How should I express my appreciation to those who helped me get into pharmacy school?

Question: 
I am so happy to be starting pharmacy school this fall and feel like I should give the people who wrote letters of recommendation some sign of my appreciation because they obviously helped me out a lot. Is this appropriate or what would you recommend?

Answer:
I do not think you should feel obligated to give a gift to someone who wrote a letter of recommendation for you. It is a very nice gesture, certainly, but it is not an expectation of the reviewer.

I have had students bring me a bag of M&Ms because I have a candy jar in my office. One gave me a CD because I used to make fun of the music he listened to. Cookies or a card are also very thoughful. If you have a personal relationship with the reviewer (ie, a pharmacist you work with, mentor, or college advisor) something very small is acceptable. If it is a professor or someone you voluntered with, an email or phone call to let them know you were accepted into pharmacy school to thank them for the time they spent is more than enough.

I can't get out of work to attend my pharmacy school interview. Why should I do?

Question: 
I just got an interview invite for March 22nd, however I may not be able to attend that day due to work obligations. Do you think schools would be willing to let me change the interview date? I would prefer to do it after when my schedule at work loosens up more, but would a school be willing to accommodate my request?


Answer:
I can almost guarantee that a school will work with you. However, please consider the following from the perspective of the school:
1) what is more important to you - work or your pharmacy school interview?
2) is it possible for you to rearrange your work schedule?

If you choose to reschedule your interview, I would not tell them the reason is because you cannot get out of work. Understand that most interviewees are missing school and/or work to attend out of town interviews and choosing not to do this could be perceived negatively by some. It's just something to consider. Just state that you had an unexpected conflict and you need to reschedule if that is the direction you choose.

Good luck.

Interviewing at a pharmacy school where I was waitlisted last year

Question: I got invite for an interview with this one school (I had an interview with them last year) except this time it's about a month earlier. I was on their waitlist last year. This is my 2nd time interview at this school.

just want to know what should I expect on the 2nd time?

also, during my interview should I mention about last time I had an interview here? or what should I do to get accepted the 2nd time?

so nervous because this might be my ONLY interview for this year.

Answer:  Great question. First of all, I commend you for reapplying to the same school even though you were not accepted last year. I think applicants sometimes give up their dreams too quickly instead of persevering.

Next, I should preface my advice to you with some general guidance: I would advise all applicants who are rejected or waitlisted to contact the school and ask how to improve your application. We get this phone call occasionally, but not nearly enough in my opinion. In many cases, we really do have a solution for how the applicant can improve. It might be as simple as improving your PCAT chem score, gaining some pharmacy experience, rewriting your personal statement to better indicate why you want to become a pharmacist, or improving one's interviewing skills.

To answer your question, I think you should expect the interview to be pretty similar to what you experienced last year. In that regard, you should be relaxed relative to your peers who might not know what to expect.

My advice to you would be (and this would impress me tremendously): Let the interviewer know that you had the opportunity to interview last year and were waitlisted, but you had such a desire to attend this particular school that you worked diligently to improve your application. At this point, add in anything you did which might impress an interviewer: Did you get a pharmacy job or shadow an RP? Did you take additional courses or retake the PCAT if that was an issue? Basically, tell them why you are a better candidate now than you were at this time last year.

I might add, hopefully without sounding too parental, that if an applicant has done nothing to improve their application from one year to the next, that they should not expect a different result than was achieved the first time.

Good luck. I hope that you will let us know how the interview goes.

I got accepted to my top choice for pharmacy school! Can I cancel a deposit check mailed to another school?

Question:  
I was admitted to a school and paid their sizable deposit with a personal check last week. Today I found out that I was admitted to my school of choice. How wrong would it be to cancel the check for the first school? Or if I notified them of the situation and asked them not to cash the check, would they agree? I assume they have the check now but it hasn't cleared and I'd hate to lose all that money. Help please!

Answer: 
I wish I could answer this one for you, but this really is between you and the school. I suppose you could argue that a school hasn't officially accepted the deposit until the check is actually cashed, but that might be splitting hairs. I would discourage you from simply canceling the check without any mention of it to the school.

