Pharmacy School Remediation and Residency Chances

[Sonic121]

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Hi, I'm a first year pharmacy student and I recently failed a pharmacy course at my school. I will have to remediate the course by summer this year. Will this affect my chances at matching for a pharmacy residency in the future?

Has anyone been successful in matching for a residency while having a failed, remediated, and/or a retaken course in their transcript from a past school year (P1, P2, P3)?

 

[MindGeek]

I will have to remediate the course by summer this year. Will this affect my chances at matching for a pharmacy residency in the future?

Has anyone been successful in matching for a residency while having a failed, remediated, and/or a retaken course in their transcript from a past school year (P1, P2, P3)?

I know of one such person. They failed and had to retake both a course in P2 year and a rotation in P4 year, which essentially held them back from graduating for a total of 58 weeks. They landed a PGY-1 residency through the ASHP match at a hospital 700 miles away from our school.

Consider yourself lucky that they are letting you retake it over the summer. When I failed P&T I in my P2 year with my original class, not enough of my fellow classmates (5) also failed, so I had to retake it the next year with my new class, holding me back a whole year. While I was ace-ing my retake, so many classmates (12) in my new class failed that they had to offer a comprehensive remediation exam over winter break, and then a summer retake course, to accommodate everyone. What a difference a year makes. It's all water under the bridge now though. I tried out and then formally switched to the PharmD+MBA program, completing both within five and a half years of starting pharmacy school. In my opinion, when you frame it like that it's impressive and a strength, not a gap in my enrollment or an obvious consequence of being held back.

Don't be too discouraged @Sonic121 , the residency landscape and pharmacist job market are going to be different by the time you graduate. I'm glad that I saw the writing on the wall in December 2011 instead of May 2015. Do something un-ignorable to potential hiring managers to distinguish yourself from your other classmates that also failed, just as you should be distinguishing yourself from the rest of your classmates and all PharmD graduates.

 

[youRCC]

Has anyone been successful in matching for a residency while having a failed, remediated, and/or a retaken course in their transcript from a past school year (P1, P2, P3)?

There were 2 people in my graduating class that previously got held back 1 year and managed to get matched for PGY1

 

[spacecowgirl]

Why did you fail? That will answer your residency chances question more than the actual failing of a class.

 

[jjcayce123]

No...I went to school with someone who also had to remediate. She got a very good residency.

 

[projektreverb]

I know people who failed a class and still got a residency. They remediate over the summer. When you remediate, so long as you don’t get pushed back a year, my school let you remediate for a maximum grade of C to show on your transcript. The fact that you failed the first time around never shows on the transcript. So hypothetically the only way for them to know in that situation would be for you to tell them or for them to somehow find out thru someone you shared with or someone at the school.