Hello reader! This is my first ever blog I am writing. I apologize in advanced if I don’t organize things a certain way. I’ll probably YouTube how to write a blog after this. Anyways, let’s get right into it.
I got accepted into pharmacy school. Specifically Roseman university. It was the only pharmacy school I actually applied to. So you may be wondering what I did to actually get accepted there. What I’m about to say might surprise you.
I originally was planning on going to medical school and I knew getting there is super competitive and you have to make yourself stand out from the rest. It’s basically the same thing for pharmacy school, except the requirements aren’t as high as medical school.
You might be thinking that I was that crazy smart guy who had a 4.0 gpa all throughout college and discovered the cure for cancer to be able to get into pharmacy school. I’m quite the opposite actually.
My very first class I took in university was calculus 1 and I failed it (great way to begin school). I ended up with only a 3.15 GPA and never took the PCAT.
The actual thing that helped me get an interview and get accepted to pharmacy school was my story. Some people might get discouraged because they might not have a compelling story to tell. Don’t worry! I don’t either. So because of that, I had to make it up and make it sound as authentic and realistic as possible.
Remember, a big thing that can influence a lot of people is emotional appeal. When I was applying to Roseman, in the end of the application. I came to three short response questions. Two of them, I just gave a generic response, nothing special, but the big one that was the jackpot for me asked, “Describe a time in your life where you helped someone and made a significant impact on them.” It was something like that.
Saying something like, “I helped this old lady cross the street and that helped her significantly because I prevented her from dying,” will not make you stand out at all. It’s not really that original and it doesn’t have any emotional appeal to anyone reading it.
The thing I wrote was a little extreme, but highly effective. I sent it to some of my friends to read to get their feedback and when they thought it was an actual real event that happened, I knew that it was a winner. So just to sum the whole thing up, I wrote about how I prevented someone from committing suicide when he had a gun to his head. It has a very strong emotional appeal and is quite memorable. If anyone is interested, I have the short response saved in my google drive and I can send it to anyone who is interested in reading it.
Also, that story was so good, it was the very first question they asked me about when I walked into my interview. I talked about it as though it was genuine and real and also giving strong emotional appeal that they ate it all up.
A few weeks after the interview, I get an email from the school saying that they accepted me. It was a very exciting and fulfilling time of my life. However, I ultimately ended up not going to pharmacy school because it didn’t see it worth my time for all the debt I would be in afterwards, but that’s another story for another day.
To sum everything up that helped me get accepted was having a compelling story to tell. A very good skill to master is the art of story telling. Even if it’s a made up story, being able to tell it in a way that is believable will help you out greatly in life. Not just for applying to graduate school.
