I'm at THE crossroads right now (STPM 2005, results coming out soon), and need some help deciding. Yeah, the two choices seem very far apart, I know. But I hope those of you who have taken either one of those courses can help me answer these questions, to decide which I want to do..

1. What exactly do you do for the most part of the course? Pharmacy I heard there is a lot of Organic Chemistry.. lotsa lab work too. Software Engineering.. a lot of maths and programming languages?

2. What type of jobs can you get after you graduate? And how easy is it to find a job?

3. How satisfying the job is to you -- pay, hours, degree of interest, etc?

Ty ahead for the help.

My advice to you is to take pharmacy... coz the trend nowadays its kinda hard for software engineering to get good jobs... trust me on this i got bundle of friends who is facing this prob... i think we need more pharmacist....

1. software engineering need you to always update urself with newer trend of programming skills... u need to learn more than what u learn during ur studies...

2. Type of job u can get is : programmer, system analyst and so on... n it's not that easy, lots of competition..

3. My friend is an senior programmer workin from 9.30am to 7pm his pay is about rm2300/month n no extra allowance what so ever...

imho,

these are 2 distinctly different jobs.

software engineeering is more IT by nature. ya, it is about computers and programming and analysis. career prospects and wprk nature depends on the company that you are working for. benefits too.

pharmacy? most likely you need to open a kedai to ahve your own business. i see lesser opportunity for establishment of professionalism here.

good luck.

Pharmacist is the way to go.
Software Engineering, you know how hard is it to be a good software engineer ? When you rush your project you'll work 24/7. Can you stand working 24 hours for a few days straight ?

But pharmacist is harder to study i think. Almost medical stuff.

Good luck to you

What's your interest by the way???
Write it down on a piece of paper....
Draw a matrix, software eng. & pharma vs pros & cons...
Fill up the pros and cons....calculate number of pros...
The one(soft eng or pharma) with the most pros wins....

If your are still blur, ask your frens & teachers for advise.
When you go buy panadols at pharmacy, ask and talk to the them.
Observe examples in front of your eyes.
At the end map it back to your interest.

After you have determined what you want...plz make sure the path towards your goal is clear.

E.g. If you want be pharmacist, you have obtain a very good result to enter local university. Honestly, I have never known someone who achieved lower than 3As(STPM), studying pharmacy course in USM.
Another option in to study in college(e.g Sedaya) or oversea universities.

We wishes you best of luck.

Hehe, ty so much, guys.

Yeah, they are two distinctly different courses. But frankly speaking, programming is much more interesting to me than organic chemistry and labwork... although I also do realize that pharmacists are able to be their own boss (aka open own kedai). But how many self-businesses fail? There is also a risk there..

Wow, work in IT industry sounds hard. How about the opportunities for lecturing?

well, are u guys very sure about this? they are a lot of local pharmacist.
and now many people taking biotech due to large amount of students taking pharmacist.

i think you should think , where do you wanna work in future

Biotech will have a better prospect. If I were you, I'll go for Biotech.

Ohana Means Family

Well, everything u study need to update n upgrade into a better knowledgable person.
biotech, pharmacist, IT professionalist, bla bla bla all need to update yaself what ! so now is depend on ya interest lor...

Cheers!

i agree. if you take up pharmacy, it's much better to work in singapore as eli lilly ( a world class pharmaceutical company ) is based there. in malaysia, the chances are not varied.... if you wanna work in malaysia, i would say biotech is better.

Hmmm.. has anyone actually SEEN jobs for biotech grads in Malaysia? Advertised in newspaper or anything? I actually considering biotech also, but it's such a popular course... and there don't appear to be any biotech vacancies popping up!

Work ah.. Malaysia, I guess. Singapore very stressful place to work, I heard. >_> Malaysia also needs less pharmacies cuz we still dont give sole dispensing rights to pharmacies..

This post has been edited by misao: Mar 2 2006, 02:02 PM

Have you heard of biopolis?

Yeah, but doesn't change the fact that life in S'pore is stressful. >_> Plus Singaporean youths themselves are taking advantage of the opportunity and many of THEM are taking biotech/biomedical science..

coz its still new course and strongly supported by the govemnent now...

ever heard of singaporiens are kia su?

And you think it is not stressful here?

most countries are still short of pharmacists. hence there'll definately be a job availability. but if u were to graduate here, you'll have to do the compulsory government service, and during that time you're paid very very little. later of course you could also choose to work in community pharmacies such as guardian or even open you own shop. there're also pharmacists which work as researchers.

it depends on ur own interest....
pharmacy in more on medical side....
good bio, chem are needed to study this course....
whereas SE, u need an interest on programming...

for a good job opportunity,
i recommend u to take pharmacy....
a great amount of pharmacists are needed in the future
not just in m'sia... and also other countries...

Omg they're both totally different thing.
How to compareleh..