Pharmacy Will it affect my chances to be accepted if I tell my school I have chronic symptoms and my husband is a cancer survivor??

[Mr.Smile12]

Hi, I'm going to apply for a pharmacy school soon. One question on the application will be "why do you want to be a pharmacist?" or "why do you choose PharmD?", things like that. (I got that information from an admission workshop at that pharmacy school for the applicants.) If I'm going to tell the truth, I will have to mention my past sickness, I had 2 times of surgeries for those symptoms and they're improved now, but I still sometimes have symptoms. And I will also have to mention that my husband is a liver cancer survivor. That school has a certain degree option, PharmD & leadership. I've been always contacting the pharmacy school often and even had a long talk with one professor, asking him about getting into CDC or FDA after I graduate. I've told that professor I had chronic pain and was going to have a revision surgery soon. But I've never told them my husband just got liver cancer 6 months ago and he has survived from it (no tumors in his body so far).
I'm thinking is it really wise to tell them these health problems dramas actually made me want to study for PharmD and plan to get into governmental agencies because I want to protect more people? Will they think I may be too sick to study well during school and hesitate to accept me? Will they think if my husband's cancer reoccurs, it may affect my academic performance or even attendance and then hesitate to accept me?
The pharmacy school's admission director and an admission advisor both have told me several times, they don't worry about my admission because of my high GPA and because I have a health professional's degree (Bachelor of Physical Therapy) outside of the U.S & I used to be a class president in my PT school.

No, I would not disclose this before getting accepted. This is information I would only share with people that I trust. In the wrong context it makes you look like you are playing for sympathy. In a more empathetic context, faculty will worry whether you would be able to finish and be wary of extending an offer. After you are accepted can you bring this up for the purposes of identifying resources germane to your support as a student.

Sent from my SM-N960U using SDN mobile

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Yes, sure.
This makes me think if I should change my personal social media's profile (I put "my husband is a liver cancer survivor" on it)...even though I don't think they have time to search my social media accounts. But for "work", some companies would try to search the applicants social media's accounts.

I would think that if anyone in health professions admissions searches your personal social media account and sees that you mention your husband is a liver cancer survivor that it won't be an issue that will disqualify you. I don't know what social media policies are in place when it comes to admissions decisions, but to me it's a very tricky subject, even for undergraduate admissions (where there are more eyeballs to do such searches and more reason for concern). I would be mindful of what the "public" sees" and even what your "friends" see. You could be very surprised that common ties such as being from the same school can get you when it comes to a social media account, and you do provide all that information in your application for someone to make that connection. There is also a liability that many personal social media accounts are spoofs or unauthorized mirrors so until I believe I can trust a social media account more than an application, I remain skeptical to bring anything up from social media.

 

[Goro]

In med school admissions, we want to see that your illness won't put your future performance at risk. A long stretch of academic excellence is proof of that. Serious illness has been the motivator of many a med student, whether in a close relative, or themselves. I've had quite a few students who were Ca survivors.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

It's sad if I'm forced to "make a story" when they ask me, "WHY do you choose PharmD?". On the 1-on-1 admission advisor's appointment & at the admission workshop, they kept telling the applicants, "we want to know your personality, your hobbies, and WHY you choose pharmacy? Not just your academic performance and resume." And they kept telling those applicants, "There are ups and downs in your life, we will help you if you reach out to us. There was a pharmacy student who got cancer when he was still in the school. And also another student got into an ER right before an exam. We will help you and make it work out for you!"

On the schools website, it says they don't have discrimination on the basis of sex, religion, disability, and many other things. And there's a title IX coordinator I may contact, they also offer Equal Opportunity Officer's email and phone numbers. I don't know if contacting them will also help me.

Thanks for your responses.

I don't want you to feel completely skeptical of admissions recruiters. We are selling you our programs and want you to feel comfortable applying to their programs. What you don't know is how the faculty on the committees are going to respond to your stories... faculty who have read every cliché reason why people want to be pharmacists or get into health care. So the recruiters are doing their job to give you confidence to apply. But they should also have given you specific feedback on how faculty might view a story that includes a disclosure that you want to include and whether there might be other students who could advise you who had gone through similar life experiences.

One of the challenges I would give is to "take away" obvious playing cards when it comes to crafting a personal statement by asking them to make multiple statements and drawing from completely different elements of their personality or personal history. You never want to sound like a one-note song, repeating the same reasons and stories over and over again, even if some of the reasons have deep emotional meaning for you. That's a big challenge during interviews because you want to balance reminding them of what you wrote but showing them you are deeper than just the layer you placed on your application. That's why I would encourage people to tell us more about who they are, their past experiences, their hobbies.

As you point out the diversity policy regarding discrimination: that there are LIMITS of what we can ask you, and opening that door (as initiated by the interviewer) begins to navigate into waters that would be problematic. On the issue of disability, the school needs to show it has done due diligence with resources to accommodate those with disabilities, but some disabilities that affect one's success within the curriculum can be exclusionary if justified by the school. That's why I would be careful in the admissions context of disclosing; once you are accepted, you should find out how the school can address your anticipated needs. But if we feel a candidate is capable of succeeding in the curriculum but has let us know of a disability voluntarily, we can't revoke the invitation to interview without making some effort to accommodate the candidate. Otherwise we could be on the hook for being discriminatory.

You don't need to feel like you need to "make a story"... but this is a story you should easily be able to tell anyone who is your patient, anyone who wants to hire you in their pharmacy, anyone you may have to be accountable to. It's a story I like to point out could be printed and quoted on big billboards or included in a medical humanities book of student essays. Those have happened and I have my couple of copies of such medical student essays on my office bookshelf.

So that said, I think you have a story. If you have shadowed or been a pharmacy tech, you know how working in that environment makes you feel, makes you grow, and makes you motivated to do more in a professional role. Your personal impact on the profession is important to us, not that you (hypothetical example here) play tennis or teach math or do toiletry fundraisers for the homeless. How do those activities inform us about how you will be the pharmacist the profession wants to emulate or promote? That's the endgame of any story you provide to answer "Why do you want to be a pharmacist (and how does your life experience make you the best pharmacist for your customers or patients)?" How did a pharmacist help you with managing your chronic pain or your husband's illness? That would be a good story.