➢ TOPIC: Your Personal Essay should address why you selected pharmacy as a career
and how the Doctor of Pharmacy degree relates to your immediate and long-term
professional goals. Describe how your personal, educational, and professional
background will help you achieve your goals. The personal essay is an important part of
your application for admission and provides you with an opportunity for you to clearly
and effectively express your ideas.
Do NOT personalize your essay for a particular pharmacy degree institution. You can
NOT make any edits to your Personal Essay after you have e-submitted your completed
application to PharmCAS.
You are encouraged to compose your essay in a text-only word processor (e.g.,
Notepad), review your essay for errors, then cut and paste the final version into the text
box above. Click the Save button and then return to the Personal Essay to review the
formatting of your text. You are limited to approximately 1 page (4500 characters,
including spaces). Some formatting characters used in programs like Word (angled
quotes, accents, special characters) will not display properly. Take care to review your
final text and to make the necessary corrections to the format.
Each pharmacy school reserves the right to require additional essay responses as part
of the supplemental application process. Please be aware that your admission essay
may be subject to submission for textual similarity review to iThenticate/Turnitin for
Admissions for the detection of plagiarism duplication and other potential violations of
the applicant code of conduct. All submitted essays and other materials will be included
as source documents in the Ithenticate/Turnitin for Admissions reference database solely
for the purpose of detecting plagiarism of such documents.
Information about myself:
● I was the first generation in my family to attend college and acquire a college degree.
● I grew up in a multiracial family and often was shunned by extended family members
because my mother was a mixed race.
● My first language was vietnamese and I had to attend english enrichment classes in
school known as ESOL to help me speak and write in english correctly; I had to attend
that class in all of my elementary school years.
● I grew up living in poverty and had to live in gang ridden areas.
● I went to underperforming schools where I often got bullied, yet I worked hard to get
good grades and enter college.
● Obtained a bachelors of science degree
● Studied many topics about biology, chemistry, and mathematics during undergrad.
● I currently work as a pharmacy technician at rite aid pharmacy to learn about the
processes of dispensing medicine and working alongside pharmacists to learn more
about medicine, healthcare, patient care/counseling, and etc.
● I’ve always have the love and passion for science and mathematics.
● I love interactions with people and I love to help people.
● I’m very passionate and career driven.
● Hard worker and very discipline
● I love to challenge myself, the love for people, science, and mathematics sums up some
of the reasons why I want to select pharmacy as a career.
● Some of the reasons I choose to pursue a career in Pharmacy and or how getting a
Doctorate in Pharmacy will help me reach my professional goals.
○ I know that obtaining a doctorate in pharmacy will provide me with a variety of
career opportunities.
○ I want to be important in the healthcare community and work with health care
professionals to maximize health outcomes.
○ I want to provide services and management of medication for diseases.
○ Work with physicians
○ Be a part of medication therapy and help patients.
● Here are some reasons on why to pursue a pharmacy degree that I’ve found online.
Please do not plagiarize or copy word for word from these sources. Please use the
information and try to make words that would be my own. Thank you! Feel free to do
your own research and add more information that would help me.
○ Interest in Math and Science
○ Oftentimes, your interests can help dictate your career path. Have you always
excelled in chemistry, biology, or statistics? Are you interested in studying drug
metabolism, veterinary pharmacy, or even conducting pharmaceutical research? If
so, a career in pharmacy may be for you. Pharmacy students have both a passion
and proficiency for these subjects—both are essential to making informed decisions
on proper dosage, utilization, and distribution of medications to people and animals
alike.
○ Passion for Building Relationships with Others
○ Pharmacy students want to pursue a career where they can build relationships
directly with patients. Pharmacists provide patient-centered care. They consider the
relationship between medical conditions, lifestyle, and other variables to help choose
the best medications. Pharmacists also work with colleagues to conduct research,
establish new pharmaceutical practices within specific business entities, and
collaborate with doctors to ensure that patients are receiving the correct medications.
○ Desire for Flexibility in Career Choice
○ The variety of career pathways that exist within pharmacy is another compelling
reason students enroll in pharmacy school. From nuclear pharmacy, which uses
radioactive drugs to treat diseases such as cancer, to veterinary pharmacy, which
hand-makes medication for animals; you can easily select a career that most
interests you. Additionally, it’s important to keep in mind that you don’t have to know
what you want to do right now. A pharmacy degree (PharmD) is prestigious, and
therefore opens the door to countless possibilities and grants you time to explore the
fields that interest you most.
○ Unique Approach to Healthcare
○ While the majority of students enroll in pharmacy school because they want to help
others, some students pick pharmacy because they want to stay far, far away from
typical doctoral activities. Believe it or not, several pharmacy students suggested that
they were drawn into the field because they didn’t want to interact with blood. If this
rings true to you, a career in pharmacy can serve as the best of both worlds, as
pharmacists can assist patients without dealing with blood and guts.
○ An exciting career choice
○ Pharmacy combines science, health care, computer technology, business, math and
counseling. Often, jobs in the sciences involve limited interaction with the public, but
pharmacy offers a rare balance of independence and interaction with patients, which
can be very appealing if you’re a “people person.” If you’re looking for adventure, you
might be surprised to learn that pharmacy can be very exciting; there’s a place for
pharmacists out on the front lines, offering services during natural disasters,
epidemics, and other crises.
○ A trusted profession
○ Pharmacists are consistently ranked as some of the most highly trusted
professionals because of the important care and health-related services they provide.
If friends and/or family members frequently turn to you for advice, pharmacy may be
a great field for you to explore.
○ Room to grow
○ There is a need for pharmacists in a wide variety of work settings: community
pharmacies, hospitals, long-term care facilities, the pharmaceutical industry, mail
order pharmacy centers, managed care organizations, and government agencies
(Department of Defense, Department of Veterans Affairs, Public Health Service).
What’s more, those with advanced pharmacy training can often move easily between
these different areas. Pharmacy can offer many interesting opportunities over the
course of your entire career.