No PCAT, no interview, is it a trap??

[DoctorAJ]

hey everybody,

For those of you who know about schools and their way of doing things, please help me out....I have heard from a number of freinds and pharmacy students that most schools that don't require PCAT and/or don't require interveiw are typically schools which participate in a "cut-off" scheme, where they accept a a large number of lower qualified students, knowing that they have a less chance of succeeding, and then after and during the first year of pharmacy school they make a large number of cuts, which in turn guaruntees them a big chunk of $$, hence the "scheme"....I would consider my sources to be reliable enough and I do trust them, but this whole "scheme" sounds a little bit far fetched to me, what do you guys think? Have any of you heard of such a thing actually happening at schools that don't require PCAT and/or interview?

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[DownonthePharm]

Just dont apply to HICP....

I would think that a school that was no PCAT/no interview was picking students mainly on GPA. So you will get the most "traditionally intelligent" students.

 

[bananaface]

HICP has closed. The announcement was made yesterday.

 

[ButlerPharm.D.]

Can you be more specific about what you mean?

 

[DoctorAJ]

For those of you who know about schools and their way of doing things, please help me out....I have heard from a number of freinds and pharmacy students that most schools that don't require PCAT and/or don't require interveiw for admissions are typically schools which participate in a "cut-off" scheme, where they accept a a large number of lower qualified students, knowing that they have a less chance of succeeding, and then after and during the first year of pharmacy school they make a large number of cuts, which in turn guaruntees them a big chunk of $$, hence the "scheme"....I would consider my sources to be reliable enough and I do trust them, but this whole "scheme" sounds a little bit far fetched to me, what do you guys think? Have any of you heard of such a thing actually happening at schools that don't require PCAT and/or interview?

 

[ultracet]

no

and i highly doubt it at reputible schools

 

[DoctorAJ]

u askin me bulter pharmD??

 

[Caverject]

People are kicked out if they fail. Schools do not accept students with the anticipation of booting people. That will cause the school to lose money in the long run.

 

[Glycerin]

Merging with the duplicate thread in pre-pharmacy. Please do not create duplicate threads in different forums. They will just be moved. Pharmacy students do read the pre-pharmacy forum, too.

 

[luckyPharmD.stu]

accepting large number of lower qualified students...that really ticks me off; i consider myself as one of those people. i hope that they didn't choose me to get money from my parent's pocket.

 

[ButlerPharm.D.]

Can you give me an example of such a school that participates in this so called scheme?

 

[mrmattsir]

Oregon State University doesn't require the PCAT, but I'm not sure about the validity of this "scheme." Then again, OSU did accept GPA's as low as 2.8 last year. Hmm.

 

[ilovepharmacy]

Well all the CA pharm schools don't even glance at your PCAT scores... so your theory is not entirely valid.

Imagine a school like UCSF using that scheme.. what a joke.

Maybe your friends are drawing these assumptions based on some school(s) in particular

 

[Seveneighty]

There are approximately ten pharmacy schools in the U.S. that don't require an interview or a PCAT. There are about 3 in Canada, as well, including one I'm hoping accepts me in the next week or so.

I'm 100% sure it's not a 'scam' on the part of any of these schools; it's just a different admissions philosophy.

 

[golf299]

this reminds me of the st. louis college of pharmacy. they accept nearly all of their students straight out of high school for a 6-year program. as you can imagine, most of these kids don't know what they're getting into and have never experienced an organic class, ever. as a result, they have an insane attrition rate. but, they score big bucks on the kids that drop out, scamming them out of 2 years of high tuition when, realistically, they can take the same pre-req classes elsewhere for much cheaper... it's a messed up system that they have in place over there... oh yeah, they don't hold interviews either... good luck getting quality students.

 

[mspaic]

There are approximately ten pharmacy schools in the U.S. that don't require an interview or a PCAT. There are about 3 in Canada, as well, including one I'm hoping accepts me in the next week or so.

toronto pharmacy school is included in there, right
that's where i'm applying next year, since it's the only pharm school in my province for now
they're buliding another one in ontario, (univeristy of waterloo) but it wont accept students till fall of 2007

 

[SomeGuy]

Indeed, in the previous admissions cycle, UofT did not look at/require PCAT scores. They do have their own admissions test however.

