My Naplex was for sure not a "minimum competency" exam....

[notRhoChi]

Hey guys!

So I just took my Naplex yesterday and wanted to post here because I am super depressed about the entire ordeal. To give you some background info, I am a very good student ~3.7 final GPA in school and feel as though I am a good test taker in general. To prepare for the test I studied for 2.5 weeks about 4-5 hours a day (of actual studying lol). Where I went over the RX prep 2020 book twice, three times for some chapters like ID, Cancer, HIV etc.... I also bought the RX prep test bank where i scored between 60-80 percent on most chapters first try after going through that particular chapter in the book. I did not take a pre-naplex exam of any sort probably just because I am too lazy. Anyways the day of my exam comes and I am feeling really good! Everyone says how the Naplex is sooo easy, its the easiest thing you will ever take in your life----that is not true in the slightest. The Naplex was the hardest exam I have ever taken hands down. The questions themselves were a random conglomerate of everything you can imagine, the tiniest fact about compounding a ph buffered nasal solution, diagnosing a skin condition with no patient case and very little information, knowing where to refer a mother and her week old baby to for lactation support, knowing the stability of a long-acting anti-psychotic after reconstitution oh and did I mention that I probably had at least 40-45 select all that apply questions, maybe more honestly. That test did a number on me. Math was literally my only saving grace, I know I got all of those right. My point being is there is no way that my exam could be deemed as "minimum competency" for a pharmacist looking to just start out. Frankly I would have preferred a test that was mainly ID, Cancer and HIV than the absolute BS that I got. I hope someone from the board of pharmacy sees this because I would so welcome the opportunity to speak with you regarding this amazing test that perfectly gauges a new grads capability in the field🙂 Will definitely update when I know more but would also love to hear other peoples thoughts


Im also not sure if I'm posting this in the correct place/way--first time poster here!!

EDIT: Hey everyone so the wait is over and I passed with a 111!!! I just want to say thank to all the consoling and half consoling messages I got on this thread. To all the other people Id like to say please take a look at the national naplex pass rates over the last ten years; they have gone down by at least 8-10% depending on the year. And those of you who are commenting saying its so easy and have taken the exam 5, 10 or even 20 years ago; your opinion in this matter, respectfully, has no bearing. My test was not easy and not minimum competency, however, the way they grade or weigh the exam must be a total joke and is why a lot of people may "feel" that it is easy because it is easy to pass. So to all you trolls get a life and sit for naplex again and see how it goes for ya🙂. Thanks guys!! MPJE next!

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[Hels2007]

It's either
- you are just letting your nerves get better of you (there are always plenty of 'experimental' questions on Naplex that don't count)
or
- you went to a ****ty school where they gave easy As for easy tests to keep students happy and didn't prepare you nearly well enough

Just wait until your scores come back.

 

[Marzapan]

It's either
- you are just letting your nerves get better of you (there are always plenty of 'experimental' questions on Naplex that don't count)
or
- you went to a ****ty school where they gave easy As for easy tests to keep students happy and didn't prepare you nearly well enough

Just wait until your scores come back.

Or they are one of the 50-60% of students who have no business being pharmacists in the first place but were accepted due to greed/desperation of pharmacy schools.

 

[TranslationalRPh]

It's either
- you are just letting your nerves get better of you (there are always plenty of 'experimental' questions on Naplex that don't count)
or
- you went to a ****ty school where they gave easy As for easy tests to keep students happy and didn't prepare you nearly well enough

Just wait until your scores come back.

Agree. I can think of harder tests such as pharmacy law, BCPS, PhD qualifier, and PhD defense.

I think that you might have psyched yourself out. Hopefully, you will do just fine!

 

[Hels2007]

Or they are one of the 50-60% of students who have no business being pharmacists in the first place but were accepted due to greed/desperation of pharmacy schools.

(S)he claims GPA of 3.7 so that's unlikely unless it's a part of the "super easy school" bucket.

I went to very demanding schools for high school, undergrad and pharmacy schools so all the standardized exams were ridiculously easy compared to what was asked of us on everyday basis... But all good teachers and professors speak to how it's becoming harder and harder to maintain demanding educational standards in the face of whiny kids, their equally whiny parents and political pressure.

 

[Seriously Serious]

I have had many top tier students worry about how "hard" the exam was bc they didnt confidently know 30-40% of the questions and then turn around and score 100+... I think you are psyching yourself out.

 

[Marzapan]

(S)he claims GPA of 3.7 so that's unlikely unless it's a part of the "super easy school" bucket.

I went to very demanding schools for high school, undergrad and pharmacy schools so all the standardized exams were ridiculously easy compared to what was asked of us on everyday basis... But all good teachers and professors speak to how it's becoming harder and harder to maintain demanding educational standards in the face of whiny kids, their equally whiny parents and political pressure.

