New Pharm School in Southern California :(

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wucool33 said:
wtf? lol what attitude? Now I'm getting a little attitude because I can't believe you are this dense. No sht I won't meet some other people's standards. That's why I didn't go to MIT or didn't get accepted by every job I applied for and I'm completely fine with that. And you need to accept the fact that having standards is a good thing. That's why not everyone can be the president or a CEO or whatever.

I'm saying having all Ds and Fs on your transcript should NOT be the standard for getting admitted into a pharmacy school. I mean I seriously can't believe we are even having this argument. Your GPA might not be in the gutter, but your mind obviously is...
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You're definitely the one who asked if I was clueless right? I was simply clarifying that your assumption was wrong. I'm in no way clueless or dense or whatever else you want to throw this way. Standards are important for many reasons...I was only stating that they are SUBJECTIVE. Yours are different than mine or the CEO of Target or anyone else's. I was only offering you the idea that perhaps people shouldn't cling to these so-called standards you seem to be so fond of just because they make you feel special.
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littleowl said:
You're definitely the one who asked if I was clueless right? I was simply clarifying that your assumption was wrong. I'm in no way clueless or dense or whatever else you want to throw this way. Standards are important for many reasons...I was only stating that they are SUBJECTIVE. Yours are different than mine or the CEO of Target or anyone else's. I was only offering you the idea that perhaps people shouldn't cling to these so-called standards you seem to be so fond of just because they make you feel special.
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Don't start changing your tone now... when you make statements like this " you will come across another individual just like yourself and you will most certainly not meet their "standards." " It shows you don't believe in having standards.

Sue me if I feel Ds and Fs should not be the standards for attending pharmacy school. If you believe otherwise, then I really don't know what to say...
 
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As a pre-pharmacy student, you want high admissions standards because when you graduate, there will be a job for you.
 
I don't believe I ever said that standards are unimportant. This is the last time I will plainly state that standards are SUBJECTIVE. My point was that without a second thought you passed judgement on the D/F student in question. Did you stop and wonder if maybe that same student has since vastly improved in the academic arena? Did you actually read the entire post? If not, I hope I've at least made you curious enough to look.
 
littleowl said:
I don't believe I ever said that standards are unimportant. This is the last time I will plainly state that standards are SUBJECTIVE. My point was that without a second thought you passed judgement on the D/F student in question. Did you stop and wonder if maybe that same student has since vastly improved in the academic arena? Did you actually read the entire post? If not, I hope I've at least made you curious enough to look.
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I don't want to point out the obvious but did YOU actually read his post before you start to post in this thread?

The Recoverer said:
I found out about programs that ONLY looked at your pre req GPA, This really helped me. Remember ealier, it wasn't my pre req classes that were lowering my GPA but rather my upper level classes that were not even pre reqs. My pre req GPA to my surprise ended up to be a 2.77, my math and science was a 2.65. I most of my pre reqs early on during my freshmen and freshmen year summer sessions when I was still motivated. I had mostly As and Bs in ochem, gen che, physics, the whole shebang. But my 4 credit upper level classes I took my senior year completely killed my cum GPA. Of course many schools have a GPA min on 2.5 so my 2.33 was not gonna cut it.

What did I do? Well for one, I definitely did not lose hope, I went to the AACP website, did a ton of searching. I made a list of schools that DID NOT have a minimum CUM GPA req and schools that only looked at pre req. I still have the list:
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Did he do well in his pre req classes (maybe at a junior college?) and did poorly in his upper division classes (maybe at a 4 year university?).

I hate to use him as an example because it is not about him. It is about low admissions standards. Just take a look in the pre-pharm forum.
 
I did read the entire post and thank you for asking politely instead of blasting me. I agree that the argument is about standards in general but to single someone out and use them as an example is just poor manners. I know standards for admission are not what they once were but some of my own pharmacist colleagues (both past and present) are a product of said lower standards. I have trouble believing that what some consider a sub-par GPA is enough to deem them unfit for the profession.
 
BMBiology said:
has anyone ever heard about american university of health sciences? Apparently it is located in Signal Hill, CA...near Long Beach.