If I had to make a recommendation, it would be to call the school and explain that you mailed them a check with the intention of attending their school of pharmacy.  Inform them, however, that in the past day or two (or however long ago), you were admitted to another school and that you would like to respectfully decline the first school's offer of admission.  During that conversation, request that the deposit check not be cashed.  Inform them that you will be canceling the check during that conversation and follow up with a polite email stating the same so that you have documentation of it.

Good luck.

Does physical appearance matter during an interview?

Question: 
I am not trying to troll or anything but simply wanted to see how people react to this question... Does physical attractiveness gain you brownie points at an interview?

If the answer is yes maybe I should start pumping iron . Maybe I should worry about getting an interview first....


Answer: 
Interesting question.  I can honestly say that appearance (in terms of attractiveness) is something I have never considered, however, I also realize that as human beings we aren't perfect. I imagine there could be someone, somewhere who tacitly or subconsciously may give an advantage to attractive applicants.

Let me be very clear - I have never heard a committee member discuss an applicant's "attractiveness" during a committee meeting. But, I think we would be naive to assume it has never entered an interviewer's mind.

More importantly, while on this topic, if someone were to arrive at an interview dressed sloppily or unprofessionally, appearance would undoubtedly be a topic of conversation for the committee. That has happened many times.

I hope this helps.

Low GPA to start, but improving. How much will that help?

Question:  How do adcoms analyze GPA? Mine is low (3.03) because I 've so many credits that as many A's as i've been getting in my last 5 classes my GPA goes up by peanuts. It's so frustrating. I actually used a GPA calculator, and it came out that i'd have to take about 60 more credits (with 4.0) just to get from 3.03 to 3.5. So what do they care about most? 

Overall , or prereq/science , is having an upward trend good enough to compete with all the 3.6+ applicants, even though I have no chance to get there those numbers, for another 2-3 years? I'm also working very hard on finding a pharmacy where I could work/volunteer. Do pharmacies care about the tech certificate? All my friends that work in retail such as walgreens, CVS, etc none have it. I also know people that have gotten certified to increase their chances of getting hired, but have had no luck eigther. Should I put in even more time for the tech cert?


Answer:  GPA is very important, particularly science and math GPA. If you struggled early in your academic career, but did exceptionally well more recently, that should definitely work in your favor. I will say, however, that I think it helps for an applicant to "point out" the fact that their more recent grades are superior because in the crush to review files, sometimes we look at the GPA without as great attention to detail as we should.

The community pharmacists that I know do not usually hire based on certification. Most that I am aware of think it is more important to find someone that is willing to work hard and that has good people skills because they are going to be working closely with you. If you are having trouble finding a job, I suppose getting a tech certificate wouldn't hurt, but it would not be where I would allocate my time and resources.

Good luck.

Will past pharmacy experience help me now?

Question:  I am a second year undergraduate student and am a Bio. major. I've been working in a pharmacy since my junior year of high school and recently became certified. Nowadays, I am not working because of school. Will this affect how the admissions committee will overlook my application? Is it looked better upon if I work consecutively work until I graduate? Also, I was wondering what the average PCAT/GPA requirements are for getting accepted into pharmacy school.


Answer:  Good question. My honest answer would be that I would indicate to them that you have 2-3 years of pharmacy experience and leave it at that. You don't need to explain that you aren't working right now or even point it out. Simply state that you have experience and be prepared to explain how it helped you decide to be a pharmacist, and you'll be fine.

The average for every school is different. I'm just making these number up off of the top of my head, but I would say that you should have a minimum of 50 on the PCAT and a 3.0 GPA. Some people are accepted with numbers slightly lower. Obviously, you're chances increase as your scores improve. To have a stronger chance, a PCAT > 75 and a GPA > 3.5 would be ideal.

Do AdComs verify letters of recommendation with the writer?

Question:  Do Adcoms usually call to verify on a recommendation? If they do, at what point do they do it: when extending the interview or after the interview and just before deciding on the applicant? I turned in My pharmacist LOR in one of the schools after the interview, on the other one on the day of the interview. Do you think it even made a difference or they pretty much probably had the decision made already and my letter came in too late? Or maybe it didn't make a difference before of the short time that I started volunteering at the pharmacy ( just over a month). I know, many question! Ok to sum it up, both schools are meeting around these days and they have not called my pharmacist. Is that probably because they are not accepting me? I'm super anxious about the fact that they have not called him, what does that mean?