Could be both. Pharmacy schools have been dropping their admissions standards to get more pre-pharms in the door for years now... do you not think that this is also correlated with a compromise in academic standards to pass these students, inflate their GPAs and "churn them out?" I would think that most schools are or will be resorting to this to keep their graduates competitive for the job market, which they can in turn use to publish better graduation statistics that they can use to recruit the next class of pre-pharms. If the NAPLEX is the most difficult exam this student has ever taken... then it definitely speaks to both the school and the student...

 

[notRhoChi]

Hi everyone, thanks for the replies, I appreciate the more consoling posts but as for the others I would like to clarify that I did attend at top 15 school. I really think it was just my test in particular that was hard. I can understand how you may not believe me but I honestly wouldn't have taken the time to write this post had I not felt this way after my exam. The SATA questions in particular I felt had a lot of gray area and many times one answer could have been omitted or not depending on ones train of thought (anyone else have a lot of those?). Like I said I will update but I wish I could literally show you all the test, I laughed out loud at some of the questions because they were so absurd

 

[Hels2007]

I laughed out loud at some of the questions because they were so absurd

From what I remember, Naplex keeps asking questions of the type you get wrong, and if you get everything right, it gets through the 'mandatory' part quickly and goes into random stuff. I remember I got some weird ones (including one that I only knew because my pharmacy manager and I were discussing the weirdest things he has seen in his 40-year career a few months earlier), but I dismissed them as 'these must be the experimental ones'. I ended up scoring 140-something... so again, don't fret and just wait for your scores. If you don't pass, then start questioning what went wrong. Maybe nothing did.

Are you one of those people who would start checking and/or discussing questions and answers after the exam was over?

 

[notRhoChi]

From what I remember, Naplex keeps asking questions of the type you get wrong, and if you get everything right, it gets through the 'mandatory' part quickly and goes into random stuff. I remember I got some weird ones (including one that I only knew because my pharmacy manager and I were discussing the weirdest things he has seen in his 40-year career a few months earlier), but I dismissed them as 'these must be the experimental ones'. I ended up scoring 140-something... so again, don't fret and just wait for your scores. If you don't pass, then start questioning what went wrong. Maybe nothing did.

Are you one of those people who would start checking and/or discussing questions and answers after the exam was over?

Its not an adaptive exam anymore. And no way, I let those nerds keep arguing about which was right and proceeded to go eat lunch. Plus who knew if they were right anyway, stuff like that would only serve to further my test day anxiety

 

[Sine Cura]

I usually got 60-80% on the RxPrep test questions. I got 134 on the actual exam one time but that was the old exam (finished in 2 hours when it used to be 4 hrs)

NAPLEX is easy to pass but not easy to do actually "well" if you don't review broadly. 75-100 is subpar tbh. Like I've said what if they moved the pass slider to the right

 

[weeneldo]

I didn’t find my exam super difficult but I did find it strange that there was a lot of repetition in it. As in I was asked to interpret identical blood culture results in three different cases in the exam, and two questions asked me exactly the same thing about one drug. Thankfully I knew the answers to these, but it didn’t feel very fair that you could potentially lose multiple points for not knowing a single bit of information.

 

[Saiyo]

I never thought it was a minimum competency exam either. In fact, when me and my classmates took it everyone felt like they failed afterwards.
Its not an easy exam, but it has a high pass rate, so in retrospect everyone thinks its easy.

 

[ValeRx]

Can we just put a disclaimer at the top of the forum that says, "If you feel like you did bad on the NAPLEX, you did fine. No need to post."

 

[TranslationalRPh]

Can we just put a disclaimer at the top of the forum that says, "If you feel like you did bad on the NAPLEX, you did fine. No need to post."

How about just wait for the score before you post because you got this

 

[ValeRx]

How about just wait for the score before you post because you got this

That would work too. It would save us all from the multitude of identical posts.

 

[lord999]

I never thought it was a minimum competency exam either. In fact, when me and my classmates took it everyone felt like they failed afterwards.
Its not an easy exam, but it has a high pass rate, so in retrospect everyone thinks its easy.

Unless you exhaust the bank. Before 2010, if you scored above 140, you actually did >92% of the hardest questions in the testing bank. People actually thought they had failed (as did I) because we got our last 20 questions as real softballs when in fact all of the hard ones were done. The current exam is no longer adaptive, but it does scale based on difficulty and accuracy (so no two questions are weighted the same). I view the current exam as easier than the adaptive version, which is pretty pathetic considering that even the adaptive version was not hard to pass.

OP, I do recommend to intern as well as study (though getting a internship is hard at this stage). Working a limited amount of hours helps you orientate to the meds.

 

[notRhoChi]

Unless you exhaust the bank. Before 2010, if you scored above 140, you actually did >92% of the hardest questions in the testing bank. People actually thought they had failed (as did I) because we got our last 20 questions as real softballs when in fact all of the hard ones were done. The current exam is no longer adaptive, but it does scale based on difficulty and accuracy (so no two questions are weighted the same). I view the current exam as easier than the adaptive version, which is pretty pathetic considering that even the adaptive version was not hard to pass.