 

[Escape]

How about Albany College of Pharmacy? From the general information on Pharmcas website, I notice that Albany and St. Louis College of Pharmacy are very similar: no interview, weigh highly on GPA. If anyone knows anything about Albany please let me know; I am thinking of applying there. Thanks

 

[lord999]

this reminds me of the st. louis college of pharmacy. they accept nearly all of their students straight out of high school for a 6-year program. as you can imagine, most of these kids don't know what they're getting into and have never experienced an organic class, ever. as a result, they have an insane attrition rate. but, they score big bucks on the kids that drop out, scamming them out of 2 years of high tuition when, realistically, they can take the same pre-req classes elsewhere for much cheaper... it's a messed up system that they have in place over there... oh yeah, they don't hold interviews either... good luck getting quality students.

Actually, St. Louis is moving toward admitting more bachelor's.

BTW, for a public school, the failure rate actually costs the school more money than keeping the student in for the full run. State auditors get really annoyed when the attrition rate for a professional school is high, because the tuition DOES NOT cover what it costs to educate a student. The state funds about a third or more generally per student, even if tuition is high. This is an investment to ensure that there are sufficient professionals hanging around the state after graduation. Failing a student is not in the school's economic best interests, and is reserved for students that the school believes are academically unacceptable and cannot be remediated. Although most schools really don't care much about accreditation (standards are as low as NAPLEX), failing too many students triggers alarms. For a school like Midwestern, they didn't make money on me until my rotation year, where I paid full tuition ($23K). They only made a slight profit until then with us.

 

[golf299]

Actually, I know several people in the program and I have it on good authority that St. Louis is moving towards accepting no transfers at all. Whatever the case may be, I'm glad I'm not there. Oh, and BTW, if they were worried about failing too many students, they wouldn't have a "self-learning" biochem class. What is that about anyway? I have heard nothing but horror stories from there...

 

[busybee2]

Then how can you explain a school that doesn't require interviews, statement of purpose or letters of recommendation, only looks at pre-pharm gpa, calculates pre pharm gpa with the highest grade earned on repeated courses, and does require a pcat but you can take it as many times as you want and applies the highest score earned (i've seen students with really low scores be accepted). There must be something they are not telling us. Why would any school be so loose in their requirements? Is it that they take the "lower qualified students" and make the classes some how easier ( i mean perhaps more focused towards passing the NAPLEX only).

 

[Aznfarmerboi]

I came straight out from HS to one of those 6 years pharmD programs. Just because you think that organic chemistry is hard, does not mean that other people think so too. In fact, if you really need three to four years of college to prepare for pharmacy, then you are nowhere near the creame of the crop.

The attriction rate for our program is pretty low. We recieve generous scholarships and financial aid from our school so it is not a scheme A good amount of the pharmacists in New York City in the high 70's to low 80's percent, come from these 6 year pharmD programs.

By the way, most of the people that I met already took AP Bio and Chemistry in High School. They also took college level organic chemistry and Anatomy and P. The first two years merely re-enforce what they have learned in High school. The two years can be comparable if not more strenous than your liberal art programs like . . . history. Just something for you to think about. PCATS and interviews dont really matter because what makes a good pharmacist is his communication skills and experience. Its not as if you will remember what you learned after you take your finals anyway.

 

[Laferno]

I don't see why schools would "scheme" to get money from students. Every student that drops out of their program is less money they will make. Some obvious math: 25,000 a year x 4 years is more than 25,000 a year for 2 years. How does it benefit them? Plus as soon as other pharmacy schools learn about it they will spread the word to the students and eventually the scheming school will have to charge less money to attract the same number of students. That means less profit for them. Also, if thier school is really meant to be a scam then the accreditation committee will shut them down.

