help with a new prepharm

[Suey]

---

Members don't see this ad.

I just finished my 1st year of college and right now I'm completely lost in what I want to do. I know I want to go into the health field but I'm conflicted over optometry, medicine, and pharmacy. I just recently began to consider pharmacy, and I seem to not be able to find too much information so can you guys help me out?

Is there a website that lists all of the Pharmacy schools and their stats, links to school's sites, etc?
What is considered a competitive applicant for pharmacy school? GPA and activities-wise. How many years of pharmacy internship is sufficient?

And any other info for a newly interested prepharm would really help 🙂

 

[Scientist]

Hi Suey,

The website www.aacp.org lists pharmacy schools, stats, and some links to the school?s site. Check out the menu list to the left. I think the stats are listed under ?institutional data?.

To be competitive the applicant should try to get the best grades possible. A 3.5 GPA and being in an organization, having work/volunteer experience etc. can help.

The applicant will not get the real pharmacy internship until the applicant is accepted and/or enrolled in the professional year; but the perspective student can work as a pharmacy tech (pharmacy trainee if allowed).


When writing the applications, concentrate on getting to the interview stage and not the acceptance stage. Then, when getting the interview, concentrate on getting accepted. Read about pharmacy, the profession, career options, and topics important to pharmacist.

 

[Triangulation]

You need to speak with some pharmacists and volunteer somewhere. There's virtually nothing medicine related that doesn't have a pharmacy component, but you need to figure out what you would like to do.

You've got a really wide scope. You need to itemize how you would like your career to be shaped and what you want to do.

If you're interested in both pharmacy and optometry, then you've got a ways to go before narrowing it down to one field.

Figure out if treating a pt is really what you want. If so then you've narrowed it down to MD, DO, NP, PA.

If not, then you've got to look at the other fields.

Pharmacy provides the opportunity to work in a ridiculously broad spectrum of careers. I want to work in policy, which seems pretty far removed from pharmacy at first glance, but pharmacy actually has that level of flexibility.

The upside is remarkable, but you should scan the threads to find out. I don't want to itemize them.