Some of these Naplex pass rates are awful

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greenteapanacea

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Symptomatic of declining incoming students. We’re seeing the result on the backend. At the point the schools don’t care, they’ve gotten their tuition payments. Everyone else got their money and the students were sold a pipe dream. Those poor souls are now burdened with tuition debt they can’t pay off…
 
It’s sad that I actually know two students who couldn’t pass the naplex in the 5 tries allocated. One was a horrible test taker but now they’re stuck with a 120k piece of paper they have no hope of being able to pay back.

Second one basically chugged along in pharmacy school using old tests to pass exams but didn’t actually learn anything. I can’t even imagine being back at square one with that much debt at the interest rate they’re at….
 
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projektreverb said:
It’s sad that I actually know two students who couldn’t pass the naplex in the 5 tries allocated. One was a horrible test taker but now they’re stuck with a 120k piece of paper they have no hope of being able to pay back.

Second one basically chugged along in pharmacy school using old tests to pass exams but didn’t actually learn anything. I can’t even imagine being back at square one with that much debt at the interest rate they’re at….
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Jesus wept
 
projektreverb said:
It’s sad that I actually know two students who couldn’t pass the naplex in the 5 tries allocated. One was a horrible test taker but now they’re stuck with a 120k piece of paper they have no hope of being able to pay back.

Second one basically chugged along in pharmacy school using old tests to pass exams but didn’t actually learn anything. I can’t even imagine being back at square one with that much debt at the interest rate they’re at….
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They give access to old exams?
 
It's bad, one of the interns at my hospital finally passed on his 5th try. But now he's having trouble with MPJE.

I kinda want to try a sample exam to see how bad it really is now. I was a 2.3 GPA student in pharmacy school and I still got a high score on the NAPLEX, it was the NYS Part 3 compounding exam that almost fked me up.
 
Dude I don’t know what it is with NYS compounding exam and being “difficult”/high fail rate. Passed it on my first go from out of state never working in NYS prior. These kids these days aren’t so great at fill in the blank, matching, not multiple choice formats…maybe it’s the answer word limit response rules because it might involve not bull****ting your way through free response and just being direct, to the point?
 
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Sparda29 said:
I kinda want to try a sample exam to see how bad it really is now. I was a 2.3 GPA student in pharmacy school and I still got a high score on the NAPLEX, it was the NYS Part 3 compounding exam that almost fked me up.
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I agree, I wonder if I am smarter or dumber when it comes to tests now vs when I graduated.
 
projektreverb said:
Same at my COP.
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They would assign each other questions numbers to memorize. I.e. student Jim memorizes questions 1 & 2. Student Anne memorizes 3 &4. They then get together and write out the exam basically

The worst thing about Kappa Psi is that they were ****in nerds who would've been bullied by frat boys cosplaying as those frat boys, hahahah
 
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One thing that changed starting two years ago was that a school's pass rate published in year X was no longer static and now subject to change with every release of data each February.

Example: previously, a student who graduated in late 2020 and didn't take the NAPLEX until 2021 wouldn't appear in the published 2020 pass rate and (drumroll) wouldn't appear in the 2021 pass rate either.

Under the new reporting system, that students performance will now be retroactively applied to the 2020 pass rate when the 2021 pass rate was published in 2022.

Our program saw a fairly excellent pass rate for 2022 drop several percentage points when the new data was recently published and several late to graduate students took - and failed - the NAPLEX in early 2023. Good times.
 
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My alma mater's pass rate is hovering in the 70-80% per the link in the OP. That's horrifying to me! Out of the 86 people in my own graduating class, I only knew of one who did not pass NABPLEX, as it was called then, on the first attempt. I did find out a few years later who it was, and didn't know that person well enough to know if I should have been surprised or not.

A woman I met who graduated a couple years before me had said that the one person in her class who failed "was having very serious problems with one of her three children, and nearly had a nervous breakdown herself." This person had no children, but they may have been sick that day, or were dealing with the recent death of a parent, or a broken engagement, or any number of other things that they couldn't leave outside the testing room.
 
