-
CycleTrack and SDN are teaming up to make medical school admissions more transparent and accessible! Read the announcement to learn how we’re supporting the future of CycleTrack’s free application-tracking tools .
What are schools saying about the profession
Started by wagrxm2000
Get help with your application
Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.
Market is really bad, even retail positions are not guaranteed anymore. Professors will tell you it's bad if asked. But won't mention it up front.
When I visited the state university pharmacy school, I asked one dean about the market saturation. He went from jovial to withdrawn within an instant. He lowered his face and told me that there were too many pharmacy schools pumping out students. He told me that new schools were run by greedy people who didn't care about the profession. Only when I changed the subject did he lift his face. I could tell he was ashamed to even admit this, but I'm glad he was honest about the matter.
From the sound of it, all my friends and I were asked the same question at our interview: Do you know the state of the pharmacy market? I told my interviewer that there were too many new schools. He went further by saying these schools were run by greedy f'ing a#$holes.
At least our state doesn't have a gazillion pharmacy schools like the rest of the country, so the market isn't bad here in BFE.
From the sound of it, all my friends and I were asked the same question at our interview: Do you know the state of the pharmacy market? I told my interviewer that there were too many new schools. He went further by saying these schools were run by greedy f'ing a#$holes.
At least our state doesn't have a gazillion pharmacy schools like the rest of the country, so the market isn't bad here in BFE.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
During an open house, the admissions director at an east coast school talked about how the job placement is no longer "automatic," and that they've put some programs, elective classes, and offices in place to keep their post-graduation employment numbers high. Said school shares the post-graduation employment numbers for the previous classes, but they only get about a 35% response rate.
So I'd say it's pretty honest. Not detailed, but not painting rainbows and pots of gold.
So I'd say it's pretty honest. Not detailed, but not painting rainbows and pots of gold.
Well its good to see there's some honesty out there.
I don't think they have to worry yet, but applications have been in a freefall. They were down 10% this year. If the trend continues then faculty at less fiscally stable schools should start examining their options.
It's not all new pharmacy schools. Most new pharmacy schools don't nearly have the class sizes the state schools do and if I'm not mistaken many state schools expanded as well or opened new campuses.
Its true that the older pharmacy schools have increased class sizes. But, these schools do not charge an outrageous amount of money for tuition, tend to attract higher quality applicants, and are staffed by professors and professionals who have years of experience in the field of pharmacy. A lot of new schools charge excessive tuition, accept a ton of subpar/inexperienced students, and are staffed by "professors" who have never worked a single day in a pharmacy.
Yes, they do charge outrageous tuition especially if you are out of state. It's usually only cheaper if you go to an in-state school that has good state funding/tuition support. I wouldn't paint all new schools with the same brush, sure some are more diploma-mill oriented and have sub-par faculty but other's I'd argue are superior to state schools.
I agree. I am going to be graduating from a school that opened just over 10 years ago but the school is actually fairly good. The students have had consistently high passing rates compared to older and other new schools within the state (actually had the highest naplex first time pass rate in the state). So it's certainly unfair to envelope all newer schools into one group.
That said, I do wonder why any new pharmacy schools are opening with the excessive number of pharmacist graduating and the market being so saturated. Of my graduating class, I would say nearly half of us have had to relocate for jobs or take positions that weren't our first choices.
So the pass rate at your school is above 95%!!!!! Because that is the average pass rate nationally. That's only a difference of five to ten people between your supposedly awesome school and the other schools in your state.
I would be more interested in percentage of students who are able to intern during school, percentage of students who were able to get full-time work upon graduation, attrition rate, etc, rather than the Naplex pass rate. The Naplex is a joke of an exam.
Plus I would be more worried about the fact that there are multiple schools in your state. More than two schools is bad for most states.
About UMass Lowell:
"What's more, bringing a pharmacy school is critically important for the region, according to McKinney, who has been working on launching a pharmacy program since 2011. Instead of pharmacy students heading to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University (MCPHS) in Boston, MCPHS in Worcester or Western New England University in Springfield, these students can now head to UMass Lowell."
