If you are going to go the retail route, it does not really matter which school you choose. However, if you work clinical and health agency or regulatory affairs or industry, .... it does matter (sort of). What matters most if the type of rotations you do in your final year of pharmacy school. For example, my school is MCPHS University Boston in the heart of Boston. Students from our school do rotations at hospitals such as Mass General, Beth Israel Deaconness, Dana-Farber Cancer, Joslins Diabetes, Brigham and Women's.... etc. These hospitals are the BIG names, which means you can compete with other people who go to schools who also have top hospitals and rotations. Other places that I know have a strong clinical reputation would be like Philadelphia, PA. Their hospitals are some of the strongest in the nation and thus they have really good rotations. San Francisco-Bay Area-San Jose, CA and Los Angeles metro, CA is another example.
My advice to you is: If you want to do clinical pharmacy or industry or whatever... go to the school that is in the big city unless the rural school has connections into strong hospitals/strong rotations. Reach out to current students and ask about their rotation sites.
... Certain schools also have a reputation of being a retail mill while others have the reputation of being more clinical. I come from a retail mill school, but I did whatever I could to get clinical experience and research and stuff, which is why I ended up in the clinical route.
