Getting into Pharmacy vs. Med School, and is Pharmacy worth it?

[Ronald Kris]

how much harder or easier is getting into Pharmacy school than Med School? I'm currently in a business advanced degree program but if job stability is hard to come by, or the hours/pay ratio is poor, I need an alternative. Also, pharmacists do get respect. My current degree program is super quant, but I have none of the other sciences and I'm missing a lot of trig. How is the job market for pharmacists? Is it worth it, and how good do you actually have to be at math? What science requirements are necessary as well?

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[68quebec]

first of all, go shadow pharmD and MD/DO and decide. you need a lot of research.

 

[oldstock]

how much harder or easier is getting into Pharmacy school than Med School? I'm currently in a business advanced degree program but if job stability is hard to come by, or the hours/pay ratio is poor, I need an alternative. Also, pharmacists do get respect. My current degree program is super quant, but I have none of the other sciences and I'm missing a lot of trig. How is the job market for pharmacists? Is it worth it, and how good do you actually have to be at math? What science requirements are necessary as well?

Like @kaidou1412 has said above, you need to do some DD/research and volunteer/shadow a pharmd and md to see for yourself. But my short answer to you is that it is a lot harder and competitive to get in med schools than pharm schools.

Job market for pharmacists has become tighter and tighter thanks to new pharm school popping up like crazy (~3-4 new schools per year on the avg: supply >> demand).

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119634/pharmacy-school-crisis-why-good-jobs-are-drying

Admission standards are also dropping due to this universal law of supply and demand. One thing for sure is that, unless you can pay out of your pocket, you will accumulate about a min of ~120K in student loans for pharm school.

Pharmacy math is mostly algebra. Pharmacy prereqs are very similar to med school's. Go to PharmCAS's website and/or AACP's to check out school's admission requirements which will tell you what specific science and other academic requirements for a students to gain admission to pharm schools.

If you can do med school, do it as I think it is a better choice to invest your time, money, and efforts.

 

[PharmtoCS]

Job stability for pharmacists is poor due to saturation, and the hours/pay ratio for physician can be horrendous, especially since you may be working well over 40 hours a week on salary with $300k+ student loans, taxes, and malpractice insurance to pay. Engineering, computer science, and maybe even business all provide much higher returns on investment for your education.

 

[Sgriz97]

I would definitely recommend shadowing because you will learn a lot about the profession. All pharmacy schools require at least one Calculus class. Also they require one year of Biology, General Chemistry, and Organic Chemistry w/labs. Besides that, certain schools may require Physics, Biochemistry, or Anatomy and Physiology. I think that getting into Medical School is harder than Pharmacy School. I recommend pharmacy because it takes half the time as medical school, but it is still a huge commitment. Go with what you want to do and don't listen to what others tell you to do.

 

[dosepak]

I agree with the previous posts. I think you should definitely get some experience through shadowing a pharmacist and a physician. However, medical school is more competitive than pharmacy school is. Once you experience what it is like in both fields, that should give you a better idea of what field you should enter. All I can tell you is this: every pharmacist I've worked with at CVS has told me that pharmacy is super saturated and has been for quite some time. This is due to the fact that schools are opening left and right and class sizes are expanding. Plus, tuition is rising and the loans that pharmacy students are taking out are astronomical. Pharmacy school graduates are left with hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and salary is 100K. Since debt is much greater than salary, it's going to take a long time to pay off these loans.

 

[deleted390966]

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[KidPharmD]

Are you saying that physicians are on fixed salaries regardless of the hours they work? Isn't that a violation of fair labor?
I don't think this is true, since the current payment system is fee-for-service. http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2009/06/should-doctors-be-on-a-salary.html

Fixed salaries aren't a violation of labor laws if you don't have base hours. Many physicians are part owners in their practice, and that makes labor laws pretty much non applicable. Other times, they might be an employee (say a Hospitalist) but they are paid to do a certain job regardless of how many hours that takes - thats not illegal if your contract/job description makes that clear.

 

[PharmDCandidate2014]

Sometimes it's not hard to believe students go into a brand new, for profit pharmacy school to take out an astronomical loan so they can party lights out for 4 years, lease a car, and live the good life. Then when **** hits the fan, they default their loans and leave it up to middle class America to clean up the mess. The question is, when does this cycle of perpetuity cause 2008 2.0 to happen again?

This is the ONLY reason why I see students taking out loans and screwing up their credit history only to invest it in a derfwad pharmacy school. If one of these guys happen to make it to retail, I just hope he doesn't identify himself as Doctor.

 

[deleted390966]

i

 

[oldstock]

Seriously, that is the ONLY reason you see? I've been living very frugally and yet I'm scared of the amount of loans I'll have to repay. It's the system's fault, hardly the students. With the amount of money spent on war recently, our government could pay for every student's tuition, but they spent it on war instead. And why the heck are colleges free to charge whatever rates they want? Colleges shouldn't cost more than $5000/year, let alone 10x that. I envy European countries that have minimal-to-no-cost tuition -- I should have (i.e.: Germany, Austria, France, Italy, Sweden, Norway, etc.)!

I agree it is more of the system's fault. But, without federal student loans, like in the old days, how many of us here can go to colleges ??

In European and other countries around the world, yes you can go to public universities for free or almost free but that come at the costs of high taxes and cutthroat competition to get a seat at a public university. The governments there also do not provide easy student loans and anyone who want to go to a private university or college has to pay out of their pockets. Again, how many of us here can do that or want to pay higher taxes or even be able to pass very very difficult entrance exams there ??

Choose your own poison...

