Hello! I am a prospective pharmacy school student who is applying for admittance to pharmacy programs in 2010. I am somewhat non-traditional in my path in deciding to apply to pharmacy school. I graduated from a 4-year university in 1998 with a degree in Biology and minors in Chemistry and Psychology. My work history includes working as a Patient Care Technician in a hospital, a Customer Service Manager in the financial industry and 7.5 years as a pharmaceutical representative. I've thought of applying to pharmacy school for years, but was always intimidated and scared of the process. You can't fail if you don't try! Last winter I finally decided I needed to put my fears aside and began the process of researching schools and what I needed to do to put myself in the best position possible to get accepted into a program.
One of the best things I have done in the process was to meet with an admissions counselor for the program I am most interested in early last spring. I made an appointment to meet with her in person and was able to establish a great relationship with her at this meeting. I continued to be in touch with her as often as I had questions. She made me realize the importance of getting actual experience in a pharmacy whether it was through volunteering or actually working in a pharmacy. I immediately got a job working part-time as a pharmacy tech.
I will be re-taking the PCAT on October 17th as my scores in June were not as high as I hoped. For me, the PCAT has been the most difficult part of the application process. I have not taken chemistry or biology courses since the late 1990s so relearning so much material from those courses has been daunting.
At this point in the application process I am fine-tuning my personal statement, solidifying my LORs and I will also be meeting with a faculty member who sits on the Adcom for the school I am most interested in attending. This meeting was facilitated by that wonderful admissions counselor who I began a relationship with last spring. I will meet with the faculty member in October. I am very excited about this opportunity.
I have much more I could write about my process. Please let me know if anyone has specific questions about my process or preparation. Good luck to everyone during this very intense but exciting time!
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3 comments:
I look forward to reading more about you and how you are going about this. Thanks.
I am in somewhat similar situation although I graduated in 2004.
In regards to PCAT, I found Dr. Collins PCAT study guide to be extremely helpful and I wish I knew about it before my first PCAT attempt!
Good Luck! I look forward to hearing more about your progress!
Thanks for the tip on the Dr. Collins guide. If this next exam doesn't go well and I don't get into a program this year, I will check into it next time. I used the Kaplan Online Study Course which has been pretty helpful.
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