The UOP Accelerated Pre-Pharm Advantage program does not “guarantee” admission into the actual pharmacy college even if you meet the GPA requirements. After your second year of pre-pharm, you are screened through a writing sample, 3 recommendations and an interview. Not all pre-pharm applicants are accepted. Also the tuition without room & board for the two undergraduate years $40,822 per year and the pharmacy years is $65,721 (not including some additional pharmacy incidental fees for technology, etc.) because there are 3 semesters in each pharmacy year. Room and board is estimated at approximately $17,000 per year. (See http://www.pacific.edu/Documents/finance/student-accounts/14-15%20Annual%20Cost%20Sheet.pdf). Also, the UOP Accelerated program does not include a bachelor’s degree which may be important later if you decide to get an MBA or other non-pharmacy graduate degree.
So unless you are offered a huge financial aid package that doesn’t have to be repaid or your parents have the means to easily support you in those programs, you’ll probably want to be pretty sure that pharmacy school is your main goal and you would screen through after your 2nd year in college to get into the pharmacy graduate school.
A bachelor’s degree from UCSD would be much less expensive if you are paying in-state tuition. UCSD has a BS in Pharmacological Chemistry which would be a great undergraduate degree for pharmacy and many other careers. You would still have to apply to a graduate pharmacy school, but with much less debt behind you.
You might also want to check out getting licensed as a pharmacy technician and getting a part time job in a pharmacy rather than just shadowing in a pharmacy. Our DS who is now a PharmD started that way in high school. He was 16 and stayed in his California high school, but took the GED and the PCTB exams (studied on his own with a book from Barnes & Noble) just to meet the licensing qualifications and then easily got part time work that fit around his school and sports schedules. It gave him a good idea about whether or not to choose pharmacy as his major.
(DS graduated in 2013 with a BS and PharmD with a minor in business administration from Northeastern University in Boston. He is currently licensed in CA and MA and working on a medical information team in the pharmaceutical industry. Northeastern is one of 10 universities that has a true guaranteed zero-6 year PharmD program (it ie a year-around program which includes a bachelor’s degree as well as a PharmD for incoming freshmen) —guaranteed acceptance meaning no test, no interview, as long as you maintain a 3.0 GPA and no grade less than a C.)
If you are looking for a guaranteed freshman entry 0-6 accelerated PharmD program, check out the following schools (not sure which of them besides Northeastern also includes a bachelor’s degree) :
Florida A & M University
Massachusetts - Boston
Northeastern University
Ohio Northern University
Rutgers University
St. John’s University
St. Louis College of Pharmacy
University of Findlay
University of Rhode Island
University of the Sciences
Good luck with your decision!