More important GPA: prereq or overall?

Question:  I have a question. For pharmacy schools, do they look more at your pre-req GPA or your overal GPA? I guess it depends from school to school right? Thank you in advance for your help.


Answer: The simple answer is we look at both.  Not only are both important, but I have found that AdComs weight them differently.  


Let's start with your prereq GPA.  To me, this ranks along with your PCAT score as the most important objective data used to determine application success.  If you have a strong prereq GPA, that would mean your grades in the basic math and science courses have been better than average which is a plus.  If your PCAT subset scores reinforce the GPA, even better for you.


In some cases, an applicant has a poor overall GPA but has acceptable prereq grades.  Maybe he/she did poorly in another field of study or struggled early in their undergraduate studies taking basic history or philosophy courses.  However, when they began prerequisite pharmacy school preparation, the applicant excelled.  This would be a case of the overall GPA being a poor predictor of success in pharmacy school.  The have been many occasions where I and others have simply said, "the applicant has a 2.5 overall, but their prereq GPA is 3.6.  Let's focus on the courses that matter and give him/her the benefit of the doubt and grant them an interview".  


I hope that answers your question.  Best of luck.