If you're wanting to shadow a pharmacist, you can get a pharmacy technician intern certification. If you are wanting a job, you can either do the intern certification or taking the PTCE and become a tech. If you're a pharmacy student, you can get a paid internship after your first year of school.
Nice!
How much information do you know about the pharmacy technician intern certification? Or even better how exactly do you go about becoming a pharmacy tech? I'm trying to plan ahead on what I want to do over the summer before Pharmacy school in the Fall. I have one of my interviews tomorrow for Pharmacy school so I'm trying to plan ahead. I know a couple of pharmacy people that are currently pharmacy techs, since it looks good on their application and they always ask in interviews "so, do you have any pharmacy experience?".
I shadowed in a hospital pharmacy this last summer in July. It was.....interesting to say the least. So much kidney failure.
Good job and good luck!
Which schools did you apply to? Do you mind sharing your stats?
I applied to University of Tennessee school of pharmacy (memphis location; all p1 and p2 students have to do their didactic studies there, because that is where the compounding labs are), Belmont, and Sullivan university (I realized later on that Sullivan does not have a great reputation at all in the Pharmacy world; it's considered a "down south" school, but I did get an interview there), and I considered Belmont for a little while since I live in Tennessee, but I was turned off by the high tuition costs. Plus, UT is 17th in the nation and number 1 in Tennessee and the Memphis campus is literally 25 minutes away from where I live, so that makes it an obvious choice. Plus, it's one of the nations oldest Pharmacy schools, being founded way back in 1898, so it has a reputation and is well-known, which gives me an advantage when it comes to being competitive in a oversaturated Pharmacy market.
I got accepted at UT so I am pretty happy about that. I think what helped me out a lot was my PCAT score, with my having 85th in Biology, 99th in Chemistry, 80th in Critical reading, and 67th in qualitative. My GPA is not as great as it could have been if I had learned how to study earlier, and it is 3.05. However, to make up for this they look at your recent performance, and I have made the Dean's list the past two semester as well as have gotten an A in Organic Chemistry 2, which is a large indictator of success in Pharmacy school (drugs are organic based......just look at biochem).
Overall I got 94th percentile on the PCAT. I didn't have any Pharmacy experience except for shadowing at a hospital and outpatient pharmacy at the university hospital that is apart of UTHSC. I also was myself during my interview yesterday and it ended up lasting an hour, and the admissions director later told me that the professor and the Pharmacy student that interviewed me were very impressed with me. So, just so you know the interview can make or break you. For the PCAT, I used Dr. Collins and the Crack the PCAT test simulating software to study. I also bought all three Pearson official practice tests and timed myself on them, especially with math (my weakest link). I had to make sure I did great on the PCAT due to my low GPA, so that provided a lot of motivation for me to study hard for it.
