A high school student planning to attend pharmacy school should consider courses that will help prepare him for pre-pharmacy studies in college. Springfield Junior College, partnered with Benedictine University in Illinois, recommends that high school students study trigonometry and take at least one year each of physics, chemistry and biology, preferably in anatomy and physiology.
Pharmacy schools are highly competitive, and before enrolling, a student needs at least two years of pre-professional coursework and will likely have a better chance of securing enrollment if he has completed a baccalaureate degree. Creighton University in Nebraska requires a pharmacy candidate to apply after having completed 63 semester hours of coursework, while the University of Southern California requires a bachelor's degree with prerequisite coursework in biology, physics and chemistry along with mathematics, psychology or sociology and economics. The University of Colorado School of Pharmacy requires 65 to 90 hours of undergraduate credit that includes courses similar to USC's requirements. Students should know the requirements of the pharmacy school to which they plan to apply.
There are community colleges offering a two-year associate's degrees in pre-pharmacy studies. For example, Springfield Junior College, partnered with Benedictine University in Illinois, offers a pre-pharmacy associate degree program with a prescribed series of courses. Black Hawk College's pre-pharmacy transfer program also is designed to fulfill the first two years of a four-year degree program including courses required by the College of Pharmacy at the University of Illinois-Chicago.
In pharmacy school, a student learns the biology of the human body and how it interacts with the chemicals introduced into it through medications which is why it is so important for future pharmacists to understand human anatomy, physiology and biochemistry as well as mathematics and physics. The student learns about drugs created from plants and animals, determines how various medications react on different people and how chemical compounds can be transformed into life-saving medications or deadly toxins. Frequently, a student participates in a clinical study of a new drug to help him learn to work comfortably with researchers and doctors. Of course, pharmacy schools also provide instruction in the fundamentals of running a business.
Every state requires a pharmacy student to complete an internship before he can take his license examination. The internship provides practical and valuable on-the-job experience. Generally, each state requires an internship of about 1,500 hours that can begin accumulating after the first year of pharmacy school. However, a few states require that internships not begin until after graduation from pharmacy school. The internship facility and intern must register with the state board of pharmacy.
All pharmacists in the United States must be licensed through the North American Pharmacist Licensure Examination (NAPLEX). The 185-question test takes more than four hours and determines if the pharmacy school graduate has an adequate knowledge to handle real-world scenarios and situations. Some of the questions rely on the student's ability to extrapolate information from background materials supplied about a patient while other questions are self-contained, with the answer derived from the question itself. The NAPLEX exams are given daily at Pearson VUE test centers throughout the country.