I have not heard about them until I got an email from careerbuilder.com telling me to apply for a faculty position:

http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSee....0.0&job_did=J8E5JJ68K2CNH4P10H4&IPath=JRKV0A

They were also looking for a dean on careerbuilder!
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I believe they already have a Dean (founding dean was the old associate dean at Touro NY) unless she got sick and decided to retire.
 
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BMBiology said:
has anyone ever heard about american university of health sciences? Apparently it is located in Signal Hill, CA...near Long Beach.

I have not heard about them until I got an email from careerbuilder.com telling me to apply for a faculty position:

http://www.careerbuilder.com/JobSee....0.0&job_did=J8E5JJ68K2CNH4P10H4&IPath=JRKV0A

They were also looking for a dean on careerbuilder!
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:mad: This has got to stop. I agree with most posts on this thread about having standards...otherwise pharmacy school will become like ITT/Devry. I'll have to tell my future kids that I was proud to make it into pharmacy school...then they'll laugh :laugh::laugh::laugh:
 
If grades are so irrelevant, why even have undergrad requirements? The guy with the D average has neither learned anything nor proven that he has either intelligence or conscientiousness. He has
not accomplished anything in several years of undergrad except wasting money and time. What's the point of making him do that? You could just base admissions entirely on the interview, or hand out admissions by random lottery, or give it to the applicant with the highest Xbox Live gamerscore.

Any of those methods would seriously make more sense than bothering to ask for a transcript and then admitting D students.
 
^^^ Yes and then pre-pharms get all butthurt when you point out the obvious...
 
but...but...I was really involved in my frat! And in 100 clubs! And I have passion for pharmacy!
 
Simply pushing for a BS requirement + 1000 hours pharmacy experience would help a good bit, as making it an 8 year degree would turn off some people. Also, at least the people coming in would have some true knowledge of what a pharmacist does besides get paid $100k.
 
littleowl said:
I did read the entire post and thank you for asking politely instead of blasting me. I agree that the argument is about standards in general but to single someone out and use them as an example is just poor manners. I know standards for admission are not what they once were but some of my own pharmacist colleagues (both past and present) are a product of said lower standards. I have trouble believing that what some consider a sub-par GPA is enough to deem them unfit for the profession.
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Dude, you seem to be confusing sub-par and absolutely horrific. No one will argue that someone who got 1 or 2 c's over their college career is unfit for pharm school. That's sub-par. This guy FAILED classes. Do you know how effing hard it is to fail a class in college? Hell, they let you drop and get a W which looks way better than an D/F. This person openly didn't give a damn and didn't even bother to submit the paperwork to drop the class. And it happened several times. That absolutely zero amount of effort is why someone with D/Fs isn't appropriate for grad school.
 
This is one foreseeable scenario:
Physician: "Hey, Peter, how do you dose vancomycin in this renally failing patient."
Peter Griffin, PharmD: "Sorry doc, I used to be an D's-student. That means I have only mastered less than 70% of what I was taught in school. You just asked a question that pertains to the >30% of knowledge that I failed to learn in pharm school. So, no can help. Sorry gotta go, time for me to clock out for lunch. Heeheeheehee"

Yeah, that totally looks awesome on our profession and benefits patient care.
 
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HEy
eagles22 said:
Dude, you seem to be confusing sub-par and absolutely horrific. No one will argue that someone who got 1 or 2 c's over their college career is unfit for pharm school. That's sub-par. This guy FAILED classes. Do you know how effing hard it is to fail a class in college? Hell, they let you drop and get a W which looks way better than an D/F. This person openly didn't give a damn and didn't even bother to submit the paperwork to drop the class. And it happened several times. That absolutely zero amount of effort is why someone with D/Fs isn't appropriate for grad school.
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I failed an entire semester in undergrad :D

Now I'm a PharmD student with a 3.5 and a PhD student with a 4.0.

oh yeah, and I work ;)

The broad generalizations in this thread are leading no where.

I agree admission standards should be competitive but grades aren't necessarily the best gauge of one's performance in pharm school. People can memorize and regurgitate but critical thinking has to be developed. I'd take a C student who is personable with good critical thinking skills over a straight A neurotic student that can't put two and two together.