...Because there is a critically important need for a 5th pharmacy school in Massachusetts, especially one within an hour of MCPHS Boston, Northeastern, MCPHS Worcester, MCPHS Manchester, and University of New Hampshire.
"What's more, bringing a pharmacy school is critically important for the region, according to McKinney, who has been working on launching a pharmacy program since 2011. Instead of pharmacy students heading to Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences University (MCPHS) in Boston, MCPHS in Worcester or Western New England University in Springfield, these students can now head to UMass Lowell."
...Because there is a critically important need for a 5th pharmacy school in Massachusetts, especially one within an hour of MCPHS Boston, Northeastern, MCPHS Worcester, MCPHS Manchester, and University of New Hampshire.
I agree completely. Hopefully the state boards will realize the state of the current pharmacy market and not permit any new schools to open and perhaps even begin closing schools that are sub par.
And ~90 minutes from URI, UConn or UNE.
The nice thing is it will be a state school, so hopefully it will take students away from the other MA schools based on more reasonable tuition. Maybe enough to get WNEU or NEU to close their programs altogether? (I can dream)
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
Nope, 18 year olds want to be in Boston not Lowell or Springfield. My old preceptor from RI was accepted to URI but chose Northeastern cause she wanted to be in the city. She complained about how hard she had it cause of her loans, mortgage and new Lexus SUV payments. SMH.
Plus the majority of MCPHS students come from California and Michigan cause the 50k/year tuition is still cheaper here than there.
If only State Boards of Pharmacy actually licensed Pharmacy Schools.
A Board could prevent a Pharmacy School from opening up a Pharmacy or from storing controlleds onsite for research, but not from teaching.
The Boards say that it's ACPE's job to prohibit new schools.
ACPE says that it only has the power to enforce its own standards (which do not include post-graduation employment rates).
I'm from michigan and no, the 50k/year tuition does not exist here. the school I'm at right now is 20k/year, and the other two schools are also in that range, for in-state students at least.
Same here in BFE. Anything above 20K a year is too much (heck I think 20K is a ripoff). But 50K is too much. It's up there with private medical school tuition.
I would just shoot for medical school if pharm school was 50k/year. That's clearly a ripoff, and the only students going to these ridiculously expensive new schools are the ones that don't have hope anywhere else.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
I don't know how the coastal states justify such high tuition. It's cheaper for people just to move out here in BFE, work part-time/PRN, and pay in-state tuition in the red states.
Because people don't want to move for school or work.... for example, this hit the front page on Reddit.
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfi...uated_from_school_last_year_200k_in_pharmacy/
Yeah, if you don't want to move away from a Highly "Desirable Place" to Live to BFE for school and/work, don't be surprised if you run into financial hardship and career troubles.
I went to school 3,000 miles away from "home." My co-workers think that was a crazy decision yet they are paying a ****-ton in private loans after going to Northstate or didn't even need to go to pharmacy school because their family is wealthy (like WTF)?
https://www.reddit.com/r/personalfi...uated_from_school_last_year_200k_in_pharmacy/
Yeah, if you don't want to move away from a Highly "Desirable Place" to Live to BFE for school and/work, don't be surprised if you run into financial hardship and career troubles.
I went to school 3,000 miles away from "home." My co-workers think that was a crazy decision yet they are paying a ****-ton in private loans after going to Northstate or didn't even need to go to pharmacy school because their family is wealthy (like WTF)?
Did a quick read. The OP in that thread says one of her classmates graduated with $500K in debt. Holy F@#$. That's private dental school tuition.
And the OP of that thread didn't work at all during school. What kind of people are these private schools enrolling? My public school requires that we have a job as pharmacy techs or they won't even give us an interview.
This is why I started this thread, I still don't believe students are prepared for life after school.
I call bull****. There's no way a pharmacy student accumulated half a million dollars of student loan debt. If it's true then they get absolutely no sympathy from me. Take some personal responsibility for your actions before you whine to reddit lol
I don't see how you can borrow 110k+ per year... Idk any school that lists their cost of attendance that high. You can't get federal loans beyond the cost of attendance.
😱 might as well be a dentist. did this person also go to private undergrad as well? If they don't find a well-paying pharm job, that kind of debt will seriously crush you. Can we get a breakdown of the debt if possible(if not too personal)? How is this possible?
