letter from MCP a week or two ago. I called them to ask what was the reason for rejection. They said that my GPA was too low and not competitive enough. A strong way to make myself more competitive is to do well on a full courseload.

Now I'm asking you guys as a post-bac, because I get no financial aid, is there a financially feasible way to take on a full courseload without having to pay upwards of $5000 a semester?

I'm taking classes at my local state university while trying to work part-time. The night classes are about the same price as the day classes and I'm just trying to figure out a financially savvy way to go about this.

Does anybody have any advice?

 

[nondescriptive]

apply for financial aid.

 

[wesleyb]

apply for financial aid.

Doesn't work. I'm taking classes individually and because it's not a graduate program or anything, there isn't financial aid.

I guess the better question is, are there pre-pharmacy masters programs in Massachusetts or the New England area that would be covered by financial aid?

 

[nondescriptive]

What you need to do is retake some of your basic science classes that you did poorly on so it can help you ace the PCAT. You do know that pharmacy is a doctoral program; you're going to be a doctor of such and such. If you can't handle basic science classes, it doesn't get any easier in pharmacy school. That's what they mean when they say you are not competitive.

Do well on the PCAT to show them you do know your science. And work on that GPA; you don't necessarily need a pre-pharmacy masters. I've never heard of such a thing; maybe we don't have it regionally down here. I'd forget the masters if I were you.

 

[y0ssarian87]

cpga: 2.63
BS in Biology
no PCAT score (yet)
3 years of retail pharm tech experience
1.5 years of long-term care tech experience
9 months volunteering at Brigham & Women's in Ambulatory Radiology
recommendations from:
Director of Pharmacy at LTC
Pharmacy Supervisor at LTC
Director of Volunteers at Brigham & Women's in Boston
Professor at undergraduate school

Just looking for advice. I applied to MCPHS Worcester and Touro University this cycle.

I got my rejection letter from MCP a week or two ago. I called them to ask what was the reason for rejection. They said that my GPA was too low and not competitive enough. A strong way to make myself more competitive is to do well on a full courseload.

Now I'm asking you guys as a post-bac, because I get no financial aid, is there a financially feasible way to take on a full courseload without having to pay upwards of $5000 a semester?

I'm taking classes at my local state university while trying to work part-time. The night classes are about the same price as the day classes and I'm just trying to figure out a financially savvy way to go about this.

Does anybody have any advice?

Community college. Many (but not all) pharm schools weigh all colleges equally despite the fact that, as a whole, community colleges are know for extreme grade inflation and that community colleges generally have less competitive students. The equalizer, of course, would have to be the PCAT, so you need to kill it and turn your grades around.

I graduated from very good private university with a 2.3-2.4 with a BS in Biochem. My transcript was riddled with C's, and I had accumulated an astounding 192 units with low grades. Well, I went to the local community colleges and retook the courses I needed while working in a research lab more than full-time. Even though my cumulative PharmCAS GPA is only a 2.70 and my science GPA is a 2.51, I have a 4.0 post-bacc GPA and a 96th %ile PCAT. I have been extended interviews to Minnesota, Maryland, Texas Tech, Georgia, and Incarnate Word. The only school I was not extended an interview to was UT Austin. I haven't interviewed anywhere yet, so no acceptances yet.

Community college is much cheaper. Here in LA it's about $50/unit, and if you have a low income as documented on your tax return from the previous year, you can qualify for a tuition/fee waiver. I am taking all my prereqs for free.

Anyway, if you go this route, you are incurring risk. There is no room for screwing up anymore. I think you have to have a stellar community college post-bacc GPA to be competitive.

Best of luck!

 

[nondescriptive]

Community college. Many (but not all) pharm schools weigh all colleges equally despite the fact that, as a whole, community colleges are know for extreme grade inflation and that community colleges generally have less competitive students. The equalizer, of course, would have to be the PCAT, so you need to kill it and turn your grades around.

I graduated from very good private university with a 2.3-2.4 with a BS in Biochem. My transcript was riddled with C's, and I had accumulated an astounding 192 units with low grades. Well, I went to the local community colleges and retook the courses I needed while working in a research lab more than full-time. Even though my cumulative PharmCAS GPA is only a 2.70 and my science GPA is a 2.51, I have a 4.0 post-bacc GPA and a 96th %ile PCAT. I have been extended interviews to Minnesota, Maryland, Texas Tech, Georgia, and Incarnate Word. The only school I was not extended an interview to was UT Austin. I haven't interviewed anywhere yet, so no acceptances yet.