RxPreceptor said:
Is it just me or do these younger kids these days seem more emotionally fragile & constantly distracted due to the constant exposure to news, everyday ongoings of family, friends, etc.?
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Every single tech under the age of 25 I have had in the past 5 or 6 years has publicly declared they have anxiety.
 
Gombrich12 said:
Every single tech under the age of 25 I have had in the past 5 or 6 years has publicly declared they have anxiety.
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I’ve only worked with three that I can think of in the past five years but two of them did suffer from anxiety attacks so you may be on to something here.
 
Back when only intelligent people went to pharmacy school, not passing the NAPLEX was considered an embarrassment on the level of having a micropenis and accidently emailing your entire class a nude photo of yourself.

There was always that one student that didn't pass. They'd be too ashamed to show their face at the school ever again. They'd leave and never be seen again.

And 60% pass rate? If that happened back then, dear God. I don't even know what would happen. The dean would probably perform a seppuku ritual.

This is also why us early millennials/late Gen Xers are going to dominate this profession for decades. I know that old people always say that the young people are stupid. But we have objective proof that the young people, as a cohort, actually are a bunch of idiots.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
I know that old people always say that the young people are stupid. But we have objective proof that the young people, as a cohort, actually are a bunch of idiots.
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I think we just have a bad sample as the lot that got into pharmacy school was objectively unqualified to be there in the first place. And this proves it.

Also, whose fault is it that the young generation are the way they are? The collective “we” of old people, who love to think we’re so smart, raised them. Laugh all you want at them. The true joke here is the old folks who raised them.
 
projektreverb said:
I think we just have a bad sample as the lot that got into pharmacy school was objectively unqualified to be there in the first place. And this proves it.

Also, whose fault is it that the young generation are the way they are? The collective “we” of old people, who love to think we’re so smart, raised them. Laugh all you want at them. The true joke here is the old folks who raised them.
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Previous generations are probably partially responsible for this, but I'm convinced that dumb $h!t kids consume on social media is making them even dumber
 
I think the really smart kids are avoiding an over-regulated, liability-prone, field of work with low wfh opportunities and going for ones that pay better, are growth oriented, aren’t governed by oppressive state boards, and allow wfh/flexibility.

I mean, great for those high performing students who want to be actual pharmacists, the cream will float to the top much easier.
 
GrandTheftAutumn said:
Previous generations are probably partially responsible for this, but I'm convinced that dumb $h!t kids consume on social media is making them even dumber
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Again, who is responsible for that? We have our hands on the levers to control that. Is it not our job to intervene and ensure the continuity of our species?
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the really smart kids are avoiding an over-regulated, liability-prone, field of work with low wfh opportunities and going for ones that pay better, are growth oriented, aren’t governed by oppressive state boards, and allow wfh/flexibility.

I mean, great for those high performing students who want to be actual pharmacists, the cream will float to the top much easier.
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Exactly, pharmacy isn’t naturally attracting the best and brightest to begin with….
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the really smart kids are avoiding an over-regulated, liability-prone, field of work with low wfh opportunities and going for ones that pay better, are growth oriented, aren’t governed by oppressive state boards, and allow wfh/flexibility.

I mean, great for those high performing students who want to be actual pharmacists, the cream will float to the top much easier.
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It's also a 8-9 year pursuit, when it was a 4-6 year when I got in. The other issue is admissions. We aren't admitting techs anymore after the PharmD became the standard (it used to be a hard requirement for admission that you had 400-800 hours of background, preferably paid). The other issue is that schools are now afraid to fail substandard people. I can say clearly that Buffalo, Florida, Iowa, Rutgers, Pitt, Temple, and Purdue had stringent pass considerations to the degree of being overly abusive during my generation. No pharmacy school would let their students graduate without them being certain that they would pass NAPLEX.

And depending on the states that had practicals, NY, CA, and WI come to mind, you were definitely worried more for the practicals than even the NAPLEX. The states that had Canadian cross-examinations also were more rigorous as the PEBC is way harder on the basic sciences side than NAPLEX.
 
