Drop-Outting% in Pharmacy School

[nyastlc]

I graduated from MCPHS University in Boston, our starting class size at PGY-1 was about 370s.... but by the time of graduation our class size was in the 240s (which is larger than most schools) . My school is notorious of accepting as many people as possible even if they may not have the best grades (of course my school wants the $$$) .
Even though many people may be accepted into a pharmacy program, I was wondering how many people end up dropping out or end up graduating. For example my friend at Rutgers says that its hard to get in but only a few (10 to 20 people) drop out for various personal reasons mostly like getting pregnant or financial issues . On the other hand my other friends says St. Johns's is also notorious for having a large drop out rate or having students stay behind.
I was curious as to what percentage of students are able to graduate once entered into pharmacy school. I know there are many considerations into getting into pharmacy school, but I feel like MANY people out there are NOT aware of the percentage of people that actually graduate. Additionally with the new NAPLEX it seems like its getting harder to get a license. With a saturated market, I was telling my friend it might be better becoming a physician assistant vs becoming a pharmacist.... what do you think?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Ra1nMak3r]

I graduated from MCPHS University in Boston, our starting class size at PGY-1 was about 370s.?

Do you mean P1 year? If not, that's a lot of PGY1 residents, I don't think I ever heard of that many. My P1 class started with 165, I think about <5 drop out throughout the program. My school is accepting less students to the program now though for multi-factorial reasons.

 

[rph3664]

We had about a 10% attrition rate overall in my class. The most common reason was deciding that pharmacy wasn't for them and changing majors, although we did have a few people drop out or flunk out and one guy who was expelled after being arrested for selling marijuana.

 

[Seriously Serious]

We had about a 10% attrition rate overall in my class. The most common reason was deciding that pharmacy wasn't for them and changing majors, although we did have a few people drop out or flunk out and one guy who was expelled after being arrested for selling marijuana.

lol

 

[pezdispenser]

Ask @PAtoPharm He's a pro at this

 

[297point1]

ACPE wants to know what's going on when the "fail out rate" reaches 6%.
This excludes medical leaves, drop outs, non-academic expulsions, and delays in graduation due to academics.

It's no accident that schools are starting to display their on-time graduation data like this (https://pharmacy.uiowa.edu/excellence-indicators) and not just a simple percentage.

 

[steveysmith54]

I believe my school is about 9% now. When i started pharm school, which is about a decade ago now, we had about 3%. When I applied, we had 17 apps per spot, we had students with masters and 1/2 of my class was from top UC. Times have changed. Those elite students are nowhere to be found.

 

[lord999]

ACPE wants to know what's going on when the "fail out rate" reaches 6%.
This excludes medical leaves, drop outs, non-academic expulsions, and delays in graduation due to academics.

It's no accident that schools are starting to display their on-time graduation data like this (https://pharmacy.uiowa.edu/excellence-indicators) and not just a simple percentage.

And so will the state for a public school. Educating pharmacists is a net cost to the state (in 04 it was roughly $25k per pharmacist over the entire training period, in 15 it was around $34k). That's kind of funny, because Iowa used to have a very bad reputation for failing perfectly good students in large numbers. Iowa had to shape up not when ACPE came for them (they never did in those days) but when the state threatened intervention on the admissions process. They nerfed the outrageous pharmaceutics and med chem classes by the time I went to school.

My alma mater for my year, six failed out our year and two of those never made it.

 

[Lexington2012]

My school lost about 10-15% of the class from P1 until P4 year. Most of them were held back and are in the class below mine.

 

[Unsure90]

My starting class had maybe ~156 students and 10 students failed a course (or two?) and were held back a year

 

[CMUchicka]

When we started, we had 153. 15 (+/-) of them were put on extended track half way through P1 and 4 dropped out ( personal and pharmacy is not for them reasons). Also, 10 student from last year just joined our class. From what I heard,it's quite common in my school.