Friday, April 20, 2012

Questions about getting into pharmacy school

Question: I didn't do to well in high school, and i decided to take some college courses at the same time. They were only electives and my college allows u to retake the class and replace it with the higher grade.Do pharmacy schools look at repeat attempts as a bad thing? Also my first semester of college i only took 2 classes per term but now i started taking 5 almost every semester. Will my first year of college be frowned upon? My science and math GPA is a 3.6 and my overall is a 3.7 and i am at a community college with on of the top science programs in the state, do pharmacy schools care if you finished your pre reqs at a community college and are you favored more if you went to a university? I am finsished with 2/3 of my chemistry and biology and done with math, would now be a good time to apply for pharmacy school? I would appreciate your advice on all of this, please and thank you.

Answer: There are a lot of questions here and I will do my best to answer them piece by piece:

-Do pharmacy schools look at repeat attempts as a bad thing? It depends. 
 If I see an applicant has taken Organic Chemsitry 4 times because he/she failed twice and then withdrew before passing the course, it is safe to say that this would have a negative impact on the applicant. We look at an entire transcript, so even though your school might replace a low grad with a higher one, your transcript will show them all and everything will be factored into our decision.

 -Will my first year of college be frowned upon?
The courseload you take is important and many of us feel that an applicant is more apt to be successful if he/she is accustomed to completing a rigorous schedule as you will face in pharmacy school. It sounds like your more recent semesters would provide enough evidence that you are capable.

-do pharmacy schools care if you finished your pre reqs at a community college and are you favored more if you went to a university? I am finsished with 2/3 of my chemistry and biology and done with math, would now be a good time to apply for pharmacy school?
Yes and No. This is a tricky question. What we are concerned about is the applicant's ability to successfully complete our program. If your grades and test scores are close to what the average admissions statistics are for a given school, you should be competitive and applying now would make sense.

 Good luck and please keep us posted.

2 comments:

Paazie said...

I have a question...after writing and sending the letter of intent. Would should you do? Does the university respond back at all to the letter? If not, then what do you recommend?

Admissions said...

Sending an email is just one step. Follow up with a phone call a few days later.