General How should I chose between Pharmacy School or Medical School?

[BC_89]

Ok, so I had all these plans of going into pharmacy school and did everything to prepare for it. I took the prerequisites, PCAT, and my application is all ready to be submitted. However, after a week of careful research and consideration seeing other pharmacist complaining about the career or those PharmD graduates couldn't find a job because of the market and how saturated it is. I'll be graduating with a Bachelor of Science in Biology next summer and my initial plan was to continue straight to pharmacy school. But now, since I've been getting all these comments saying "Don't go into pharmacy, etc", I'm coming up with these options:

Option 1: Stick with the plan and finish pharmacy school with 4.0 GPA and try my luck on pharmacy
Option 2: Wait till another year to prepare and apply for medical school instead (which means I'm taking a gap year after graduating next year) and that gap year will be working and saving for med school, prepping for MCAT, getting more experiences.
Option 3: Take MCAT in a week or two, apply for MCAT and hope there will be luck in getting accepted (Application close on Oct. 1st)

I'm open to new options and suggestions. Besides pharmacy, I'm interested in family medicine, internal medicine, nothing in dental or vet or surgery.
Quick fact about me: I'm 18 (I'm assuming age could be a factor because I'm still young so taking a gap year won't hurt?), My Science GPA is 3.800, Math GPA is 4.0, Overall GPA is 3.8971 (so I think I can handle med school), since pharm school and med school tuition are the same, I think I won't have to deal with loans (i have abt $40-50k in savings, currently and will be debt-free after graduation). I love the healthcare field so I have to get into the medical field but I also need a guaranteed job and decent pay/hour after graduating. I barely have any healthcare experiences but mostly work (I've work two part-time jobs while in years for years now). Do you think I have a shot in medical school right now?

You want to be running toward a career. Not running away from one.

You stated you “barely” have any healthcare experience. Before jumping into the first opportunity, I strongly urge you to shadow multiple careers. We can warn you all we want on an Internet forum, but in the end it’s up to you what career matches your personality and desires.

Shadow a few physicians, work as a technician, ask them questions...it comes down to knowing what career you see yourself doing for 40 years.



Yes, pharmacy is seeing some longevity issues in community as well as certain specialties when it comes to full time hours and wages. Medical school would provide job security, but blindly doing so will cost you what some seem to believe is “the-best-years-of-your-life.” Take a gap year and get some exposure. 1 year of exposure could save you decades of regret.

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[MusicDOc124]

Option 3 is a no go. 2 weeks of studying for the MCAT on a relative whim and without any practice tests suggesting where you'd fall? Also, for MD schools, this is a little late because there will be a delay getting the application verified after waiting for transcripts to be sent. For DO, timing is fine, but if you don't have any physician shadowing or a DO letter, some schools may not look your way. LoRs written for medical school may also cause a delay.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

There are no guarantees in life. There are many physicians who don't pass boards or don't match after they graduate from medical school. Job security is great but professional growth is better. There are many physicians who don't like what they do just as there are pharmacists who hate what they do.

 

[BC_89]

I love doing both but if I have to put myself through another 4 years of school that costs me thousands of dollars just to come out with no job, no job security, not enough hours, low-paying jobs that I could get with just a B.S., or have to move to the middle of nowhere, then it's no longer what I'm passionate about. I do love both pharmacy and medical but I'm not sure if pharmacy is right for me anymore.

I would tread cautiously on stating you can see yourself doing either pharmacy or medical school when you have not shadowed a physician nor worked as a pharmacist technician. This is what most people call looking at a career with "Rose-Colored-Glasses." The appeal is their, but you need to do the foot work and put yourself out there to ask questions. This is what most would arguably say is the top priority of taking a gap year. Give yourself time to do some community service, shadow, work in a pharmacy, work as a scribe at a hospital, do something that brings you closer to the ins-n-outs of a profession.

This of course is at no fault of your own. Being 18 years old, you are well ahead of the opportunities in academics. What you have in academics you lack in experience. Take the gap year to check all the boxes off for Medical School and pharmacy. Whatever you do though, do not take the MCAT on a whim. get your hours in for what I have mentioned and take the next year to embrace and study the rigors of the MCAT (Seeing its much more in depth than the PCAT).

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Ok. There are definitely things you aren't telling us. Are you in an early admissions to pharmacy program BS/pharmD? If you are 18 and thinking about a "gap year", do you mean before or after college?

You definitely haven't told us your experience in medicine. You haven't told us about if you have even applied for a job as a pharmacy technologist (since you need a job after graduating?).

You should go to Explore Health Careers and read up on all the careers. And get a lot of shadowing and extracurricular community service.

Maturity is going to matter no matter what you decide to do. You'll be around older students and much older patients.

 

[lord999]

The advice remains that you ought to spend a gap year getting the experience. Figure out why you want to do medicine by experiencing it, and I think your choice will become clear.

Also, this is going to sound contrarian, but medicine’s and other health professions' tendencies toward overwork and burnout are not insignificant. You really have to have internal motivation to keep going, or you might end up in a situation where you won’t have a voluntary choice about your career disposition. I oversee the office that deals with involuntary reassignment, and it’s regularly remarked that they wish they went into medicine for themselves rather than external pressures.

And you’re not the only young in either field. I was one myself, PharmD at 21, PhD 3 years later. The difference was that I had three years of technician experience (from 15 years old) upon acceptance and enough professional recommendations such that my admission was a fait accompli (for the state school, it also made it harder because faculty knew both my family and me on a social level). The mistake that I corrected in pharmacy school was I paid too much attention to my high school studies and not enough time to learn the unwritten rules of the job. In pharmacy school, I did not take lectures without reservations, and I worked more than I went to class as what I was taught in the hospital and in the chain as an intern was much more relevant than the lecture hall. I still feel that way and say so when I'm on the podium to the undergraduates now.