Answer: It has been my experience that AdCom will occasionally call the writers of LORs. Personally, I will do this on only a couple of times each year and it is usually with regard to something very specific mentioned in the letter itself. For example, I had an applicant who did poorly on his verbal and writing subset scores and the reviewer "Recommended with reservations" because of some communication issues. This concerned me (as it would most committee members) and I simply wanted to ask about a couple of situations mentioned in the letter.

In those cases when I have directly contacted a writer of an LOR, I did so prior to us offering an interview. As mentioned, in those cases, there was usually something in the application or the letter itself that seemed out of the ordinary or needed clarification. In these situations, I contacted the writer because I wanted to get a better understanding of what was being reported so I could give him/her an honest evaluation

On another occasion, we received two letters that were clearly written by the applicant and submitted in the name of a reviewer. Calling the reviewer confirmed this - he said that he gave permission for the applicant to do this, but it was a major ethical issue for the committee and we did not extend an interview to the applicant.

As a general rule, I would not expect your reviewers to be contacted directly by the school or a committee member. If your reviewers haven't heard from anyone, as an applicant that would probably bother me less than if they had contacted them to ask questions. I wouldn't worry if I were you.

Good luck.

How much do pharmacy school AdComs value volunteer work?

Question:  I'm interested in volunteering an a hospital, and for a number of reasons, one of which I've had great experiences volunteering back in high school and I know I'd enjoy doing it again. Ideally, I'd like to volunteer with the pharmacy staff, but the hospitals I'm interested in have more formalized programs and don't offer positions close to pharmacy and they don't offer shadowing positions. My strategy is to network and hopefully create the pharmacy volunteering opportunity or at least make a connection for shadowing.

But in the worst case that this doesn't materialize, I'm still interested in volunteering. My question is, how do admissions committees value this type of experience? I know that an experience like this will be rewarding nonetheless, and I think I can leverage those experience in putting together my application. And the fact that these are highly-acclaimed hospitals doesn't hurt either =) But I also need to make sure that I'm fully optimizing my free time. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Note - I work full time and am still applying for prehealth-studies programs


Answer:  I can only speak for myself on this, although I've sat in on enough meetings to have an opinion beyond my own. It has been my experience that any type of volunteering can be beneficial. It shows character and a willingness to give of oneself to help others - something every pharmacy school wants of it's students and graduates.

Having said that, volunteering at the animal shelter or something unrelated to health care won't gain you very much when a decision is being made. If you can show volunteer work at a hospital somewhere other than the pharmacy, I think it would help if you had a letter of recommendation from someone who supervised you. Otherwise, it's just something on the application that probably won't contribute much. Ideally, some pharmacy experience would be preferred if it is possible.

Ultimately, whether you have documented volunteerism or not will have very little say in the final analysis of your application. Good to have some? Sure. Better off using that time studying for the PCAT? Perhaps.

Hope that helps. Good luck.

Why is the Dean of the pharmacy school reviewing my application?

Question: I have a question on the general steps taken by an adcom to decide on someone. I called my top choice school today, where i interviewed in early october. Most of the people from the "batch" got their acceptance letters last week. I called to ask whether they had mailed out my decision letter and was told that my file is still in the dean's office. I thought that the dean only signs off the decisions already made by the committee, so why would someone's file be held up with the dean?


Answer:  Hmmmm, very interesting question. Why would the dean be reviewing your file? At our institution (and all I am aware of), the dean ultimately has the final say. However, it is rare for the dean to be involved at all unless he/she has a desire to see a particular applicant admitted. That might be because the applicant belongs to an under-represented minority or because the dean knows the applicant or someone called him directly on the applicant's behalf. Another thought might be that the dean needs to review the applications of those that the school will offer scholarships too. Too difficult to tell, I am sorry to say.

I wouldn't call back to ask at this point, but I would encourage you to ask what it means to have the application in the dean's office if it ever comes up again. If they can tell you, they will.

Good luck.