Honestly, who/what gave you the idea that Pharmacy has got more things to remember?

You'll have to ask someone who has completed BOTH courses.

Ask yourself these questions:

1. Which part of bio do you like, human body or plants? Human body then yes, you'll enjoy the first two years of pharmacy.

2. Which part of chemistry do you like? Organic, inorganic or physical? You'll only learn organic chemistry and for 1.5 years so you better like it or learn to like it.

3. Are you interested in drugs? How drugs work, what happens when they enter the body, how to calculate drug dose, how to calculate the amount of drug going into your body, and out into your urine.

4. Do you like to interact with patients? Ask them how are they, get scolded if they're in a bad mood, get a 'thank you' if they find you helpful. Site down with them and talk them through their medicines.

5. Do you have an interest in managine a patient's medication regimen? You'll learn to identify drugs which are safe or dangerous. You'll learn to deal with doctors who gave the wrong drugs.

6. Do you like MAKING drugs? Identify the different ingredients in a bottle of syrup or a small tablet. Ensuring that they don't interact with each other and kill your patient.

7. Do you like given case studies of patients with 10 drugs and 3-4 diseases? identify if there's a problem, reason out why these drugs were given, come up with a management plan for this patient and think of advise to give your patient.


This is just a part of pharmacy. If your answer to MOST of these questions is a 'YES', then go ahead.


(personally my answer to 1 & 2 is NO but I'm in it for the drugs).

4 diseases like heart failure, high blood pressure, diabetes and high cholesterol....


anyway, that's just a rough idea on pharmacy.

You mean, if you don't take a pharmacology postgrad?

Sure, why not. Not everyone has a postgrad qualification around. Those who do end up in R&D or lecturing.

That would be a good option.

A Master's in Clinical Pharmacy would get you specialised in a hospital setting. I don't know the details (exploring this option myself too).. but I intend to finish my 3 years of gov service first before pursuing a postgrad.

Yeah, A Lvels is your best bet if you want to go to the UK. Don't think about SAM at all. Unless you get a very high score, it will be very difficult to enter UK unis with SAM.

Yeah no problem with SAM. Other Australian pre-u courses you can do are HSC (Penang) and AUSMAT (Sunway Uni College).

MUFY is a foundation under Monash. It's more expensive .. but just check with the unis you intend to apply to if they have a minimum entry requirement for MUFY. If they don't state in their entry handbook, it would mean that the uni probably doesn't accept MUFY. Foundation programmes are usually more catered to a particular uni (in this case, MUFY-Monash) so other unis MAY not accept, especially for critical courses like Pharmacy, Medicine & Dentistry.




This post has been edited by baoz: Nov 9 2010, 09:46 AM

Every country has their own immigration rules.

Unless you're very certain that you don't want to work in Malaysia at all and immediately want to work abroad, then it would be better if you'd just get your degree from that country.

I'm pretty sure your qualification as a pharmacist will grant you a job in most countries after working in Malaysia for a few years first. Albeit, you'll have to register with THEIR Pharmacy Board and fulfill a few requirements such as interview or written tests.

Just ask around a few locals - friends and relatives. You'll hear that some people decided to go abroad to work for a few years - better job prospects or follow husband/wife.. etc. No problem with them working as pharmacists there.

Hmm. For me I never considered dentistry at all for several reasons.

1. Completely not my area of interest.
2. Too expensive to do the course private. Impossible to get into local uni.
3. Pharmacy is my interest. Drug design, drug delivery, patient medicines management.

Monash Sunway.

ptptn gives monash pharm students around 70k if i'm not wrong. slightly under half the total fees.

The prospectus for Taylor's UC Pharmacy programme is up on their website.

I don't quite get why the MPharm is also an honours degree though.



PS: I'll be outstation 'til mid January so any updates you want included on the 1st page will only be updated in January. Sorry for the inconvenience caused.

This post has been edited by baoz: Dec 3 2010, 09:49 AM

In order to do Pharmacy degree in the USA, you will first need a general degree.

Your parents budget?

Give us a rough figure and we can guide you better.

I understand your worry about not getting into IPTA; there are other IPTS around like AIMST, CUCMS, Masterskill. Plus, there's PTPTN loan which usually covers approximately half the total tuition fees of your course.

According to their website, BPharm Rm 100,000. Medicine Rm 250,000.

not too sure about the accreditation part.

I did double math for SAM. No advantages in terms of health sciences at all, but it does open up your choices should you decide not to go into pharmacy (especially actuarial science - you need double math). Of course, the Bio package opens up just as much options too.

Bio is easy. Double math is hard. But if you do double math well, it can be your upper hand.

However if you're not confident with double math, and you're not considering actuarial science/engineering my advice would be to just go for Bio.

Shouldn't be a problem. You history will not matter. If a uni accepts you into their Pharmacy course and you graduate, the Pharmacy Board will approve of you (as long as you fulfill the pre-reg).

I've had friends who dropped out of other courses (eg: medicine, science and other university's pharmacy courses) to start over Pharmacy at older ages. No problem.

Nah, don't worry. Be it 2nd degree or fresh out of matriculation, they'll take you in regardless.

Friends... 23, 25, 26, 26. The first two are doing Pharmacy as their second degree, the third dropped out of medicine, the fourth was in a similar situation as you.

Oh you were talking about IPTA..

That I'm not too sure. Sorry, I was referring to IPTS accepting students who dropped out.

Biology would be good to keep. SAM's Chemistry notes were useless for me. If possible do keep SAM maths too as we will be doing statistics again.


@wan_109 : sorry, don't know about the situation in NZ but I'm guessing the prospects would be better than in Malaysia as a community or hospital pharmacist. Can't tell for the other sectors like industry and management.

Don't worry about the pre-u stuff. It's not a necessity. If there are repeat lecture material just look it up the library or internet.

Maths are simple maths... no engineering stuff.