#grad interviews

[made-of-honey]

stopped for coffee somewhere in st. louis to recharge on my long drive to my very first graduate school interview. I’m nervous & I sure hope I’m prepared. fingers crossed.

[elle-emily]

First Pharmacy Interview

Last week on November 18th, I went to my first pharmacy interview at the UOP School of Pharmacy. I was so nervous while I was on my way there from San Francisco, frantically trying to remember my prepared answers for basic interview questions, but once the program started, all that nervousness went away and was replaced with confidence (for a bit). It was game time, baby!!!

I arrived at UOP at around 11:30am, a full hour before the actual interview started. Since it was still early, I stayed in the car to review my interview notes some more and eat a little even though I was too nervous to have an appetite. At around 11:50am, I headed to the designated meet-up location and met other interviewees. Everyone was pretty awkward with each other, including me (hah), but I made some small talk with some girls. I eventually got to know this one girl who was also from SF and we hit it off pretty well. By the time 12:30pm came around, there were only about 15 of us total. I was pretty surprised since I thought there would be more people interviewing but I guess it’s because UOP is on a rolling admissions basis and the application deadline isn’t until December 1st.

At promptly 12:30pm, a lady whose name I could not hear nor remember led us to a classroom where we received our interview packets and name tags. She explained to us what we could expect that afternoon and tried to crack some jokes to help us relax. We then met the dean of the pharmacy school and I have to say, he is funny. I really liked his welcome speech and the way he tried to help everyone feel relaxed. This welcome part of the interview day lasted for thirty minutes. At 1pm, we were split into three groups based on the number printed on our name tags. Each group traded off doing the tour/presentation and the interview portions, but everyone did the writing sample at the same time.

I was in the group that had the tour and presentation first. Water and cookies were offered, which was really kind of them. The presentation was just an overview of the pharmacy program which was presented by a P2 student. It provided a pretty good insight of what UOP can offer especially the extracurriculars. I’m interested in joining a fraternity so I talked to a few people about it. The pharmacy school isn’t very big with only I think three buildings in total so it took less than 15 minutes to see everything. The dorm is literally 2 minutes away from the lecture hall which is VERY convenient but I don’t think I would want to live on campus when it’s cheaper to live off ($450-500 for a single).

Finally, it was time for the interview. The format of the interview is traditional 1 on 1 with one 20 minute interview with a professor and another one with a P2. But I found out from a P2 that I was the only one who would be interviewed by two professors. LOOOOOOOL that kind of freaked me out but the students said they are really nice. For the first interview, I was pretty bad or at least, to me now that I think about it. My nerves kicked in again which made my voice so thin and shaky. I also stuttered a little too... UGH but it helped that the professor wasn’t put off by it. He smiled to my answers and seemed interested in what I had to say. The questions asked were VERY basic: why pharmacy? tell me about yourself. what have you done so far to show your interest? etc. There was also a situational question which I already had an example for. THANK GOODNESS. Before my interview ended, the professor said I seem very mature and he thought that I will do well in my future endeavors. At this point, I was like YAS, I received a compliment. The second interview went more or less the same way but I was much more relaxed and confident.

After going thru the tour and interview, the writing sample was the last thing to do. It was only 50 minutes long and the topic was “Do you think the drinking age of 21 is the most appropriate?” It’s a pretty easy, non-ethic related question so I had no trouble brainstorming and writing about it which was unexpected since I am not a great writer. I took about 40 minutes to finish my essay and turned it in. By this time, it was 4:00pm and I was so glad everything was done.