| My kid is in a prepharm program with an early assurance guarantee, and appears to be doing well enough to keep the guarantee. However, just to be safe, my kid decided to take the PCATs in August to be able to submit a few other applications too (PCATs aren't necessary under this guarantee if grades are above a certain GPA). What a surprise! We started looking at some other possible Schools of Pharmacy's pre-requisites, and discovered that they are all over the place. Some schools require a semester of microbiology and others don't. Some schools require statistics, and others don't. Some schools require a semester of biochemistry. Some schools have pre-requisite classes with names that make it hard to figure out what they are. In short, pharmacy appears to be a program in which having a clear idea of what school and program you're targeting from the beginning is very, very important.
When you add many schools' requirement that certain prepharm classes be taken AT THAT SCHOOL, which eliminates AP or transfer credits, it's not surprising that more and more pharmacy applications are from students who have achieved their BS.
Needless to say, my kid is very happy with the early assurance guarantee and is now probably going to gratefully stay in the same school...and forget about possiblity transferring.
I thought this info might help someone else who is picking a prepharm program. |