How do you apply?

[Carboxide]

I have, of course, been looking online at the courses required to attend the various pharmacy schools. I'm wondering how you all chose where to apply - did you apply to schools which had similar prereqs or did you just decide to apply wherever you wanted to attend and take any "out-there" courses after you were accepted, in the summer or whenever?

 

[PharmPrincess]

i wanted to stay in-state so i researched the pharmacy schools here (3 schools). Most of the pre-req courses overlapped (90%), with a few extra courses needed depending on the school. I ended up completing my B.S., so most of these "extra" classes fell into the general requirement to graduate anyways (like Calc II, 2 semesters of physics instead of one, stats for example). Doing this also allowed me to apply to other out of state schools that ended up with similar pre-reqs.

So its up to you, rather if you want to focus on just one school to be applying to or if you want to have the "general" pre-reqs that will allow you to apply to more than one school. Keep in mind if you're on an early track to pharmacy, that some schools also look more at degree holding prospective students and that some schools will be turning over to requiring a degree for admission eventually. good luck.

 

[Storm90]

I assessed every school in the US, since an acceptance would mean I'd be moving (I'm from Canada). I looked at numerous statistics, considered which schools cater to my strong points (PCAT, experience, extracurriculars, volunteer work, etc) and didn't focus on my weakness (GPA). From there, I filtered out schools that don't consider international students as well as schools that weren't considerate enough to email me back when I'd email them. Got that number down to ~14 schools, and was accepted to my early decision choice. A lot of work, but worth it. I ended up having to do several courses through correspondence, including biochem, but I got through it.

 

[cinnamoroll12]

First of all, I really wanted to stay here in Cali, but I knew that chance is slim with my not so stellar stats. So I had to consider out-of-state schools as well. I looked into all the schools here in the U.S. through the list provided by PharmCAS. I narrowed the schools down by eliminating those that with certain minimum requirements that I didn't meet in the first place (i.e. PCAT, GPA, LORs). For the OOS public schools, I looked into their acceptance stats, especially the number of OOS students that got accepted last year. Other minor factors that I looked into are the curriculum setup, philosophy and values (i.e. Catholic/Jesuit schools), location, etc.