New prepharm student advice!

[josielynnr]

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Hello all! After 10 years experience as a pharmacy technician I have decided to pursue pharmacy! I am completing my bachelor in general studies this year. I have a 3.7 GPA. I will need to take the biology and chemistry courses at a community college. I have networked and have had the great privilege of working for Express Scripts for several years and a few other pharmacies as well. I will start the biology and chemistry courses that I need next Spring.


I have interviewed quite a few pharmacists I work with and have worked with. So far I have received great feedback for the most part.


Did you work while you took your prerequisites?

Did you work while you were in pharmacy school?

What was the most difficult prerequisite course you took and what advice can you give me to ace it?

Thank you .


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[Apples2Oranges]

1. Yes, I worked while taking pre-requisites. I was a traditional college student and managed to finish everything in 3 yrs (it would've been 2 but I studied abroad). I did clinical research and volunteered. It's not as bad as you think.
2. Personally, I thought working 5-15 hrs a week as a side-gig is pretty achievable. It's nice having some cash flow. Few people in the first year worked, but some did and were fine doing it.
3. Physics. The professor just genuinely sucked. A lot of people at my university avoided taking it at the school and went somewhere else to transfer credits. My worst chem course was analytical chem and pulled my first C+. My pharm school required it, but most do not. Second hardest would probably be microbio or gen chem 2. Organic chem and biochemistry were pretty great, but I had no idea what to do with calorimetry and electrodes in gen chem 2...or maybe I was just a dumb freshman who didn't know how to study. Still managed to get a 96 on my chem and bio sections on the pcat w/ a month of studying and got into a top program. You can do it!

Good luck!

 

[Nguyen2017]

Most difficult course: biochem but my school recommends but not requires it so I dropped the class. The second hardest: o chem. Then bio, microbio, anatomy, physiology which are hard for me to get As. Inorganic chem and physics are easy for me.

 

[josielynnr]

1. Yes, I worked while taking pre-requisites. I was a traditional college student and managed to finish everything in 3 yrs (it would've been 2 but I studied abroad). I did clinical research and volunteered. It's not as bad as you think.
2. Personally, I thought working 5-15 hrs a week as a side-gig is pretty achievable. It's nice having some cash flow. Few people in the first year worked, but some did and were fine doing it.
3. Physics. The professor just genuinely sucked. A lot of people at my university avoided taking it at the school and went somewhere else to transfer credits. My worst chem course was analytical chem and pulled my first C+. My pharm school required it, but most do not. Second hardest would probably be microbio or gen chem 2. Organic chem and biochemistry were pretty great, but I had no idea what to do with calorimetry and electrodes in gen chem 2...or maybe I was just a dumb freshman who didn't know how to study. Still managed to get a 96 on my chem and bio sections on the pcat w/ a month of studying and got into a top program. You can do it!

Good luck!

Thank you for your input. I am working full time at a pharmacy. This semester I'm taking classes full time but luckily they aren't any chem or bio courses. I was figuring that when I start the prepharmacy math and science courses I will work part time.

Also during pharmacy school I plan to work maybe a few hours a week as I am a single mom with three children.

I have interviewed several pharmacist I have worked with and they all seem to have the same story. They say they just sacrificed a few years and lived very humbly and it was worth it. They all lived off of student loans for the most part.





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