OP, I do recommend to intern as well as study (though getting a internship is hard at this stage). Working a limited amount of hours helps you orientate to the meds.

Look at my edit up top brotha/sistah

 

[TranslationalRPh]

Look at my edit up top brotha/sistah

Don't know what point you were trying make, but perhaps you missed the spirit of some of the comments. Any test with a pass rate around 90% for someone who just graduated school is comparatively easy to pass for most eligible candidates. That's not that different from what it was when I took it. Look at pass rate for BCGP or BCPS by comparison, and several of those test takers take it more than once or have a residency. I never said that every question was easy. What difference does the question difficulty make if almost every new graduate who takes it passes?

 

[ValeRx]

Don't know what point you were trying make, but perhaps you missed the spirit of some of the comments. Any test with a pass rate around 90% for someone who just graduated school is comparatively easy to pass for most eligible candidates. That's not that different from what it was when I took it. Look at pass rate for BCGP or BCPS by comparison, and several of those test takers take it more than once or have a residency. I never said that every question was easy. What difference does the question difficulty make if almost every new graduate who takes it passes?

OP is young and not particularly articulate and lacks tact as do most of today's youth.

 

[notRhoChi]

Don't know what point you were trying make, but perhaps you missed the spirit of some of the comments. Any test with a pass rate around 90% for someone who just graduated school is comparatively easy to pass for most eligible candidates. That's not that different from what it was when I took it. Look at pass rate for BCGP or BCPS by comparison, and several of those test takers take it more than once or have a residency. I never said that every question was easy. What difference does the question difficulty make if almost every new graduate who takes it passes?

A minimum competency would entail that most of the questions are as such. While most do pass on their first try the level of said questions should be the benchmark as to whether the exam is "minimum competency" not the way in which the exam was graded (i.e. no one knows how questions are weighed)

 

[notRhoChi]

OP is young and not particularly articulate and lacks tact as do most of today's youth.

Guess people can't have a little bit of fun commenting on here and being happy that he passed all of his licensing exams. My bad

 

[TranslationalRPh]

A minimum competency would entail that most of the questions are as such. While most do pass on their first try the level of said questions should be the benchmark as to whether the exam is "minimum competency" not the way in which the exam was graded (i.e. no one knows how questions are weighed)

Maybe you feel that way because 111 isn't that high, especially relative to the GPA and hours spent studying you mentioned. It's a totally acceptable score, and, parenthetically, I know plenty of people who were basic students as well as those who didn't study as hard for the exam score the same or higher. I do wonder if there is some defensiveness regarding your performance that's whetting you to this unsupported position. Most responders don't buy into your premise about minimal competency because, simply put, if you can't pass NAPLEX after completing an accredited pharmacy school, you shouldn't practice pharmacy is the defacto position. Full stop. It, a test with around a 90% pass rate, was never meant to stop you from entering pharmacy. It only stops the people who can't prove minimal competency, by design.

As pointed out, one BIG challenge with using purported "question difficulty" as you propose is that you don't know which questions are scored and which ones are not OR how they are scored. Also, what is your offer of proof that the questions are any harder this year versus 5-, 10-, 15-years ago. If there is a public statement by NABP, it would at least be helpful for you to share it. The only thing that you have offered is a biased, subjective, and anedotal opinion about exam difficulty from someone who has very limited reference points (ie, no credentialing or graduate school). That alone isn't enough to change decades of sentiment; was that your expectation, or were you trolling us? Currently, all I am hearing is someone with okay performance who took an exam that almost every eligible test-taker passes, complain the questions were too hard.

This is seriously what scares me about current students. Instead of arguing with those of us with demonstrable competence, and by your definition, much higher than minimal competency, here's some things IMHO that would demonstrate more than minimal competency: Try scoring higher in physiology than medical students at a tier 1 research institution, passing board certification (you can take practice exams from ACCP now), defending a PhD in a "hard science" at a tier 1 research institution, present at a national conference and defend your ideas among KOLs, publish in peer reviewed journals for hard and/or applied sciences etc. When I talk to MDs in my field, I never hear them arguing that their board exams are so hard they can't show just minimal competency. Given their propensity for specialization and years of practice and training before becoming the lead practitioners on their teams, I typically see just the opposite. If this entitled view (passing a NAPLEX with some hard questions is beyond minimal competence) is representative of the next batch of pharmacists and wannabes, I can't help but feel that we have lost our way. I find it somewhat demeaning and debasing of the profession, and I sincerely think you are better than the position you defend, and thankfully you now have an opportunity to show it on a larger stage. Why would anyone argue over table stakes without material support is beyond me, but because I feel trolled, I am off to way more productive things. Best of luck to you.

 

[rxkrafted]

Waiting for OPs post about MPJE next and then one about a job search