More likely what they are doing is just not using interviews or PCATs for their acceptance process. Neither are legally required to have before admitting a student into the school, however, both are highly recommended. The schools that do not require those may just not do as good a job of accepting students that are prepared to meet the rigorous requirements of Pharmacy School. Therefore they will have a slightly higher attrition rate than the average school that looks at both PCAT and interviews.

DoctorAJ, I am sure your reliable sources are telling you exactly what they think to be true, but they may just be misinterpreting a natural phenomena that will occur when you take less factors into consideration for acceptance as a scheme to get more money from students.

 

[atticus27]

hey everybody,

For those of you who know about schools and their way of doing things, please help me out....I have heard from a number of freinds and pharmacy students that most schools that don't require PCAT and/or don't require interveiw are typically schools which participate in a "cut-off" scheme, where they accept a a large number of lower qualified students, knowing that they have a less chance of succeeding, and then after and during the first year of pharmacy school they make a large number of cuts, which in turn guaruntees them a big chunk of $$, hence the "scheme"....I would consider my sources to be reliable enough and I do trust them, but this whole "scheme" sounds a little bit far fetched to me, what do you guys think? Have any of you heard of such a thing actually happening at schools that don't require PCAT and/or interview?

I went searching for past admissions criteria and I found a lot of threads like this one. There were pharmacy schools that didn't require interviews a few years ago! What the f***?

 

[alenadoma]

I went searching for past admissions criteria and I found a lot of threads like this one. There were pharmacy schools that didn't require interviews a few years ago! What the f***?

I know! Actually, this is the first year the Michigan requires an interview. Last year they accepted some people without an interview!

 

[Sparda29]

Before the 2008 Admission Cycle, LIU didn't use PharmCAS, and interviews were not required. As a LIU Pre-Pharm, all you needed to do was complete your pre-requisites and hold a 3.0 Overall/MS GPA.

What LIU should have done was keep this procedure for their Pre-Pharmacy students, and convert to PharmCAS for any transfers.

 

[kane20]

Can anyone tell me what schools do not require PCAT? pls help, thnxx

 

[Passion4Sci]

Can anyone tell me what schools do not require PCAT? pls help, thnxx

California schools, Pacific-Oregon, and MCPHS-Worcester (Maybe Boston also) USN off the top of my head.

 

[musicman123]

Purdue as well. A simple google search would have answered your question.

 

[diastole]

California schools, Pacific-Oregon, and MCPHS-Worcester (Maybe Boston also) USN off the top of my head.

Nope, USN now requires the PCAT. The number of applicants dropped dramatically. I think requiring the PCAT caused a lot of Californians to drop USN off the list.

But I have a question that isn't so easily answered with a Google search. Do all the non-PCAT schools make you write an essay at the interview?

 

[musicman123]

Nope, USN now requires the PCAT. The number of applicants dropped dramatically. I think requiring the PCAT caused a lot of Californians to drop USN off the list.

But I have a question that isn't so easily answered with a Google search. Do all the non-PCAT schools make you write an essay at the interview?

Not sure about all, but UCSF, UCSD, and UoP require an on-site essay.

 

[297point1]

But I have a question that isn't so easily answered with a Google search. Do all the non-PCAT schools make you write an essay at the interview?

If they were smart, they would...

 

[twhughe]

I also know that Pacific University - Oregon requires each applicant to write an expository essay on the interveiw day.

 

[rxlea]

Twhughe, I just sent you 2 e-mails! 😉

 

[rph3664]

this reminds me of the st. louis college of pharmacy. they accept nearly all of their students straight out of high school for a 6-year program. as you can imagine, most of these kids don't know what they're getting into and have never experienced an organic class, ever. as a result, they have an insane attrition rate. but, they score big bucks on the kids that drop out, scamming them out of 2 years of high tuition when, realistically, they can take the same pre-req classes elsewhere for much cheaper... it's a messed up system that they have in place over there... oh yeah, they don't hold interviews either... good luck getting quality students.

Most of the pharmacists in my area are from STLCOP and they go by high school grades. Very few people transfer in for obvious reasons. These pharmacists are as good as any I've worked with.

I didn't need the PCAT or an interview either, but then again, I graduated in 1994.