The thing that bothers me the most is that some people, no matter how high their scores on an exam, can't seem to see the big picture. I've been in case studies or have done group work with 4.0 students who fail to actually treat the patient. Memorizing a bunch of guidelines or info from the textbook isn't always the best approach. At least that's been my experience as a student and an intern....

EDIT: look, I may not be the best student-- there are definitely people in my class that are total rockstars. Stuff happens. People mature.

IMO, getting A's all the time doesn't make a good pharmacist...it takes much more than that.

Just sayin'....
 
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Dayum...you guys are harsh about a single metric as if it defines a persons intelligence. People do have extenuating circumstances. :/

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2
 
rxlea said:
HEy

I failed an entire semester in undergrad :D

Now I'm a PharmD student with a 3.5 and a PhD student with a 4.0.

oh yeah, and I work ;)

The broad generalizations in this thread are leading no where.

I agree admission standards should be competitive but grades aren't necessarily the best gauge of one's performance in pharm school. People can memorize and regurgitate but critical thinking has to be developed. I'd take a C student who is personable with good critical thinking skills over a straight A neurotic student that can't put two and two together.

The thing that bothers me the most is that some people, no matter how high their scores on an exam, can't seem to see the big picture. I've been in case studies or have done group work with 4.0 students who fail to actually treat the patient. Memorizing a bunch of guidelines or info from the textbook isn't always the best approach. At least that's been my experience as a student and an intern....

EDIT: look, I may not be the best student-- there are definitely people in my class that are total rockstars. Stuff happens. People mature.

IMO, getting A's all the time doesn't make a good pharmacist...it takes much more than that.

Just sayin'....
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n=1

You may be the exception to the rule and have succeeded. However, you did fail an entire semester which indicates at one point you were a very bad student (note I didn't say you were stupid, I just said bad student). A few people recover. In most cases failing extensively is a marker of a poor student and a pattern. You can drop and get a W so I just can't understand how people accept F's when they are so easy to avoid.

We can all point out the 4.0 student who can't talk without stuttering or the 2.0 student who every patient loves, but at the end of the day these are exceptions to the rules rather than the pattern. You can't argue that there is no strong correlation between success as a clinician and success as a student.

I'll take the A student who can actually diagnose and treat me over a C student (someone who only knows 70% of the material) who is fun to talk to but doesn't know enough to be useful. It doesn't matter if your patients like you if you can't treat them due to lack of knowledge.
 
BrightLight said:
This is one foreseeable scenario:
Physician: "Hey, Peter, how do you dose vancomycin in this renally failing patient."
Peter Griffin, PharmD: "Sorry doc, I used to be an D's-student. That means I have only mastered less than 70% of what I was taught in school. You just asked a question that pertains to the >30% of knowledge that I failed to learn in pharm school. So, no can help. Sorry gotta go, time for me to clock out for lunch. Heeheeheehee"

Yeah, that totally looks awesome on our profession and benefits patient care.
Click to expand...

Nah, it would go more like this.

Physician: "Hey, Peter, how do you dose vancomycin in this renally failing patient."
Peter Griffin, PharmD: "Let me put you on hold for a minute while I go on LexiComp/Micromedex to look this up."

Honestly these days, LexiComp and Micromedex have made everything super easy mode. Learning how to look stuff up is probably more important nowadays than learning the stuff in the first place.
 
eagles22 said:
n=1

You may be the exception to the rule and have succeeded. However, you did fail an entire semester which indicates at one point you were a very bad student (note I didn't say you were stupid, I just said bad student). A few people recover. In most cases failing extensively is a marker of a poor student and a pattern. You can drop and get a W so I just can't understand how people accept F's when they are so easy to avoid.

We can all point out the 4.0 student who can't talk without stuttering or the 2.0 student who every patient loves, but at the end of the day these are exceptions to the rules rather than the pattern. You can't argue that there is no strong correlation between success as a clinician and success as a student.

I'll take the A student who can actually diagnose and treat me over a C student (someone who only knows 70% of the material) who is fun to talk to but doesn't know enough to be useful. It doesn't matter if your patients like you if you can't treat them due to lack of knowledge.
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This isn't about stuttering or patients liking C students. There are enough A students who lack clinical knowledge that some places actually steer clear of the 4.0 student without experience. Just because you memorized for a test doesn't mean you KNOW it. Similarly, just because you get a C in the class doesn't mean you only learned 70% of the material. Some people learn/retain from mistakes. Also, the amount of information is difficult to absorb in such a short period of time.

