Well, that’s not always true, especially for certain specialized fields of medicine like pharmaceutials. Many medical fields– including surgery, radiology, or even psychiatry– require that you go to general med school before you begin to specialize your skills. But becoming a pharmacist requires its own specialized schooling which is completely separate from a med school program. (Incidentally, optometry school is another medical education that doesn’t start its path with a general med school, either.)

The path to a career as a pharmacist requires a specialized test, the PCAT, and a higher education to earn a fancy degree– in this case a doctorate of pharmacy, which is also known in shorthand as the PharmD. Strangely, the PharmD is the neither an ordinary bachelor’s nor traditional graduate degree. Rather, a PharmD what is known as a first professional degree.

Because earning the PharmD circumvents the whole med school thing by putting students through schooling specifically for pharmacy skills, there are a bunch of different ways to complete the program. The right path for you depends upon how early on you’re ready to commit to pharmacy school and exactly how quickly you’d like to get that PharmD in your hands and start dispensing sweet, sweet medication to a needy populace.

This guide on How to Become a Pharmacist does a pretty good job in outlining the three general paths available to prospective pharmacists:

1. Enter a traditional pharmacy school program after completing a series of prerequisite courses in an accredited four-year college or university. Programs take 4 years of traditional sessions with summer vacations.
2. Enter an accelerated traditional pharmacy program after normal undergraduate studies. The program is accelerated because students finish in 3 years of year-round schooling.
3. Enroll in a “0-6″ pharmacy school program straight out of high school. The name “0-6″ comes from the fact that– within 6 years of gradating high school– a student can get all of the prerequisite education and professional studies finished while enrolled in a single school.
4. Enroll in an “early assurance” program, also right after graduating from high school. The time-frame is the same as “0-6,” but students will technically be admitted to a school as a ordinary student, and are guaranteed to be transferred into the specialized pharmacy school (within the same college or university) after completing the first two years of prerequisites.

Although these options are pretty similar to each other, they still provide a pretty huge amount of flexibility to prospective students– especially if they’ve made up their mind on a career as a pharmacist by the end of high school. If any of the options above seem particularly attractive, a little more research can only help.

Scope out all of the accredited pharmacy schools in the U.S. at one of these sites:

1. ACPE’s Accredited Professional Programs of Colleges and Schools of Pharmacy
2. The American Association of Colleges of Pharmacy’s School Locator
3. Pharmacy College Application Service’s directory of pharmacy schools

And for you young bucks who are ready to get started as soon as you finish high school, the How to Become a Pharmacist guide has already narrowed down your search with a complete list of “0-6″ schools as well as a complete list of “early assurance” programs in the nation.