Pre-Pharmacy Questions

[Mizener]

Advertisement - Members don't see this ad

Hello, I'm new to this forum, so I thought I should get accustomed to a place that can help me with my pharmacy questions. I am currently a first year student in college, and I'm attending a JC in San Luis Obispo. A couple questions that I have been thinking about were what's an average gpa (total gpa or major gpa?) to some popular pharmacy schools in CA, like Loma Linda, UoP, UCSF, and UCSD? Is "lower" a huge drawback for acceptance? And how difficult is it to get some experience in the pharmacy field, is there any minimum knowledge or schooling to get an internship? I have other questions, but I figure I can ask them at a more appropriate time since im only a first year student.

 

[koercive]

Hello, I'm new to this forum, so I thought I should get accustomed to a place that can help me with my pharmacy questions. I am currently a first year student in college, and I'm attending a JC in San Luis Obispo. A couple questions that I have been thinking about were what's an average gpa (total gpa or major gpa?) to some popular pharmacy schools in CA, like Loma Linda, UoP, UCSF, and UCSD? Is "lower" a huge drawback for acceptance? And how difficult is it to get some experience in the pharmacy field, is there any minimum knowledge or schooling to get an internship? I have other questions, but I figure I can ask them at a more appropriate time since im only a first year student.

You should try to transfer to a 4-yr university to improve your chances of acceptance. You can get into some pharmacy schools without a bachelor's degree, but it is becoming increasingly more difficult. GPA is only one aspect of your admissions profile, but I would say shoot for a 3.5 and up.

PharmCAS has average GPAs of accepted students. The site I run PharmApplicants has acceptance stats of pharmacy school students.

Receiving a pharmacy technician license may be necessary to get jobs at retail pharmacies. although you can become a clerk without any of that. If you can't find a job, you can always volunteer at an independent pharmacy or a pharmacy school run clinic.

 

[Passion4Sci]

Agree with Koercive.

Double agree since you're seemingly planning to stay in CA, and you'll really want to have a Bachelor's degree for it.

 

[Mizener]

Thanks for the input guys. Im planning to transfer to CSU Monterey Bay after one more year at a JC (forgot to mention that), and majoring in Biology with an emphasis in pre-med. The school doesn't offer as much as I would like, such as minor/majors in chemistry, but I think this major would benefit me. As for schools out of state, I am interested, but have not done enough research out of CA, so I'm not sure what schools are reputable and which are not.

 

[Passion4Sci]

This board is a pretty good source of information about reliability. 🙂

 

[Mizener]

I've noticed, quite a community you guys have got here. Thats why I thought I'd post something, because I know ill be having more questions in the future. Also, is the 4-year you attend affect your pharmacy school app.? Because I know monterey state is a fairly new school.

 

[Passion4Sci]

I've noticed, quite a community you guys have got here. Thats why I thought I'd post something, because I know ill be having more questions in the future. Also, is the 4-year you attend affect your pharmacy school app.? Because I know monterey state is a fairly new school.

Eh, honestly there is no empirical way to prove or disprove the hypothesis that undergraduate school really matters much.

I mean, is a 3.8 at CSU MB that much better than a 3.4 at Berkeley or Stanford? Well, from a lot of experience, there are difficult, "hard core" instructors at every level of institution, so it'll come down more to the letters on your transcript and what classes you've taken above and beyond the pre-requisites (Biochemistry, Analytical, etc) than the name of your school.