It's actually not so much about grades in pharmacy school, it's more whether you're well thought of as a hireable pharmacist. In medicine, grades do matter, but the USMLE/COMLEX exams matter just as much if not more, as well as needing to be able to culturally fit in. But the approach to just numbers may have worked in my era, but I actually consider it not enough if there is no experience or professional recommendations to back those numbers up.

 

[lord999]

First of all, you have to understand that there is no external pressure that got me into medicine and I'm fully aware that it requires a tremendous amount of dedication and motivation which I'm prepared for. So yeah, I'm planning to volunteer at a hospital next month to see how it goes in both fields. I get that experience and strong network and recommendations are significant in both fields but at least I need to know there is job security and sth that guarantee me a job later on. I get that pharmacy is a good profession but I don't think it used to be as "relevant" as it used to be. I seriously don't want to put myself through 4 years of pharm school with $100k of loans and came out with no job where I could do the same with med school.

I frankly would not agree with your first statement. Anyone who makes a career decision on a lifestyle reason and not a work task reason has external pressure. My real reason for entering pharmacy school was literally "I like to make chemistry work on people" and didn't care about the money (if anything is a tell for that, the PhD afterwards in the best pharmacist environment that ever will be would be a loud announcements). I still enjoy that aspect of the job when I get to do it (mired in administrative concerns too often now). I'm speaking from a place where I'm trained to look for that, because I deal with the consequences of professionals who got what they asked for, but not what they wanted. In what you have wrote, you have not yet properly socialized into the community as of yet. Even for pharmacy despite the falling standards, you would be an automatic reject at Texas-Austin, Houston, or Tech on lack of experience and pharmacist recommendations (possible A&M would accept, but they are not as selective). I would not recommend you select pharmacy school on that basis alone. If you do not enjoy the work of a pharmacist, it does not matter how rewarding it is.

I will say the same for medicine. You have the basic stats necessary to apply if your MCAT returns are decent. However, without experience and proper socialization, you will make career ending mistakes before you realize that you have shut those doors.

I am not asking you to take my advice, but I am asking you to apply with open eyes to what the work is like rather than what the lifestyle desired. Right now, you might even get into medicine with just the scores, and that would be a disservice to you actually, because without understanding what the day-to-day practice is like, there is no chance that you could practice long-term without it either taking a toll on you or worse, your patients. When you say that your application is about the practice of medicine, I will then believe you have no external pressure. But if you do not have the idea of what practice is like, it is no good to apply or be admitted in that state. I am sure that you can handle the academic work, but doing the job is both different and more complicated without explicit guidance as the lead of the healthcare team.

In short, what worries me is that you are making major career decisions without the experience or knowledge to make them at this point. This is extremely fraught with risk given the commitments required. The best answer that I can give you is that you cannot answer the question you pose without experiencing a piece of the action. Once you do, this question can be asked more clearly.

 

[BC_89]

And that is WHY I'm starting to volunteer in a local hospital from next month and not only because it is good for my school application, it's for my own sake to see which field is right for me. I'm not trying to prove you wrong or anything I'm just trying to show you that both fields work fine to me because if I have to choose one right now, it'll definitely be a physician (who knows what it'll change once I step my foot in the hospital).

The bold portion answers your original question.

As for my underlined part, this is what multiple users on here are telling you. You cannot choose physician over pharmacist or vice versa because your looking at things from academic studies NOT experience with community service, leadership activities, shadowing (until next month), or simply questioning different individuals who practice in each setting.

Again, this is expected from a well academic but lack-of-life-experience background. You'd be better off taking the remaining of the year for the MCAT, shadow, work as a scribe in a hospital, then come back here and present your case. I did this, and still choose pharmacy over anything else. That's me though, everyone has their choice. That choice is just best done after you put in the foot-work of observing and research.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

There are many testimonials about a life in pharmacy, including all the different specialties and venues where they make an impact. Go to Pharmanyforme.org .

In addition, your future success depends on being able to receive feedback from mentors and actually following advice. You've already demonstrated here an inability to truly listen, and that will hurt your future patients. If you don't accept responsibility, you won't go as far as you may want to.

 

[BC_89]

Yes, I will look into those and make my decision later on. It still won’t be too late to apply for pharm school since the deadline is in January. Are you currently in pharmacy school, or currently a pharmacist, or retired? And could you give me your ideas and experiences in pharmacy field? I know I’m gonna get this later once I shadowed physician and pharmacist but I just want to get as much info as possible to make a relevant decision.

My journey to pharmacy is a bit of an outlier but stems from opportunity and experience. I initially joined the military after obtaining my bachelors in Biochemistry for the exposure in healthcare, benefits at the time for my wife and kids, and GI Bill for further education in the future. Some years later I was medically retired and receive a monthly compensation pay-out from the Veteran Affairs and currently in a program that pays for my pharmacy school education. Due to prior experience as a civilian being a pharm tech to military pharmacy experience, I enjoyed the pace and daily missions I had with my fellow crew members (all in uniform) as well as the behind-the-curtain budgets with medications and special nonformulary drugs for our "wounded warriors" from overseas.

Finances played a part in pharmacy due to no debt on graduation but still having a steady income as a student. I enjoy understanding therapeutic effects of different drugs and how they act on the body. Rather than trying to diagnose an unknown disease, I enjoy the idea of monitoring any unwanted preventions that may take place in pharmacodynamics / kinetics / or for the specialties pharmacogenetics. How did I get to all this? I shadowed, I worked in the pharmacy setting, I asked questions. Do all this that is recommended by online advisors and you wont go wrong.