Good question, and one I am ready to defend since I'm sure I'll be asked more than a few times between now and acceptance (hopefully) time.
Location is the first and foremost reason, yeah. Since my parents own a house in N. Stockton that they use maybe 3 mos. out of the year, it's a no-brainer for me to move in there during my pharmacy education and save a ton of money on rent and other incidentals. Meanwhile, my wife can move into graduate student housing at whatever school she gets into for law. This way, we can graduate from our respective programs with minimal debt, which might be really important if one or both of us have hard time finding work in 2013/2014.
UCSF is a fine school and I will certainly cherish the opportunity to interview there if I get the invitation, but living in the Bay is unreasonably expensive during school, and if it's both my wife and I in the bay, we'll need a slightly bigger place (and one that takes pets to boot), etc, and will then be very limited on roommates. For some reason, people don't like to room up w/ married folk, this has been our experience thus far in Davis while she finishes her undergraduate also. So it's pay $3,500/mo for a place in Berkeley so we both can do the Bay thing, or I pay $0/mo for a 5 bedroom 3 bath house in N.Stkn and she gets graduate student housing for a pittance. It's a sacrifice, but the ability to be way out on top after our programs is a bit too tough to pass up, and it isn't like the distance from Stockton to Berkeley is such that a weekend trip would be out of the question.
Sooooo yeah, that was long-winded (as usual) but it's late, I can't sleep (WAY too excited/nervous) and yeah... UoP's school has been a fixture since the mid-19th century, so it isn't like its reputation is anything but awesome in the pharmacy community, which might or might not be really important come a few years down the road. They also have an existing relationship w/ the hospital I currently volunteer at, AND several of the pharmacists I work under now graduated from TJL, so it seems natural.
Out of curiousity, why isn't UCSF your first choice? Location? I think you could get into UCSF based on what I've read about your knowledge and dedication to being a pharmacist.
UOP is also my top choice along with UCSF though 🙂.
. Looking over some old threads, I thought the PINT (Preliminary Interview?) would tell you the date of your interview. Anyways, good luck with the upcoming interview 👍.
