What should I do next to get into Pharmacy school and which school should I transfer to?

[PharmacyCat]

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I’m currently in community college in as a biology transfer major and I have most of the pre-requisites for Pharmacy. I live in Massachusetts and near Boston. I will be getting an AS in biology by this summer and be transferring out to a different school by next semester of fall 2016. The schools I have applied to are: MCPHS Boston (regular application as pharmsci, since I know will get rejected for PharmD), Northeastern University-CPS, Umass Boston/Lowell/Amherst. I haven’t applied to MCPHS Worcester since, I wasn’t sure if I would consider going there since it is far and not only that, accelerated programs are difficult and I’ve heard nothing but negative things about that school but, if it easier for transfers to go there then I may consider applying still since the admission advisor told me they extended their deadline to March 1st for MCPHS. So, the reasons why I have listed and applied to schools that didn’t have pharmacy is because my GPA is actually mediocre. I struggled a lot during the workload of courses, and changed majors over time and I just have a 2.5 GPA as of now and I’m trying really hard to get it up. Would it make me more competitive to have a bachelor’s degree in Biology and then apply for pharmacy school at the end? Some of my friends are telling me to just go to MCPHS, while my sister in law who graduated from MCPHS as a pharmacist about 8 years ago says to not consider MCPHS because it is difficult to get a job and it would be better to go to NEU because of their CO-OP program. While I have also heard that from current students of MCPHS Boston if you don’t get into PharmD, pharmseutical sciences is very difficult to transfer out of, and that their workload is harder than NEU’s PharmD. I’m unsure about what school I would like to transfer to by Fall 2016. NEU CPS program was one of my options because with an AS degree from CC they would cut the tuition of NEU’s daytime school in half however it’s all night courses, and I ‘m not sure if it’s worth to myself through that .. and they do offer a biological sciences program and the director of pharmD at NEU told me I would have an advantage if I went to their NEU CPS school to transfer into their PharmD program since it’s the same school.. I’m really unaware of where to go and what I should do but in the end I want to become a pharmacist and I would take any route to heighten my chances. What do you guys think? The schools I probably would consider the most are either NEU CPS hopefully transferring into NEU's PharmD or Umass Boston to get a bachelor's in biology or MCPHS for pharm sci and hopefully transfer into PharmD or even Umass Lowell's pharmacy if they ever open up around 2018...

 

[Thestrugglez]

I’m currently in community college in as a biology transfer major and I have most of the pre-requisites for Pharmacy. I live in Massachusetts and near Boston. I will be getting an AS in biology by this summer and be transferring out to a different school by next semester of fall 2016. The schools I have applied to are: MCPHS Boston (regular application as pharmsci, since I know will get rejected for PharmD), Northeastern University-CPS, Umass Boston/Lowell/Amherst. I haven’t applied to MCPHS Worcester since, I wasn’t sure if I would consider going there since it is far and not only that, accelerated programs are difficult and I’ve heard nothing but negative things about that school but, if it easier for transfers to go there then I may consider applying still since the admission advisor told me they extended their deadline to March 1st for MCPHS. So, the reasons why I have listed and applied to schools that didn’t have pharmacy is because my GPA is actually mediocre. I struggled a lot during the workload of courses, and changed majors over time and I just have a 2.5 GPA as of now and I’m trying really hard to get it up. Would it make me more competitive to have a bachelor’s degree in Biology and then apply for pharmacy school at the end? Some of my friends are telling me to just go to MCPHS, while my sister in law who graduated from MCPHS as a pharmacist about 8 years ago says to not consider MCPHS because it is difficult to get a job and it would be better to go to NEU because of their CO-OP program. While I have also heard that from current students of MCPHS Boston if you don’t get into PharmD, pharmseutical sciences is very difficult to transfer out of, and that their workload is harder than NEU’s PharmD. I’m unsure about what school I would like to transfer to by Fall 2016. NEU CPS program was one of my options because with an AS degree from CC they would cut the tuition of NEU’s daytime school in half however it’s all night courses, and I ‘m not sure if it’s worth to myself through that .. and they do offer a biological sciences program and the director of pharmD at NEU told me I would have an advantage if I went to their NEU CPS school to transfer into their PharmD program since it’s the same school.. I’m really unaware of where to go and what I should do but in the end I want to become a pharmacist and I would take any route to heighten my chances. What do you guys think? The schools I probably would consider the most are either NEU CPS hopefully transferring into NEU's PharmD or Umass Boston to get a bachelor's in biology or MCPHS for pharm sci and hopefully transfer into PharmD or even Umass Lowell's pharmacy if they ever open up around 2018...

My opinion: UMass if you can get in state tuition. Confused about the NEU tuition thing. So do you get the discount or not since you're taking night classes?... If you get the tuition discount, it might be worth it.

With your current stats (a 2.5 from cc after 2 years), I don't think you're competitive enough to get into a 5/6 co-op year program. You really have to buckle down and get up your gpa (or at least show improvement) and learn how to study. MCPHS in particular is notorious for weeding people out. IMO, I would probably aim to get a bachelor's degree and some tech experience, since there's almost no way you can bring that 2.5 up in one year.

Also, please use paragraphs next time because big blocks are hard to read.

 

[estara89]

so, what did you decide to do?