Community college is much cheaper. Here in LA it's about $50/unit, and if you have a low income as documented on your tax return from the previous year, you can qualify for a tuition/fee waiver. I am taking all my prereqs for free.

Anyway, if you go this route, you are incurring risk. There is no room for screwing up anymore. I think you have to have a stellar community college post-bacc GPA to be competitive.

Best of luck!

👍👍CC is the way to go to boost your GPA

 

[ForumHangout]

Jesus...

If you got rejected with that GPA from MCPHS, my fate will be the same. I should have freaking knew that my GPA was actually 2.5 ish instead of the actual 2.9 on my transcript! DAMNIT!

 

[intekmdma]

I had to charge my classes on a credit card after obtaining my B.S., still paying them off. You can get a personal loan from your bank, but I decided to charge it instead. It puts me in a position where I feel I have to pay it off faster.

It's a pain, as a post-bac. When I was working at my state university, the people did inform me that the classes are discounted greatly.

Sorry for the poor suggestions on the $$$ portion, may I suggest one thing:


Since you already have a B.S. in bio, you've probably already taken most of the lower division courses offered at the local community college. (this eliminates cheap classes)

To improve on your application (and GPA) take upper division classes that is different. What I mean by that is for example:

If you got a C in intro to genetics, don't take that class again to take an A.

Take a more advance course of genetics, (e.g. human or molecular genetics), and ace the class. This will not only increase your GPA, but will also show to the schools that you can handle the harder classes.

 

[y0ssarian87]

cpga: 2.63
BS in Biology
no PCAT score (yet)
3 years of retail pharm tech experience
1.5 years of long-term care tech experience
9 months volunteering at Brigham & Women's in Ambulatory Radiology
recommendations from:
Director of Pharmacy at LTC
Pharmacy Supervisor at LTC
Director of Volunteers at Brigham & Women's in Boston
Professor at undergraduate school

Just looking for advice. I applied to MCPHS Worcester and Touro University this cycle.

I got my rejection letter from MCP a week or two ago. I called them to ask what was the reason for rejection. They said that my GPA was too low and not competitive enough. A strong way to make myself more competitive is to do well on a full courseload.

Now I'm asking you guys as a post-bac, because I get no financial aid, is there a financially feasible way to take on a full courseload without having to pay upwards of $5000 a semester?

I'm taking classes at my local state university while trying to work part-time. The night classes are about the same price as the day classes and I'm just trying to figure out a financially savvy way to go about this.

Does anybody have any advice?

Oh! Another option that I pursued was to get a full-time research position at the university. When you're a full-time employee, you usually get free units for classes. It just so happened that a week after I started the educational benefits at my institution changed, so I actually didn't benefit in this way. Many schools still have those benefits though. Also, I really enjoyed the research!

 

[kcha90]

Oh! Another option that I pursued was to get a full-time research position at the university. When you're a full-time employee, you usually get free units for classes. It just so happened that a week after I started the educational benefits at my institution changed, so I actually didn't benefit in this way. Many schools still have those benefits though. Also, I really enjoyed the research!

Do research labs actually allow people with such low GPAs to work for them?

 

[y0ssarian87]

Do research labs actually allow people with such low GPAs to work for them?

Yup. For me, they didn't care; in fact, it never once came up. They cared more that I had undergrad lab experience and that I was able to edit manuscripts, protocols, and grants. Since my PI is the department chair and has a huge lab (20 post-docs, 5 techs/students), he needed someone who could manage the lab's grants and protocols and any miscellaneous tasks as he was very absent. So my job was half administrative/half research, and they liked that I had "good hands". My PI also told me that he liked that I had bioinformatics experience from my time volunteering in a computational bio lab.

 

[DrDrugs2012]

Being employed by the university is one way to take classes for free. Be careful, however, as some employees are not eligible for free tuition waivers into classes.

An alternative, though significantly longer, is to simply complete another bachelors degree. Having a non-vocational degree will virtually assure you that you will not need to complete all the pre-requisites over. Choosing a related degree as your first one will assure you of overlap and credits which count for your new degree. Ultimately, instead of completing 120 new credits, you may only need about 30-40 for a whole new second degree. It might still take you two years of part time school to do it, but you will have a second degree, be eligible for financial aid, and if you choose degrees wisely, might have employment prospects for the duration of your future academic career in your 2nd degree AND pharmacy school.