Getting a good score on the Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) is necessary to become a pharmacist unless you are in a 6 year pharmacy program direct from high school. The exam is scored between 200 – 600 and a percentile rank is given. Usually a score above 430 is high enough for any pharmacy school and other factors in your application will determine if you are admitted.
The exam contains 240 multiple choice questions and 2 essays.
Further breakdown by category:
- Writing section (2 essays) – 30 minutes each
- Verbal section (48 questions, 60% analogies, 40% sentence completion) – 30 minutes
- Biology section (48 questions, 50% general biology, 20% microbiology, 30% anatomy and physiology) – 30 minutes
- Chemistry section (48 questions, 50% general chemistry, 30% organic chemistry, 20% bio chemistry) – 30 minutes
- Reading Comprehension section (48 questions with 6 reading passages) – 50 minutes
- Quantitative section (48 questions, 15% basic math, 20% algebra, 20% probability and statistics, 22% pre-calculus, 23% calculus) – 40 minutes