Many of the college kids I work with are not capable of doing math that I was capable of in the 4th grade.

It's fascinating to me that we live in a time where it's never been easier to educate yourself on just about anything you want to learn, yet people on average seem more stupid than ever before.
 
DH1987 said:
Many of the college kids I work with are not capable of doing math that I was capable of in the 4th grade.

It's fascinating to me that we live in a time where it's never been easier to educate yourself on just about anything you want to learn, yet people on average seem more stupid than ever before.
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I'm telling y'all, they're too busy with TikTok, FB, IG, SC, or whatever the kids do nowadays.

Cash me ousside, howbow dah
 
DH1987 said:
One of my techs informed me that "FaceBook is for old people".
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This is correct. When I want to reach my really old family members, I use Facebook.

IG is for millennials and so I use that to reach my peers.

Gen Z has TikTok and Gen Alpha is probably still on Roblox or something…actually, I think they started sending postcards again, or writing letters. I dunno.
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the really smart kids are avoiding an over-regulated, liability-prone, field of work with low wfh opportunities and going for ones that pay better, are growth oriented, aren’t governed by oppressive state boards, and allow wfh/flexibility.

I mean, great for those high performing students who want to be actual pharmacists, the cream will float to the top much easier.
Click to expand...

Yes. I have a super student cousin who got into all the ivy leagues. She ended up majoring in machine learning engineering about 7 years ago, interned at Facebook and works for Apple now. I didn't even know what machine learning engineering was until recently. If only I were smart enough to invest in it back then. Of course she is able to WFH.

I hear biotech and commercial real estate are good fields too.
 
confettiflyer said:
I think the really smart kids are avoiding an over-regulated, liability-prone, field of work with low wfh opportunities and going for ones that pay better, are growth oriented, aren’t governed by oppressive state boards, and allow wfh/flexibility.

I mean, great for those high performing students who want to be actual pharmacists, the cream will float to the top much easier.
Click to expand...
I can't stress this enough to students who rotate through my site. The Texas pharmacy law book is longer than the Texas medical board book, two dental examiner books stacked on top of each other, and three veterinary board law books stacked on top of each other. Dispensing Xanax to a patient is more regulated by the state than open heart surgery, root canals, and elephant birthing. Innovation never comes from the government, it always comes from the private sector. Pharmacy innovation is decades behind schedule because the board simply won't allow it. We either have to convince the board to allow what we want to do OR we have to get our state legislators to write a bill. Oh yeah, our legislature only meets every other year and the Lt Governor sets the agenda. Doesn't matter if the bill passes the House unanimously, if the Lt Gov doesn't want to hear it he won't hear it. It's ridiculous. This profession is ridiculous. Can't wait to retire and get the hell out. Make no mistake about it: if I win the lottery I'm done. I'm mailing my license back to the board with a photo of me flipping the double bird.
 
297point1 said:
One thing that changed starting two years ago was that a school's pass rate published in year X was no longer static and now subject to change with every release of data each February.

Example: previously, a student who graduated in late 2020 and didn't take the NAPLEX until 2021 wouldn't appear in the published 2020 pass rate and (drumroll) wouldn't appear in the 2021 pass rate either.

Under the new reporting system, that students performance will now be retroactively applied to the 2020 pass rate when the 2021 pass rate was published in 2022.

Our program saw a fairly excellent pass rate for 2022 drop several percentage points when the new data was recently published and several late to graduate students took - and failed - the NAPLEX in early 2023. Good times.
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I noticed this as well with my own program - also figured the change may have had some correlation with last years NABP release date being much later than this most recent cycle.
 
