Leaving Pharmacy School for Computer Science

[pharmacybalance]

Hello fellow colleagues,

I'm a first year pharmacy student attending a "top 10" school based on the USA news ranking: https://www.usnews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-health-schools/pharmacy-rankings.

I've thrown myself headfirst into pharmacy school, received an internship that teaches me outpatient for a year, and transitions into inpatient for the following 3 years. I've worked as a pharmacy assistant in undergrad for 3 years, and am now in a leadership position for my schools AMCP chapter where I'm learning more about managed care/industry pharmacy. I've also picked up an independent research project with a professor in my program. I did my undergrad in biochemistry (3.72), and am sitting at a 3.89 gpa in pharmacy school.

As a networking fanatic, I've been trying to set myself up as best as possible for a job once I graduate, with the pharmacy saturation and job dissatisfaction that seems to be more and more common with some pharmacists in the field. I've never really looked at other careers outside of pharmacy and have been playing around with coding (Java, learning some data sciences in SQL, and R). I've started to enjoy this greatly, and even do some basic R in my research project, and am currently contemplating dropping ship from pharmacy school and going into computer science due to the greater job prospects in my area and the quality of life. I've been commuting, and only have a current loan of 14k since I received scholarships, and earned income to pay my first years tuition.

I'd like to spend this summer shadowing people in the CSE field, pharmacists in industry/managed care and making a final decision. I wanted to get your thoughts on this, it's a huge decision, and I'd love to hear others opinion on my thoughts. If I did drop out, I have friends who are in CSE that would help mentor me as I do an online masters/bachelors degree in CSE.

tl;dr : Very involved pharmacy student thinking of leaving pharmacy school after first year to pursue computer science. Wanted opinions if you were in my shoes.

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[lord999]

I was in your shoes a decade ago, but specifically completed to do this:

Medical Informatics Training Program | U.S. National Library of Medicine

If you are in one of those schools, they all have healthcare analytics programs that tide you over until you make it outside. If you happen to be at Michigan, Ohio State, Minnesota, Purdue, or UNC, there are specific options available locally both careerwise and training there.

However, if you clearly have no intention of practicing, then leaving is not bad at all. Pity that you wasted a year on this.

 

[Apples2Oranges]

Your experience is impressive but at this point, follow your passions. Cliche, right? Despite the saturation, the grass may not always be greener on the other side, even though computer science is a hot major nowadays. And I can see why. Consider the amount of time it would take you to complete a CS major. More people are realizing CS is a good field (as pharmacy was back in the day), so eventually you will also have to get a Masters to be competitive for higher jobs. If you start over, that's an additional 3-4 years of your life. You also have to know that your knowledge will be mostly obsolete if you don't keep up with new programs and software in the future. You can google it or ask experienced people in the field. By the time you're 35-40, you can get replaced by a new grad who knows the new bells and whistles.

However, CS has very large room for growth in the most cases. Coding is very useful. I highly recommend it to anyone nowadays. It's in demand, and you don't have to deal with sick and annoying patients. I had friends that were making straight Bs and Cs and still got jobs at a good company after graduation. Even if you quit your job in corporate, you can go off on your own and maybe have your own tech start-up or online biz.

 

[MrBonita]

I wanted to be an MMA fighter while in pharmacy school. I was training with Gilbert Melendez, Nick Diaz and Jake Shields. I chose to train in Stockton instead of Ohio State with Hammer House with Mark Coleman and Kevin Randleman. I was right there training with these guys before they were in the UFC but one day someone dislocated his knee during training. The sight of the dislocated knee gave me nightmares and I quit. All these guys I trained with became average UFC fighters and I always thought what I could have been but now all these guys are old and so am I. Too late for me but not for you.