Question about pharmacy experience for PA schools.

[JEW UNIT]

 I have a question about pharmacy experience for PA schools.  Recently I had to withdraw from my pharmacy (PharmD) program because of medical reasons and had to return home to get better.  I am currently debating against going back to pharmacy as a career and would like to go into PA.  I really was interested in PA since my volunteer days when I was younger (I am 24 right now and have been volunteering since 14).  I was wondering, how does pharmacy experience look on a resume? The schools I'm applying to this next year is AT Still University and NAU (maybe Midwestern Glendale) all in Arizona. 

 

My GPA:

 

Overall - 3.39

 

Science - 3.28 (with all upper division science/math classes...Including Organic Chem. and Calculus). 

 

Pharmacy school: It is on a Pass/Fail system. There are no grades; Passing grades are 90% or above (anything lower than an 90% is an instant fail). I was passing all my classes until my health condition got worse.  

 

Experiences:

 

2000 hours of pharmacy tech experience. 

 

1000 hours of pharmacy intern experience.

 

500 hours of volunteering experience.  

 

~800 hours of extracuricular activities during undergrad

 

~50 hours of extracurricular activities during pharmacy school

 

No PA shadow/volunteer experience (yet...will be getting it soon)

 

Have not taken the GRE yet. 

 

Known languages: English, Russian, and Spanish

 

i know my GPA is on the low side.  I will be returning to school this Fall to finish up my BS in Biology (with a focus in PA).  I have 30 more credits to finish.  

 

WIll my pharmacy experience count for anything? What are my chances of getting an interview?

 

Thank you for reading this. Hope to hear from you soon =).

[Febrifuge]

If you want the purely subjective opinion of a PA who's been out of school for 5 years+, and doesn't work for a program but did take part in the admissions process a bit in my second year of school...

 

You would be asked why you left pharmacy in favor of PA (or why you're planning to). You would be asked how come you studied Pharmacy if you didn't intend to stick with it; the second part of that question is why did you change your mind about Pharmacy so quickly. They will be looking to make sure you're serious about PA as a career, and how you know you're serious.

 

As far as experience, ehh. It is patient-contact, in a sense, but it's not medicine. I've certainly heard enough stories about somebody's aunt or cousin who's a pharmacist and apparently tried to diagnose something, and for all I know there could even be a little bit of anti-Pharmacy bias in your state or area. Then again, for all I know pharmacists might be looked on really favorably. You'll find out when you check with PA programs, I suppose.

 

Bottom line, rack up a ton of shadowing hours with PAs and docs, and that will become the more important aspect, with the pharm tech hours being a "nice to have" kind of thing. And get ready to have a really good answer to the question about why the change.

[JEW UNIT]

Thanx for the input :)