Well, do you mind being in school for 10 years? (I don’t think it’s all that bad, but you might) Fortunately, real classes only make up the first year or two of med school, then you actually do on the job training in addition to seminar style classes. If I’m not mistaken, pharmacy also has at least one year in which your learning is largely on-the-job. so that’s 6-7 yrs of class and 3-4 yrs of experiential learning.
Ultimately med schools care about three things:
1. Will you be a good doctor?
2. Do you have what it takes to learn all this?
3. Do you want to do this?
I think the pharmacy degree answers a lot about the first two but raises questions about the second. The further you go down any professional track, the more you have to explain why you’d leave that track to go to medical school. Fortunately the pharmacy degree is pretty closely linked with becoming an M.D. If you can answer that third question then the pharmacy degree is a great asset and will make you a much stronger candidate.
My guess is that it your decision will come down to the time when you are about to receive that B.S. If you have a 3.9+, great experiences, and a 35+ on the MCATs you might as well just apply that year if getting the pharmacy degree isn’t crucial to you. But if you have a 3.7 and a 29 on the MCATs, the extra two years might make the difference in the schools you get into.
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