lord999 said:
It's also a 8-9 year pursuit, when it was a 4-6 year when I got in. The other issue is admissions. We aren't admitting techs anymore after the PharmD became the standard (it used to be a hard requirement for admission that you had 400-800 hours of background, preferably paid). The other issue is that schools are now afraid to fail substandard people. I can say clearly that Buffalo, Florida, Iowa, Rutgers, Pitt, Temple, and Purdue had stringent pass considerations to the degree of being overly abusive during my generation. No pharmacy school would let their students graduate without them being certain that they would pass NAPLEX.
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Everything you said. Esp the part about pharmacy schools not letting students graduate if they weren't certain they were capable of passing the NAPLEX (or NABPLEX for the really old people like me.) My school had something like a 96% pass rate while I was attending. There were several 6 or 7 years students (this was when it was a 5 year program), because students were flunked and forced to repeat classes if they didn't have the bare minimum basic understanding. The school was proud to say that every graduate could pass (of course, sometimes illness or stress gave someone a bad test day, and kept the pass rate from being 100%.......and the 1 gal who was rumored to have slept her way through school, she never did pass the NABPLEX and went on to be a drug rep--I have no doubt she was quite successful at that, but everyone who was in her class or attended school when she was there knew about her because she was a rare example of someone who never passed the NABPLEX after multiple tries. Well that, and her Playboy spread also ensured that everyone knew about her....)

I think schools should lose their accreditation, if they have less than a 90% pass rate 3 years in a row. And I think I'm being generous with that. But I see zero reason why a school shouldn't have at a minimum, a 90% pass rate.

Now the program I went to, many moons ago, admitted the majority of students straight out of high school. So very few had any pharmacy experience coming in (I didn't.) But the vast majority got tech/intern jobs and worked during the summers (I did,) and many would also work during the school year. All the state boards around my area at least (and probably in most states) required a certain number of hours to sit for the board. And this was a good thing. Because while the externships/clinical rotations within the school curriculum are very helpful, there is a real learning experience that comes from working as a paid employee, as a tech or intern, that is missing from the externships/clinical rotations curriculum.
 
Chen101 said:
Well, I did not take the NAPLEX yet, but just reading through this article, I am already scared to 🙂
My school program wasn't the greatest as well, and I know it! I decided to take a few practice tests before the exam, in addition to brushing up on the basics for sure! I hope that would help! But yeah, I don't know how some of these universities are still accredited with such a horrible passing rate.
Any thoughts/recommendations on practice tests? I came across many, but this one seems to be really good! I am also working at a pharmacy and the pharmacists are helping me! https://clinicalpharmacycourses.com/courses/naplex-questions-bank/
If you know better ones please share! Many thanks!
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That's a really solid advertisement. I was trying to decide if you were a human working in a foreign spam farm, foreign AI or American AI. At any rate, all the exclamation marks are a little much and I don't think you're using the emoji correctly.
 
There will be pressure to dumb down the NAPLEX. Is there a standard for gainful employment or minimum pass rates for pharmacy schools?
 
clarkbar said:
There will be pressure to dumb down the NAPLEX. Is there a standard for gainful employment or minimum pass rates for pharmacy schools?
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I don’t know how much more they can dumb it down considering it was a minimum competency test….
 
clarkbar said:
There will be pressure to dumb down the NAPLEX. Is there a standard for gainful employment or minimum pass rates for pharmacy schools?
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unfortunately I think you are probably correct - instead of schools saying- wow, we have crappy graduates and trying to be more selective (which means lost tuition $$), they will say how the test isn't fair or too hard in some way. They might even show how the number of graduates have decreased and we need to stave off an upcoming shortage or some BS like that.

In an ideal world, there would be regulation on the number of schools and graduates, and if you don't meet a certain minimum passing score, you go on probation, and if it fails to increase above that threshold, you lose accreditation, but we all know that will never happen.
 
Dred Pirate said:
unfortunately I think you are probably correct - instead of schools saying- wow, we have crappy graduates and trying to be more selective (which means lost tuition $$), they will say how the test isn't fair or too hard in some way. They might even show how the number of graduates have decreased and we need to stave off an upcoming shortage or some BS like that.

In an ideal world, there would be regulation on the number of schools and graduates, and if you don't meet a certain minimum passing score, you go on probation, and if it fails to increase above that threshold, you lose accreditation, but we all know that will never happen.
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This is where I think APhA could step it up. It would also handle our supply issue with the number of pharmacists.
 
law school has such a standard of gainful employment.
 
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