When NIC student Aidan Mischook applied for the competitive UBC Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) program this year, he expected to wait another year.

In early May though, he got his letter telling him he had been accepted for this fall.

“My grades were good. My interview skills were decent, but it’s a competitive program, and it was my first time trying to get in,” he said. “I didn’t expect to get in this year.”

To prepare, Mischook has been enrolled in NIC’s Island Pre-Health (IPH) Science Advanced Diploma program, which was launched in 2023 as a pathway for students to consider the many options in the health sector.

He credits the help from NIC faculty like Aisling Brady, Sarai Racey and Rishi Somvanshi in giving him an edge for his application process to UBC. In particular, Brady and Racey worked with him on the PharmD program interview process to be ready for the rigorous questions he might face.

“Sarai and Aisling both did practice interviews with me and helped explain what the interviews were like,” he said. “I think I wouldn’t have been accepted this year otherwise. Getting that practice in, learning what type of questions they ask really helped.”

The process can be difficult, according to Brady, so the NIC instructors set up practice interviews for Mischook on MS Teams.

“It’s a very challenging interview,” she said. “It was really encouraging that he was successful on his first try.”

The IPH program sets up students for advanced health training in fields like medicine, dentistry and pharmacology. They work on core skills in health sciences and biology during the first two years before shifting their focus to advanced studies in pathobiology, epidemiology and pharmacology in year three.

One of the other features is the broader base of courses in the program. These include the emphasis on communications, empathy and social justice, which are designed to have students consider their role in the wider community, especially in rural areas, and what it means to be a healthcare worker.

“The program is working … we know that the program is meant to work,” Brady said. “We also say if you want to get into pharmacy, if you want to get into med school, this is the evidence that you can handle a very rigorous workload.”

There are few pharmacy programs across Canada, meaning acceptance is far from guaranteed. In this province, the UBC program is the only one. One reason Mischook wanted to take the NIC program to prepare was to stay close to home in the Comox Valley.

In secondary school, he considered concentrating on mathematics, but when weighing career options, along with his interest in chemistry and biology, he decided on pharmacy halfway through his Grade 11 year.

“Health care was kind of the first thing that popped into my mind,” he said. “You help people, you care for people.”

Once he has graduated from UBC, he is looking forward to moving back to Vancouver Island, ideally the Comox Valley or Campbell River area.

“I want to stay on the Island,” he said.

There is more information online about the Island Pre-Health Science program webpage.