PCAT Writing section & score

[movingfwd]

I heard the writing score on the PCAT isn't very important, since pharmacy schools don't give this section much weight in their decision making process. Is this true? How important is the writing score in my admission process? How do pharmacy admission officers interpret the writing score? Is it as important as my biology and chemistry scores?

I also heard the writing sections are just there to wear us down for the next sections on the PCAT. What do you guys think?

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[Rouelle]

Some pharmacy schools make students complete a written essay on interview day. My assumption is that the written section of the pcat was added so that schools could have the option to stop this process and thus streamline the interview process. That said, I have heard the same thing as you about the writing section being less important. To support the argument, when schools report statistics for their incoming classes, they report composite scores and not the averages from the writing section (at least as far as I have seen). My guess is that the adcoms give a quick glance at the score to make sure it appears the applicant can communicate the language at something above an 6th grade level, then don't worry about it much beyond that. I am not an adcom member though, so my opinion is merely speculation.

 

[iBeast]

I heard the writing score on the PCAT isn't very important, since pharmacy schools don't give this section much weight in their decision making process. Is this true? How important is the writing score in my admission process? How do pharmacy admission officers interpret the writing score? Is it as important as my biology and chemistry scores?

I also heard the writing sections are just there to wear us down for the next sections on the PCAT. What do you guys think?

I don't know if that is true or not but I do agree with this statement somewhat... especially how they structure the test...

 

[xtsukiyox]

Some schools have a minimum required writing score.

Otherwise, your guess is as good as mine, since it doesn't seem to impact your composite.