 

[deleted390966]

I agree it is more of the system's fault. But, without federal student loans, like in the old days, how many of us here can go to colleges ??

Yes, yes, the point of federal loan is to help poor students attend colleges in the first place. But over time, it is abused: Private colleges nowadays take it as an opportunity to increase their tuition rate 5% EVERY year

In European and other countries around the world, yes you can go to public universities for free or almost free but that come at the costs of high taxes and cutthroat competition to get a seat at a public university.

Competition: No, simply no. Look at their medical school entrance exam for one: It's a complete joke compared to the MCAT in the US.
Their duration of schooling is also shorter. Most colleges in EU would accept citizen-students as long as they don't fail a high school class.
They don't need loans because colleges are free or cost only $500/semester in the mentioned countries. Poor students can ask for government aid to pay rent.
The tax investment that Europeans pay is actually worth every euro: free healthcare, free college, free pension, paid longer vacation.

 

[oldstock]

Yes, yes, the point of federal loan is to help poor students attend colleges in the first place. But over time, it is abused: Private colleges nowadays take it as an opportunity to increase their tuition rate 5% EVERY year


Competition: No, simply no. Look at their medical school entrance exam for one: It's a complete joke compared to the MCAT in the US.
Their duration of schooling is also shorter. Most colleges in EU would accept citizen-students as long as they don't fail a high school class.
They don't need loans because colleges are free or cost only $500/semester in the mentioned countries. Poor students can ask for government aid to pay rent.
The tax investment that Europeans pay is actually worth every euro: free healthcare, free college, free pension, paid longer vacation.

We can move faster than trying to fix or change the system here

 

[BC_89]

how much harder or easier is getting into Pharmacy school than Med School? I'm currently in a business advanced degree program but if job stability is hard to come by, or the hours/pay ratio is poor, I need an alternative. Also, pharmacists do get respect. My current degree program is super quant, but I have none of the other sciences and I'm missing a lot of trig. How is the job market for pharmacists? Is it worth it, and how good do you actually have to be at math? What science requirements are necessary as well?

Seems like you will need to do the research deep enough to know which of the two you decide to get yourself into : any investment in either one is a BIG impact on you if security / financial "qua" is the prime reasoning alone....some small passion in healthcare and sciences will bring you a long way...short answer though med school is much harder to get into than pharmacy... Ignoring the "outliers" that come with each profession and the specialties (mostly talking the MD / DO route), you will see that on - call / all nights can be expected of a physician, Competition with saturation in pharmacy being highly expected and the LIST goes on... after you shadow and get by organic chemistry (seems to be the class that narrows down the idea of who wants their career path bad enough), think about the lifestyle you may want...want time with your family? want a career that allows you to leave work AT work? can you deal with insurance quota for patients and / or deal with multiple tasks and answer prescription questions while double checking that your PA / tech filled an order or information right or else its on your hands if malpractice or your contract only covers so much bad judgment? Not to degrade the professions both are excellent choices if your willing to sacrifice extra yrs of study, possible residency (for pharmacy school if a specialty is chosen), willing to compete for job locations, and have a passion for the career...Some wont really know until most of the pre-reqs are done but most will have an idea after sufficient job shadowing... As for the math: most pharmacy schools require a semester of calculus and a semester of algebra based physics (or) calc. based physics...the bigger schools require one year of each as far as math goes ( MCAT you will want to take at least a year of calc. based physics with kinematics and quantum formulas while the PCAT is short questioning of algebra / critical thinking / and basic calculation skills ).

 

[SanMateoRph]

pharmacy is not worth it these days. only before 2009-2010. all the dumb money is in pharmacy

 

[JayHawks1983]

Physicians are inherently protected by the law. Pharmacists, on the other hand, are not. Do we see Congress allocating additional budgets to open up more residency spots for future physicians? I don't think taxpayers will be open to funding future practitioners' training which eventually leads to more people making money in the higher tax bracket. Therefore, the supply and demand issue will favor the salary of the physician by the very nature of the 1997 ACA passed by Congress. Unfortunately, this is not the case in pharmacy and will lead to a high unemployment rate for pharmacists and/or significant decrease in salary very soon. They are both respected professions, but the law "protects" physicians and does the very opposite for pharmacists. This same very thing has been the model for Europe. Anecdotally, I have heard the same thing has been happening to Australia and industrialized regions of Asia.

 

[Ronald Kris]

Physicians are inherently protected by the law.

just a side note about protected by the law: my uncle, a doctor, hasn't paid taxes in 10 years and walks the streets a free man. Owes the IRS to the tune of $800,000.

 

[Lucky One]

I agree with previous posters, do research(shadowing/working/volunteering/Google) into the fields as whether it fits your interests/passions. Pharmacy I would say is just as competitive as Medical school as a lot of programs have expanded in the past decade to fill the previous void. Question whether your intentions are justified, because there are a ton of medical schools because of the shortage and with limited residency spots it's also quite competitive.

 

[Praiszy]

how much harder or easier is getting into Pharmacy school than Med School? I'm currently in a business advanced degree program but if job stability is hard to come by, or the hours/pay ratio is poor, I need an alternative. Also, pharmacists do get respect. My current degree program is super quant, but I have none of the other sciences and I'm missing a lot of trig. How is the job market for pharmacists? Is it worth it, and how good do you actually have to be at math? What science requirements are necessary as well?

My guy, med is harder

 

[PharmtoCS]

Anyone with a pulse can get into pharmacy school.

 

[Jibby321]

Anyone with a pulse can get into pharmacy school.

DO school is really easy to get into as well.