So I have a few questions about rotations and residency matching at this college. Can a current student please address them?
1) Where are the possible rotation sites located? I know that they briefly went over this at the interview, and I remember Round Rock being one of them, but I don't recall them all.
2) How do you get matched with the rotations? For instance, do students get to pick or do you get placed somewhere? And can you stay there or the whole year or are you moved around quite a lot between rotations?
3) What is the residency matching rate like? I've heard that the IRL College of Pharmacy is geared more towards retail and less towards clinical. although I'm not sure which career path I want to take yet, I'd like to think that my chances of pursuing a clinical pharmacy career will not be jeopardized if I attend this school..
OH and I had another question, not related to rotations/residencies - Where do students usually eat? Are there any cafes/cafeterias/restaurants on campus?
Thanks a bunch!
1)
For P2 Year: anywhere from Seguin, The Valley, Victoria, Corpus, Alice, Robstown if you are lucky Kingsville but the furthest it will be will be about 2 hours. You do your rotations every Friday so you have the weekend to study and do whatever work you need to do.
For P4 Year: Almost anywhere, depends on the availability, each year is a little different Temple, Round Rock, College Station, Dallas, Houston, the places can pretty much vary just about anywhere.
2)
P2 Year: You have to do 1 semester of Hospital and 1 semester of Community. so you will either be hospital or community one semester and the next semester the other.
You rank your cities and they assign you via preferences and availability .
P4 year you have to do 6 rotations Sites: Hospital, Ambulatory, Community, Gen Med, and 2 electives (which can be outside your region)
You rank the zones or regions on what you want and they send you off based on availability. Your two electives can be pretty much anywhere, but also depends on availability.
3)
I don't know where you heard that from but the school doesn't determine if you will go clinical, retail, or whatever that is your choice and up to you what you want. As for a residency It's all on you, your networking, your resume/CV, and how much you want it. I don't really know the matching rate other than it is competitive no matter where you go.
Food:
there are some places nothing fancy there is your typically fast foods: Whataburger, Wendy's, Dairy Queen, McDonald's, Taco Bell, etc.
There is a buffet cafeteria at the School and they also have Pizza Hut, Chik-Fil-A, Subway, some asian restaurant
outside of campus there is a lot of Tex-Mex, Mexican Cuisine, not much really some burger joints, sandwich shops, etc. The real food would be 30-45 mins away in Corpus Christi.
Hope that helps!
