Check your state and area where you hope to work first, before you consider this field.
Our middle daughter started pursuing a career in pharmacy. She did the undergrad to med school route because a majority of pharmD programs are combined within medical schools.
There is no funding, so you will be paying medical school prices. Can you afford $260k to $300K for a professional program of 4-6 years? Most of my daughter’s classmates were on med school loans.
It is a tough program and the return on your investment of time and money may not be what you expect. There are a slew of pharmacists looking for positions. Most of those positions are retail and many are part-time (4-6 hour shifts/ every other day including weekends). Our daughter chose to segue into medical research for new drugs with big Pharma companies.
Our elder daughter’s friend was fortunate that she was able to secure a full-time position at a hospital, with great benefits (10 years ago), but had to move to the desert. It is now a very coveted position when she has openings, and her interview team has piles of resumes to wade through from hopeful applicants. She asked our middle daughter about sending a resume but couldn’t guarantee that she would be selected.
To add to that, there are lots of mail-order pharmacies that only require 1 pharmacist to supervise many pharmacy clerks. That takes away the need to have brick and mortar pharmacists. The expected retirees didn’t retire, as they are staying longer in their positions.
Every university appears to be opening pharmacy programs because it is a financially viable boon to their coffers, but they don’t guarantee to place and match their students.
So before you spend a mountain of money and 6 additional years of schooling, do yourself a favor and ask current pharmacists about the job and any future outlook.
Here is UCSF’s school of pharmacy: