Staff Pharmacist Position vs Residency

[Reptar22]

Hey everyone,

So I submitted 12 residency applications to PhorCAS last week and haven't heard back from anyone. Here is my situation: GPA = 2.9, several strong leadership positions, extensive volunteer and student organization involvement, 2 years retail experience, a few presentations, local publications, and an ongoing research project. I have really good letters of rec from clinical preceptors and my retail employer.

With my GPA being below a 3.0, I'm not sure if I should fill out more apps for some smaller residency programs, or just start looking for a hospital staff position now. I know I could probably get a retail job, but hospital pharmacy is what I'm really interested in and where I would be happy.

Advice?

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[someonesomething]

It's only the first week and some programs haven't even begun to look through their applications yet, so don't feel too discouraged! The deadlines for a lot of programs were only a few days ago, and a lot of people who have been hearing back from programs are hearing back from PGY-2s.

 

[Reptar22]

It's only the first week and some programs haven't even begun to look through their applications yet, so don't feel too discouraged! The deadlines for a lot of programs were only a few days ago, and a lot of people who have been hearing back from programs are hearing back from PGY-2s.

Thanks for the motivation! I guess I'm just paranoid that everyone threw away my application because of my GPA.

 

[njac]

We haven’t sent out a single invite from any of our programs yet. I wouldn’t sweat it just yet.

Today I evaluated a pgy2 candidate who had a 2.something and still managed to get a pgy1. Not all is lost.


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[someonesomething]

Last year I got more interview rejections than actual interviews, but sometimes it really only takes one place to interview and to really click with the people there. One of my friends literally only had one interview for PGY-1 and got it, and she's finishing a PGY-2 now.

 

[rookbishop]

Depends on where you applied to. If you're applying to larger programs that gets hundreds of applicants, they may have a GPA cut-off where they automatically just toss your application. A GPA of 2.9 would definitely be below most of those cut-offs and in a large pool of applicants, nothing else you mentioned would differentiate you from the rest. If you applied to smaller programs, they may dig deeper.

 

[Reptar22]

Depends on where you applied to. If you're applying to larger programs that gets hundreds of applicants, they may have a GPA cut-off where they automatically just toss your application. A GPA of 2.9 would definitely be below most of those cut-offs and in a large pool of applicants, nothing else you mentioned would differentiate you from the rest. If you applied to smaller programs, they may dig deeper.

I applied to 2 large academic medical centers, 3 VA hospitals, and the rest community hospitals of varying sizes.

 

[rx25295]

I mean it doesn’t hurt to start looking for staffing positions but I wouldn’t necessarily dive too deep into that until you’ve actually heard back about interviews. You never know what could happen.

 

[Reptar22]

So it turns out my transcript including my Fall grades finally made it to phorcas and my GPA > 3.0 now! For the programs whose deadline has passed already, will they go by the gpa I listed in my application, or will they actually look at my transcript to see the update?

And I'm guessing it would look desperate to email the programs with this update?

Thanks for the advice everyone.

 

[bacillus1]

So it turns out my transcript including my Fall grades finally made it to phorcas and my GPA > 3.0 now! For the programs whose deadline has passed already, will they go by the gpa I listed in my application, or will they actually look at my transcript to see the update?

And I'm guessing it would look desperate to email the programs with this update?

Thanks for the advice everyone.

When reviewing packets, I typically go by the GPA on the transcript. I don't have time to look at GPAs in multiple places.
Also, we are still reviewing packets. Definitely not sending out invites yet.