Hi everyone,
How are you all doing? I hope you are all doing great. I know getting accepted into pharmacy school is very frustrating, but a word of caution, make sure you do a lot of research on a pharmacy school that you are planning to attend.
I am a student of HUSOP and I'm not liking it at all. A couple of my classmates have thought of transferring out of HUSOP and I am not an exception. The school has been on probation for the last 3 years and no one knows about it. They keep everything very internally, they don't tell anyone about the school's accreditation status. As of right now, they are trying to re-obtain the accreditation and it only applies to the class of 2008. In other words, the accreditation is nowhere to be confirmed for the classes of 2009, 2010, etc. So be careful!!! You can't take the board if you are graduating from a non-accredited institution.
I have read threads on this post and I'm not surprised to hear that you called and got 2 different answers from 2 different people. The administrators don't really know what is going on because all they do during office hours are surfing on the internet, chit-chatting on the phone, talking about their hair and nails.
So how is life in classroom? Not so good!! Please do not be mistaken. I am not talking down or bashing down on a school, I'm just trying to let you all know what you need to know about the school. Remember, you are paying $30K per year, so if you do the math, it is $120K!! It's a lot of money and you want to, at least, be able to pay back the loan once you are done with school. The school itself is very poorly-established. The laboratory is unequipped and the majority of chemical ingredients that we use are beyond expired. We're in the year of 2008 and guess what, most of the stuffs have expired in 2006. The labs are very elementary. Mix this mix that, done!!
In terms of tests and exams, it's ... !! OK, HUSOP made me feel that anyone can be a pharmacist. They utilize a lot of old tests from previous years. Meaning, professors copy and paste their prior years' tests. Students "study" by memorizing the old tests' answers and of course everyone does GREAT on every test. And when asking them about the topic that has already been tested, no one knows the answers even though they aced every time.
So what's about failing rate?!! Unbelievably HIGH!!! This is the stats from other graduates. We started out with 70 students on the first semester of P1 year, ended up with 60 on the second semester of P1 year, and ended up with about 40 students by P4 year. Can you do the math?!! The failing rate is about 45%.
Now the question is WHY such a high failing rate?! First, most of the pharmacy students at HUSOP do not have a BS degree so they don't have prior knowledge about biology or science-related. Can you imagine sitting in a PharmD class, and your classmates (aka PharmD candidates) don't know what PCR, electrophoresis, Gram Stain, ELISA, and other common science-related tests are. That's pathetic!! Second, the professors at HUSOP go at such a slow pace as if you are still in high school, trying to understand what Geometry is all about. Third, most of the professors at HUSOP are pretty inexperienced. They are mostly fresh graduates from other pharmacy schools thus no residency, no strong experience about pharmacy either. Fourth, HUSOP is not paying professors that well therefore, often times, each professor teaches more than 2 classes at a time. This is a problem. They don't have time to prepare detail lectures on a topic thus the class lecture is very general. Also, they are assigned to teach classes that they are not specialized in so no detail knowledge about it either.
There are a lot more to say about HUSOP and I am going to stop right here because I think it is enough for you to PLEASE RE-CONSIDER and DO MORE RESEARCH BEFORE ATTENDING HUSOP!!!
Sincerely,
