To become a pharmacist, getting an admission in a reputed pharmacy school and obtaining a PharmD degree is necessary. For this, you have to be prepared for answering the pharmacy school interview questions. Since the interview panel will throw tough questions at you, knowing how to answer them will be helpful to you. The main aim of conducting an interview is to gauge your strengths, values, maturity level, as well as communication skills. The interview panel will assess you based on your academics, work experience, and any contributions that you have added to the society or your family.
In short, pharmacy school interview questions are designed to judge what moral values you carry, the priorities you have in your life, the abilities you possess, and how you react to a particular situation. This means, there will be questions that are totally out of the league or related to the admission. So it's vital that you keep your calm, be attentive, and focused. This is your chance to demonstrate why the pharmacy school must take you as a student.
Here are the 5 questions you must know how to answer them:
This is the common question every interviewee is asked whether for a job, or applying for a business loan, or an admission at any educational institute. While there is no specific pattern or rule for answering this question, you must first know the intention of the interviewer behind asking this question. Basically, they want to see how you react to unexpected questions, your oral communication skill, and know about your past and present in brief.
So, when answering, start with your past and then move on to the present. You can give a brief detail about your family background, the high school you attended, the grades you achieved during your academic years, what you're doing currently, and what you aim to do in the future by taking pharmacy education.
This question is intended to find out about your priorities in life, reason for choosing pharmacy as a career, maturity you have developed for the profession, and any motivation you have.
To answer this question, try to narrate something that prompted you to take pharmacy as a profession. You can say that at a young age, you have seen people close to your family die because of unavailability of medicines that doctors prescribed, or lack of pharmacists for preparing the right medicines has prompted you to become a pharmacist so that you can help people and save them from dying.
Another way of answering this question could be the duties that pharmacists do for the society. You can say that you're influenced by pharmacists because they not only fill prescriptions, but also educate people on how to take medications, take precautionary measures to prevent illness and disease, and participate in community outreach programs where they provide immunization shots to people as well as assist doctors in the treatment process.
This tricky question is to judge your work ethics since these medical supplies can be used for injecting drugs or harming others as a revenge.
The right answer to this question would be: I will first ask a prescription, and if the person doesn't have it, then I will check the database. If the records show that the person is a diabetic and is on an insulin, I will call and request the doctor from whom the person is taking treatment to send a prescription for the same. If there is no record of the person, I will ask the reason of purchase. If the person doesn't disclose any information, or admit to using the supplies for injecting narcotics, I would take another route and try to educate the person. If it is found that the person needs injectable for certain conditions, I would give the supplies without any further question.
Don't give them a parroted answer to this question. The idea behind asking this question is to know how well prepared you are for the pharmacy education. So, instead of saying you know the subjects or have studied them well, talk about your research related to pharmaceuticals. Say that you have been interacting with a pharmacist known to your family for years and have done quite a bit of research on the subject. Seeing the pharmacist closely working on medicine preparation has piqued your interest in this field. Add that you have even conversed with pharmacy students and gained knowledge on what is expected for a pharmacist. You can also emphasize that you're willing to make any sacrifices the pharmacy profession demands.
While it's obvious that they want to hear some good things about their school, don't go overboard in praising them. Say you have researched various pharmacy schools in your state and have finalized theirs because of the quality education they provide to students. Then, talk about their curriculum, good reputation, experienced teachers, and the kind of research project students get to work on. If the location of the pharmacy school is closer to your residence, you can give it as a reason to choose them.
Along with these questions, be prepared for some other questions as well since there is no guarantee what the pharmacy school would ask. If you're lucky to secure an admission at a prestigious pharmacy school and are going steady to obtain a PharmD degree, visit our website for free and real-world pharmacist resume samples