If you can somehow get into Medicine then do it. Even if you have to go abroad to do it somewhere in Europe. There is someone on here who talks about 65k a yr etc etc. Maybe, but not the norm. You'll be starting on 25-28k in community and after 15 yrs by the time you're 40 you may have got up to just over 40k as a manager. It all depends on location, company, responsibilities, etc.
I can tell you from experience that working 0830 to 1730, 5 days a week for 47 weeks of the year, is like being on a hamster wheel. You are always running but never seem to get anywhere. It turns into groundhog day, same staff moaning, same customers moaning, same senior management moaning (about targets). It becomes an incredibly boring, repetitive job, we have so much knowledge and could do so much, but the model of community is making money from dispensing prescriptions, which the Pharmacist is responsible for, so this is why MURs have failed, you can't be in the consulting room talking to people while there are lines of scripts and customers waiting for you to check your script. Even if you have an ACT ( checking technician) you are legally responsible for their work! (Madness)
Now we are trying something new: CPCS, like a combination of emergency supply and minor ailments, but once again you are in the consulting room and the scripts are piling up waiting to be checked and ONCE AGAIN this side of things seems to have been ignored AGAIN. The basic problem is, there is one pharmacist and 2 jobs, and that's if you have a dispenser, if you don't or they are counter staff cover too you will struggle, you are constantly stressed, the phone rings constantly because someone had the bright idea, that pharmacies can be phoned by patients to order their meds, not phone the surgery. I don't know what the prescription clerks are doing! Again, MADNESS, it's not our job to order patient's meds. Why involve a 3rd party. Patient should contact surgery, electronically, or walk in with repeat slip, exemptions for housebound to use the phone. It's not difficult but GP surgeries think they can push a bit of work onto us. Something we don't get paid for and when the patient doesn't get what they ordered,it's OUR fault, no it's not, we simply placed the order, don't shoot the messenger, if they didn't send an item it's not our job to find out why. It's your medicine, you want it, they haven't sent it, get off your ass and go find out why. Not our job, we did our unpaid bit by taking your call, printing out your meds request, taking it to the surgery to process, and then THEY haven't sent what you asked for. NOT our problem. Your meds, Your problem. Anyway I am going off on a tangent.
Basically if you can get into Medicine then do it, here or abroad. There is a career path and progression and salary progression. There is NOT in community pharmacy. A lot of companies have flat management structures now, there used to be progression in the big chains, now maybe less so. From my experience, the 30/40k is more likely than the 65/80k or whatever nonsense that person is posting. You may earn that as a Head pharmacist in a hospital at the top of a band. Or Superintendent of a chain. Your bog standard bloke or woman in a chemist shop will generally be on below 50k. And tbh lucky if they are on over 40k.
Pay has fallen rapidly in real terms. The locum rate was frozen in 2008 due to all the new graduates.
Drs get high wages and locum rates because there is demand and a shortage so their pay rate rises. In pharmacy, demand is the same or falling, and supply has increased so pay rate falls. Look at economics supply and demand curves. Maybe these new PCN networks will take up more pharmacists, and there are less people going to study pharmacy because they read these threads and hopefully make the right decision, that although it may be an interesting degree, the job at the end is far too stressful and badly paid for the work and responsibility you have. You can earn as much being the deputy manager up the road of the Lidl or Aldi if you enjoy retail. Personally not having had a pay rise for 11 and a half years since 2008 and some companies are back to paying locum rates that they were paying in 2004 due to the saturation, and more pharmacists than there are jobs in urban areas. In the NE and SW, and rural Wales and Scotland you may well earn those silly figures that have been quoted. But they are the exception, not the norm.
Basically, if money and status and progression is what you want then pharmacy is NOT for you.
(yes there are some 80k jobs, but these are rare, unlike Medicine where you will find most GPs working full-time as partners and not salaried, will all be on over 80k) If you look up your own GP surgery on the nhs.uk website they tell you the average salary of a GP there!
Good luck, but research carefully, remember, you will work until you are 70, that's 45 yrs if you qualify at age 25 so take some time now to decide. Do online quizzes to find out your personality type and what work you would be suited to. Example, there is no point becoming cabin crew because you love travel, but hate the general public and get scared of turbulence! If you think you have made a mistake, pull your UCAS form and apply next year, but in your year off, make sure you can explain to a Uni a productive thing you did, for example you travelled across America with a friend for 3 months, so that shows you looking after yourself, planning your travel and tickets and buses or trains and hotels, managing money, meeting and getting along with people from a different culture, etc etc. Then when you come back you work in a charity shop 3 afternoons a week, and you volunteer in a hospice 3 mornings a week. The important thing to do is show WHAT the experiences taught you and WHY you did them. How did they develop you as a person?, how did they make you more suitable for the career you want to progress in? Example, if you want to be a GP, you will see and will need to deal with death. Old people die, people with cancer die, people have heart attacks and die. There is no point becoming a GP if you are a weepy waily type who will cry everytime. Hence the hospice experience. People you meet there one month, may not be there the following month.
So hopefully you get the idea. I'm sure there are plenty of people of a certain age reading these threads, like pre-reg tutors, pharmacists who take summer students like myself, lecturers, etc, of Generation X or Boomers who wish they had done more research and made better plans and always have a planB! Always.
Remember, life is what happens when you're busy doing other things. It's much easier to change courses, move Unis, or countries! when you're in your 20s, than try and start all over again when you're 35 and have a husband, a mortgage, 2 kids and a dog! It's not impossible!, But it's harder. So to the OP, these are just my thoughts. Hopefully something in it somewhere will trigger something in you to go and look at a particular area or career path you are interested in. Where do you want to be when you're 30, then 40.
A good simple example is what former Tory MP, (now Lord) Michael Heseltine wrote on the back of a fag packet in the student bar many decades ago. 'Millionaire by age 30, MP by age 40, In the cabinet by age 50, PM by age 60.' He nearly did it, the last one he had to settle for deputy PM under John Major. Try something similar then start filling in the gaps between those decades of HOW you get to that goal.