Hello All!
Let’s talk about pharmacy technician experience and pharmacy school.
Bad news: It does look good on your application.
Good news: It is not necessary.
I know plenty of my peers who did not come to pharmacy school with any tech experience. Some only had volunteering experience at a pharmacy. I think many (if not most) of those that did not come into pharmacy school with experience got an internship to gain that experience. So you should know that it can wait.
Where I am from, it is incredibly hard to get a tech job. I tried applying at all the pharmacies around the area I lived for the first two and a half years of my undergrad. No bites. So here I was, almost the end of my junior year, really stressed about my lack of experience and pharmacy school applications (if only this blog post was around back then). What I did was I asked to volunteer at an independent pharmacy in my neighborhood. I needed a minimum of 50 hours of pharmacy experience for the school I was looking at. The owner/pharmacist was very understanding of my situation, and since she knew I was interested in pharmacy as a career, she allowed me to volunteer!
I would highly suggest doing this if you are freaking out as much as I did. The funny thing is that I didn’t even have to stress about my lack of experience because there are so many more qualities and criteria that The Ohio State University looks at for applicants. So you don’t really have to do this, or feel like you have to.
The best part about this was that the owner/pharmacist loved me and the help that I brought to her pharmacy, that she offered me a job after I was done with my volunteer hours.
Some other ways of gaining experience that the admissions committee looks at are: “participation in a pharmacy related organization, work as a pharmacy technician, volunteer work in a health care setting or a charitable pharmacy, along with other educational or extracurricular opportunities.” This was found on the FAQ page of The Ohio State University College of Pharmacy website. You should check it out if you have not already!
Thanks for reading! I hope this relieved some stress and gave you some ideas on gaining experience that you may have had!
