This is why I feel like I can't take personal statement advice from anyone, haha... Direct quote from PharmCAS personal essay page," Your Personal Essay should address why you selected pharmacy as a career and how the Doctor of Pharmacy degree relates to your immediate and long-term professional goals."
Feel free to write a personal statement about your motivations if you wish. I have no problems with that. I DO have problems with people advising that motivation is the ONLY thing to discuss in a personal statement. You do have other options. And I am telling you with inside information, that the schools are tired of reading the same exact reasons from applicants over and over. Perhaps you did extremely poorly in your first year or two of college before turning it around and pulling a 180. You went from C's and D's to A's and B's. You can discuss how and why you made the 180 and why you are a different student today than the one on paper whose cumulative GPA is still a 2.7. Perhaps it was youthful exuberance that led you down the wrong path. Maybe it was just poor study skills. Maybe it was the fact that you were used to succeeding and never met failure. But whatever the reason, you got up off the ground, dusted yourself off, and made an honest to god mature decision about yourself and where you wanted to go in life. That speaks louder and clearer than any speech on why pharmacy.
The professors and admissions team that sit in a circle discussing applicants will nearly automatically interview the high PCAT/high GPA crowd. Then when they get to the less stellar candidates who aren't the 4.0, 99ths, they start discussing elements of your application as it pertains to character. They look at character because it is the basis of ethics (which are extremely important to the future of the profession as pharmacists transition from product specialists to service specialists) and the basis of excellence in academics and professional life. And whether you like it or not, aside from trying to find the highest scoring applicants who boost their silly rank and prestige, they really do look to see who would make good pharmacists at the end of the day. They really are concerned with producing pharmacists who will one day embarrass the school for making the egregious error of passing that student. They want to know that you have the fortitude to face the challenge of academics and professional life.
While they do want to know your motivation for pharmacy school in a general sense, they largely want to know that the motivation is serious and real, not what the specific motivation may be. They want to know that you REALLY want to be there. They don't want an applicant who is using pharmacy school as "backup if the med school plan fails". THAT is the differentiation they seek to make. But the reality is that most applicants use the same exact canned line of BS (which I realize is not BS for some applicants) in the hopes of playing up pathological pathos persuasion (isn't alliteration fun?). Is it even remotely possible that almost 75% of personal statements I have read (and this numbers in the hundreds) go along the lines of
"Ever since (insert someone close to you) was sick with (insert disease), I have been curious about the medications used to treat the disease and decided that I wanted to help people like the doctors and pharmacists who were helping (insert person)."
Seriously. Everyone in healthcare has the same exact sob story? No. You and I both know its all a bunch of bull. So do they. They want to see sincerity and trust me, more times than not, they can spot an insincere person. A person who legitimately has that specific motivation writes very differently than one who does not. And when they see an insincere person, they discuss character issues which will be the deciding factor behind your invitation or denial to interview, and post-interview, your acceptance or denial from admission. And if your motivation is to then try and write differently so your sob story sounds more believable, I can promise you one thing, I would not want to call you a colleague.... and neither do they.
If your reason for wanting to go to pharmacy school is to become a specialist in pain and palliative care management so that you can go to Capitol Hill and convince Congress to legalize medical marijuana... and maybe just a blanket legalization... then just say so. More tactfully and elegantly of course, because after all you don't want to come across as Johnny Potsmoker, but it can be said, and you can get interviews on that basis. I can promise you one thing, if I read that personal statement, I'd interview the applicant on the basis of curiosity to see if the applicant was truly that astute and forward thinking. Its rare to find a student with the intellect and courage to make that sort of statement.
Be sincere in your personal statement. Be honest. Be open to discussing your commitment to the pursuit of pharmacy which not necessarily the same thing as the motivation for pharmacy, and a far more powerful ally for you in that deliberation room.
Out.
