Pharmacy school application: what should my next step be?

[fhwulala]

Hi all, I hope all your application is going well.
I am a non-traditional student with a BS degree in Biotechnology applying for the 2015 term.

My undergrad GPA is 2.84. My PCAT scores are 75% (Jan 2014) and 95% (July 2014)
I have also passed the PTCB this year, but I currently have no experience working in a pharmacy.
My target schools are Virginia Commonwealth, St.Joseph and Western New England.

I have been working in the pharmaceutical industry as a chemist for the past six years since my graduation.
For the first five I was working in a medium sized generic pharmaceutical company. During which I have been a group manager for one year. I have experience working in different departments such as R&D, QC and Compliance. I am sure I can get pretty nice LORs from the CEO and CSO.

At the beginning of this year I joined one of the top 10 big pharma as a contracted senior chemist. My contract expires next February. I was hoping that I can get a LOR from the management but apparently there is an HR policy prohibiting it. So it is unlikely that I would be able to get any reference from the current job.
Since I have been out of the school for so long, I might not have a LOR from my previous professors, but I am giving it a try.

This brings me to my question,
Currently I have two plans:

1) Stay at the current job, take two classes at the local community college (my cGPA will be ~2.98), volunteer at the local hospital.

2) Quit my current job, be a full time student at the community college to bring my cGPA to 3.0+ and get some LOR. At the same time I will work part time as a pharmacy technician.

Which one do you guys think would be the most benevolent to my pharmacy application?

I guess my real question is how would they value my professional experience as a chemist at a major pharma?
My biggest worry is that if I take plan 2 and I did not get accepted to any school, I would not have a career to go back to.

I welcome all inputs; please don’t be hesitated to share your opinion.
Thank you all in advance.

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[oldstock]

Hi all, I hope all your application is going well.
I am a non-traditional student with a BS degree in Biotechnology applying for the 2015 term.

My undergrad GPA is 2.84. My PCAT scores are 75% (Jan 2014) and 95% (July 2014)
I have also passed the PTCB this year, but I currently have no experience working in a pharmacy.
My target schools are Virginia Commonwealth, St.Joseph and Western New England.

I have been working in the pharmaceutical industry as a chemist for the past six years since my graduation.
For the first five I was working in a medium sized generic pharmaceutical company. During which I have been a group manager for one year. I have experience working in different departments such as R&D, QC and Compliance. I am sure I can get pretty nice LORs from the CEO and CSO.

At the beginning of this year I joined one of the top 10 big pharma as a contracted senior chemist. My contract expires next February. I was hoping that I can get a LOR from the management but apparently there is an HR policy prohibiting it. So it is unlikely that I would be able to get any reference from the current job.
Since I have been out of the school for so long, I might not have a LOR from my previous professors, but I am giving it a try.

This brings me to my question,
Currently I have two plans:

1) Stay at the current job, take two classes at the local community college (my cGPA will be ~2.98), volunteer at the local hospital.

2) Quit my current job, be a full time student at the community college to bring my cGPA to 3.0+ and get some LOR. At the same time I will work part time as a pharmacy technician.

Which one do you guys think would be the most benevolent to my pharmacy application?

I guess my real question is how would they value my professional experience as a chemist at a major pharma?
My biggest worry is that if I take plan 2 and I did not get accepted to any school, I would not have a career to go back to.

I welcome all inputs; please don’t be hesitated to share your opinion.
Thank you all in advance.

I would go with Plan 1, i.e. staying at you current job and going to school part time + volunteering. Keeping your current job now sounds like a better and safer bet. But trying to bring up your GPA above the cutoff point for application consideration at least. Your PCAT is excellent. Your job is pharmacy-related so I think it will add more points to your application. I am not going to worry about you not getting in any pharmacy school as there are many schools now for you to choose from, or even VCU/MCU. (heck, there was one poster who getting in VCU with only 2.90 and 75 on the PCAT http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/are-my-stats-a-joke.1073232/ , so why can't you ?? ). GL !!