IMO (and many of my pharmacist friends agree on this), rotations is where it all comes together. Memorizing a cascade in immunology doesn't translate into knowing how to treat a patient with RA. Either you can problem solve/critically analyze information or you can't. People can develop that skill. Some cannot.

you can make a correlation with lots of stuff like how influenza immunizations aren't as effective in geminis :rolleyes: :smuggrin:

IMO, they should make the NAPLEX more difficult.

The PCAT is supposed to be an equalizer but again, it's hard to say there is any hard indicator of performance once in pharmacy school. I don't remember a damn thing about JAK STAT cascades or what the structure of doxorubicin looks like. I DO know how to figure **** out though. Therapeutics has been easy as hell to me. When you treat the whole patient, stuff makes sense. Little bits and pieces of med chem or pharmacology, while interesting factoids, don't teach you how to make sound recommendations.

I agree that outright failing in pharm school (and not caring about that) probably doesn't translate into success (see evidence Sparda). I think it's rotations that matter the most, though. And probably the therapeutics, infectious disease, acute care courses. Med chem? Meh....

People need to keep their grades up of course to be competitive for residency and there are plenty of students with the whole package. But to just outright say that C students would not be successful clinicians and A students are somehow better is not a fair assertion. Maybe I'm reading you wrong but that's how it comes off....
 
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rxlea said:
This isn't about stuttering or patients liking C students. There are enough A students who lack clinical knowledge that some places actually steer clear of the 4.0 student without experience. Just because you memorized for a test doesn't mean you KNOW it. Similarly, just because you get a C in the class doesn't mean you only learned 70% of the material. Some people learn/retain from mistakes. Also, the amount of information is difficult to absorb in such a short period of time.

IMO (and many of my pharmacist friends agree on this), rotations is where it all comes together. Memorizing a cascade in immunology doesn't translate into knowing how to treat a patient with RA. Either you can problem solve/critically analyze information or you can't. People can develop that skill. Some cannot.

you can make a correlation with lots of stuff like how influenza immunizations aren't as effective in geminis :rolleyes: :smuggrin:

IMO, they should make the NAPLEX more difficult.

The PCAT is supposed to be an equalizer but again, it's hard to say there is any hard indicator of performance once in pharmacy school. I don't remember a damn thing about JAK STAT cascades or what the structure of doxorubicin looks like. I DO know how to figure **** out though. Therapeutics has been easy as hell to me. When you treat the whole patient, stuff makes sense. Little bits and pieces of med chem or pharmacology, while interesting factoids, don't teach you how to make sound recommendations.

I agree that outright failing in pharm school (and not caring about that) probably doesn't translate into success (see evidence Sparda). I think it's rotations that matter the most, though. And probably the therapeutics, infectious disease, acute care courses. Med chem? Meh....

People need to keep their grades up of course to be competitive for residency and there are plenty of students with the whole package. But to just outright say that C students would not be successful clinicians and A students are somehow better is not a fair assertion. Maybe I'm reading you wrong but that's how it comes off....
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what is this? I thought the discussion was about how admission standards have dropped, not about how some D student MIGHT become a better pharmacist. Why are people still having this argument? Would anyone argue that a D student shouldn't be accepted into harvard law? You can argue all you want that a D student from an unknown for profit school might end up being a better lawyer than some from IVY league, but that is not the point (and highly unlikely)... do you guys seriously don't see the bigger picture here or do you guys just like to argue
 
Going back to the topic.

Ever heard of California Health Sciences University (CHSU)? This one is in Central California.

David Hawkins, the same guy who was the founding dean of California Northstate College of Pharmacy (CNCP) is now the founding dean of CHSU. I believe before he founded CNCP, he was an associated dean at the then new, for-profit South University.

http://chsu.org/aboutus/
http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/news/education/4197-local-pharmacy-college-assembling-team

When UCSD started a pharmacy school in 2002, I thought that was a great idea. A well-known university with a medical school. They only accepted 20 students and it was almost impossible to get accepted. All of these new schools are nothing like UCSD. They are often driven by profit and by investors. Their sole purpose is to graduate as many pharmacists as possible and to make a quick profit and then move on.

**Update: wow, 10 years later and UCSD only accepts 60 students per class!

http://pharmacy.ucsd.edu/prospective/admissions-faq.shtml

Q: How many applicants do you accept each year?

A: Each year, we accept 60 students from a pool that has ranged as high as 1500 applicants. Competition can be affected by the size and composition of the applicant pool for a particular year.

How many students is CNCP accepting per year? 105 students

Q: How many applications do you receive, interviews do you grant, and applicants do you accept in an average year?

A: We typically receive more than 1700 applications a year, grant approximately 450 interviews, and offer acceptances to seat a class of 105.

http://www.californiacollegeofpharm...t&view=article&id=174:faq&catid=35:admissions

So, a well-established school with a medical school (UCSD) is graduating 60 pharmacists per year while a stand-alone for-profit school (CNCP) is graduating 105 pharmacists per year. I wonder what is going to stop CNCP from graduating 300 pharmacists per year? Their first class just graduated last year!
 
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When I was a pharmacy student, I remember seeing billboards trying to recruit nurses away from this major hospital. There was a major shortage of nurses. Then for-profit nursing schools start to pop up everywhere and now according to CNN,

CNN said:
"It's a problem well documented by the nursing industry. About 43% of newly licensed RNs still do not have jobs within 18 months after graduation, according to a survey conducted by the American Society of Registered Nurses"
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http://money.cnn.com/2013/01/14/news/economy/nursing-jobs-new-grads/index.html?iid=HP_MPM

At least with nursing, it is an 2 or 4 year degree and many of them don't come out owing 6 figure student loan debt.
 
These nurses can't find a job and guess what they are doing? Going back to school to become nurse practitioner (NP) and Doctor of Nursing Practice (DNP). They can prescribe medications and now they are competing with physicians.

BTW, nurses are also allow to do MTM. You can argue that pharmacists are more fit to do MTM but what if they are willing to do it for less pay?

Nothing against them. They got to do what they have to do.
 
BMBiology said:
Going back to the topic.

Ever heard of California Health Sciences University (CHSU)? This one is in Central California.

David Hawkins, the same guy who was the founding dean of California Northstate College of Pharmacy (CNCP) is now the founding dean of CHSU. I believe before he founded CNCP, he was an associated dean at the then new, for-profit South University.

http://chsu.org/aboutus/
http://www.thebusinessjournal.com/news/education/4197-local-pharmacy-college-assembling-team

When UCSD started a pharmacy school in 2002, I thought that was a great idea. A well-known university with a medical school. They only accepted 20 students and it was almost impossible to get accepted. All of these new schools are nothing like UCSD. They are often driven by profit and by investors. Their sole purpose is to graduate as many pharmacists as possible and to make a quick profit and then move on.
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I agree. I just want to say I wouldn't consider ALL private institutions as subpar though. U$C (I kid :) ), UOP, and Creighton to name a few are well established programs that are not state schools. Not arguing, just pointing that out for any pre-pharms that may read this. It's the new stand-alone pharmacy schools with maybe a nursing school that seems sketchy to me. Just my opinion
 
rxlea said:
This isn't about stuttering or patients liking C students. There are enough A students who lack clinical knowledge that some places actually steer clear of the 4.0 student without experience. Just because you memorized for a test doesn't mean you KNOW it. Similarly, just because you get a C in the class doesn't mean you only learned 70% of the material. Some people learn/retain from mistakes. Also, the amount of information is difficult to absorb in such a short period of time.

IMO (and many of my pharmacist friends agree on this), rotations is where it all comes together. Memorizing a cascade in immunology doesn't translate into knowing how to treat a patient with RA. Either you can problem solve/critically analyze information or you can't. People can develop that skill. Some cannot.

you can make a correlation with lots of stuff like how influenza immunizations aren't as effective in geminis :rolleyes: :smuggrin:

IMO, they should make the NAPLEX more difficult.

The PCAT is supposed to be an equalizer but again, it's hard to say there is any hard indicator of performance once in pharmacy school. I don't remember a damn thing about JAK STAT cascades or what the structure of doxorubicin looks like. I DO know how to figure **** out though. Therapeutics has been easy as hell to me. When you treat the whole patient, stuff makes sense. Little bits and pieces of med chem or pharmacology, while interesting factoids, don't teach you how to make sound recommendations.

I agree that outright failing in pharm school (and not caring about that) probably doesn't translate into success (see evidence Sparda). I think it's rotations that matter the most, though. And probably the therapeutics, infectious disease, acute care courses. Med chem? Meh....

People need to keep their grades up of course to be competitive for residency and there are plenty of students with the whole package. But to just outright say that C students would not be successful clinicians and A students are somehow better is not a fair assertion. Maybe I'm reading you wrong but that's how it comes off....
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A C means exactly that you only mastered 70% of the material. You got 70% of the questions right. You knew 70% of the answers. And then you end up remembering even less of it after the class ends. Tell me you know any basic science better now than you did right after taking the course.

I just think you're tainted by your situation (which is very unique) with regards to grades as you are clearly an exception. I couldn't find anything about the PCAT, but it seems that the MCAT (and undergrad GPA) is quite a good predictor of med school success (this is not apples to oranges). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16186610.

Again, find me someone who says I would prefer the C student to the A student. No one wants the student who is just satisfactory. They want the best. Grades are good predictor of success in treating people since you need knowledge (which is measured by grades) to treat patients. On average, the better performing student will make the better practitioner, and I don't see how you can continue to argue that is a wrong assertion.
 
Sparda29 said:
Agreed, I went in there with minimal studying and got like a 130 or something when my GPA was barely passing.
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NAPLEX is a ****ing joke. You don't even need to go to a pharmacy school to pass it. All you need is to memorize RxPrep Coursebook inside and out. Although you may not pass the exam the first time, you have to be Peter Griffin-******ed to fail it more than twice.
 
BrightLight said:
NAPLEX is a ****ing joke. You don't even need to go to a pharmacy school to pass it. All you need is to memorize RxPrep Coursebook inside and out. Although you may not pass the exam the first time, you have to be Peter Griffin-******ed to fail it more than twice.
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What do you call someone who passed the NAPLEX after failing 2...3...4 times?

A registered pharmacist.

You can make the exam as hard as you want, but people invested too much to walk away and you eventually get to steady-state in terms of the number being produced each year as a function of the number of graduates.
 
rxlea said:
Doesn't matter. Some places won't even look at grads from new schools. Sad but true.
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SAD? That's smart. If a UCSF grad and a grad from some new school applied I would pick UCSF without looking at either applications.

Why on earth would anyone pick a new grad from a crappy school? They had what? 25 on PCAT and a 1.5 GPA? and fail the Naplex 10 times? :laugh:
 
confettiflyer said:
Actually, I don't care if the surgeon failed anatomy, I'm going to look at his mortality and infection rate.
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And who do you think will have the highest mortality and infection rate? the idiot that made the Ds and Fs. :laugh:
 
wucool33 said:
lol oh comon you guys attack SCH and Sparda all the time :smuggrin::smuggrin::smuggrin:
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SHC is always right. People just don't like to hear the truth cuz it hurts. :smuggrin:
 
BMBiology said:
So, a well-established school with a medical school (UCSD) is graduating 60 pharmacists per year while a stand-alone for-profit school (CNCP) is graduating 105 pharmacists per year. I wonder what is going to stop CNCP from graduating 300 pharmacists per year? Their first class just graduated last year!
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Do remember that there are some "well-established" schools that have class sizes of 300 or more...heck, there is one that now has a class size approaching 700...:eek:

With few exceptions, nearly all schools are contributing to the increasing number of graduates, through program expansion, satellite schools, or new program creation. I'm no fan of CNU, but it isn't right to pin all that ails the profession at their feet alone.
 
confettiflyer said:
What do you call someone who passed the NAPLEX after failing 2...3...4 times?

A registered pharmacist.

You can make the exam as hard as you want, but people invested too much to walk away and you eventually get to steady-state in terms of the number being produced each year as a function of the number of graduates.
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In California, one can only fail either CPJE or NAPLEX up to four times before he has to go back to a pharmacy school and take 16 units of additional education before he can go back to the exam room.

I've heard from many older pharmacists that CA used to have such a shortage of pharmacists compared to other states because CPJE used to be much more difficult than how it is now and had to be taken in writing (instead of multiple choices). Based on that, a licensure exam that's difficult enough does deter some incompetent pharmacist from getting licensed, at least in the states with a tough exam.

I don't know about other states, but I do not understand why CA BOP does not post on its website the number of times that its registered pharmacists have failed CPJE and NAPLEX, as it does with our addresses of record. After all, don't the public have the right to know how much the persons who handle their meds have to rely on post-graduate exam preparations before they are "competent" enough to be licensed? In fact, I think pharmacists' exam scores should also become public information as well.
 
BrightLight said:
I don't know about other states, but I do not understand why CA BOP does not post on its website the number of times that its registered pharmacists have failed CPJE and NAPLEX, as it does with our addresses of record. After all, don't the public have the right to know how much the persons who handle their meds have to rely on post-graduate exam preparations before they are "competent" enough to be licensed? In fact, I think pharmacists' exam scores should also become public information as well.
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Right to know issues aside, I suspect that Joe Sixpack does not care.
 
297point1 said:
Right to know issues aside, I suspect that Joe Sixpack does not care.
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rxlea said:
:smuggrin:
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During my entry/processing of rxs, it seems like half my patients feel the need to make small talk while I'm trying to get their obligatory, "how much" answered. About every few months, people ask about my schooling to do what I do. Their response to my 4+4 (well 3, but still 36 months), "damn, you should have just went and become a doctor. I thought you all only went to a trade school or something" :rolleyes: So not only does Joe Sixpack not care, he often has no clue.
 
I think the general feel of this thread is:

"I'm too lazy to think about metrics and correlation, so I'm going to pick a convenient number and use that to make my broad generalizations."

If GPA and NAPLEX/juris test scores predicted success as a practitioner, then damn, why didn't anyone tell me? I just wasted my hours critically evaluating CV's/LOI/LOR's and interviewing people for these dang residency spots.

You guys must know everything. Do share how you came to that conclusion, cuz I sure as hell want to know.
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the general feel of this thread is:

"I'm too lazy to think about metrics and correlation, so I'm going to pick a convenient number and use that to make my broad generalizations."

If GPA and NAPLEX/juris test scores predicted success as a practitioner, then damn, why didn't anyone tell me? I just wasted my hours critically evaluating CV's/LOI/LOR's and interviewing people for these dang residency spots.

You guys must know everything. Do share how you came to that conclusion, cuz I sure as hell want to know.
Click to expand...

I'll agree that the scores aren't a hard and fast for anything other than a rudimentary competence for practicing pharmacy. However, as I've mentioned before, I'd like to see step like tests for rph school such that they could be used to better objectively evaluate residency apps.
 
I think we can agree that grades do not always predict the person's competency but I think we can also agree that although there are some exceptions, C, D, and F students should not be accepted to a pharmacy school.
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the general feel of this thread is:

"I'm too lazy to think about metrics and correlation, so I'm going to pick a convenient number and use that to make my broad generalizations."

If GPA and NAPLEX/juris test scores predicted success as a practitioner, then damn, why didn't anyone tell me? I just wasted my hours critically evaluating CV's/LOI/LOR's and interviewing people for these dang residency spots.

You guys must know everything. Do share how you came to that conclusion, cuz I sure as hell want to know.
Click to expand...

You may very well have wasted your time evaluating LOI/LOR's and interviewing people. You seem to want evidence that GPA/test scores predict performance - why not be skeptical towards LORs and interviews also? Do you have any evidence that your interview process is any good, or any better than just picking someone with a high GPA who doesn't pick his nose in public?

I did a report in undergrad about evidence for admissions criteria for med schools, and as I recall, the literature showed that interviews were good for screening out really bad candidates who were able to make good grades (ie the high gpa rain man guy who picks his nose in public) and not much else. GPA and MCAT scores were better predictors. They also found that interviewers tended to overrate their ability to detect good or bad candidates.

I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if the same thing turned out to be true for practitioners, but there's not a lot of research into predictors of success as practitioners (as opposed to students), probably because it would be harder to measure.
 
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