Don't even see how dentists manage their debt, especially those who specialize in ortho, endo. Inching closer and closer to a mil in debt. Any dentists around here to explain?
I am not a dentist but I am a matriculating dental student that has some limited knowledge on the debt management. Well, for pharmacist, the roof of earning potential plateaus at 120k or 130k with a bunch of overtime work and now as wage decreases, this salary/wage is more like the exception than the norm.
for dentistry, ortho (which suffers saturation but still doable in bony areas) and endo (still ok) offer a chance to earn 250k starting out working for someone in a private office/corporate (this is the regular estimating wage, not overestimating or underestimating). Many dental specialists, despite mountain of debt, take out more debt to buy a dental office that boosts the earning potential to 350k at least starting out as ownership. Thus, in 5-6 years, if they manage the debt carefully, they can clear the seemingly impossible debt. It is not uncommon for dental specialist to reach 400-500k as owners. Generalist owners hovers around 300k. However, as you age, your back and your hand give in and these specialists and generalists work 3-4 days to lengthen their careers.
It takes stiff competition to get into ortho or endo so these students are the cream of the crop too.
the true and realistic question you should question is how dental students graduate with DDS/DMD have near million debts (trust me, many dental schools have near 430k COA and with undergrad debt, this figure easily reaches half a mil mark). These students will earn like 120-150k$ starting out so this debt is not manageable but you will see that many students will still pay it off in 5-10 year track living well below their mean.
I believe the super high debt of dental education (at private dental schools, for less competitive but still competitive students) scare noncommitted students away from the profession. Why?. because once you graduate with that debt, you can only work and work to pay it off with no way out.
if you cant pay it off, you can enter IRB/PAYE (government program that you pay 10% or 15% of your gross income for 15-20 years and get the rest of the amount forgiven but still taxable income). you still have to come up with generally 400k overall to pay for your dental education.
honestly, I got into the public school OOS that give in state tuition after one year(just by going to school there for 1 year, no need to work or own property) but I seriously question the sustainability of this high tuition model dental schools have
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
It's not what schools are really saying about the profession... but it's what they're DOING TO the profession. An example?
Take a look at the prepharm forum:
A student that was initially rejected received an acceptance e-mail very recently. That is more criminal than Walter White's last two seasons in Breaking Bad.
Take a look at the prepharm forum:
A student that was initially rejected received an acceptance e-mail very recently. That is more criminal than Walter White's last two seasons in Breaking Bad.
And in other news:
UMass Lowell scraps doctor of pharmacy program
By Rick Sobey, [email protected]
LOWELL -- The plan for the first public doctor of pharmacy program in Massachusetts is dead.
Due to budget restraints, UMass Lowell will not be able to open a doctor of pharmacy program, according to Chancellor Jacquie Moloney.
http://www.lowellsun.com/todaysheadlines/ci_30378862/uml-scraps-doctor-pharmacy-program
Thanks for your concern, but no, the tenured (not clinical) faculty are doing fine (if you count the fact that universities in general are declining). Remember, undergraduate pharmacy students are one part of the business model. I would realistically say that the top 8-12 schools do not even need to run the undergraduate division to stay in business due to sponsored projects and industry funding if they shed their clinical faculty (and this includes both UC's, UNC, Wisc, UW, Purdue, Rutgers, UMN, and UT).
Those of us who are also pharmacists though are despondent at the market prospects. I don't mind a late 1980s market (equivalent to 5 years ago) where there are enough personnel to ensure that there is some minimal staffing safety (hospitals in particular would run with too few staff and that would cause patient care problems in the early 00s when I graduated). It means there is no bonus bonanza, but jobs were still for the choosing. This market and the conditions the graduates go into it are really bad with a chance that CMS cuts will make it worse for everyone (dentistry and specialty medicine included).
Not the board's problem. That's ACPE's and there is a Special Interest Group dedicated to the regulatory capture of ACPE (alluding to the 'greedy' proposition). If anyone wanted torches and pitchforks in front of any pharmacy organization for working counter to the interests of pharmacists, I'd probably direct you to ACPE HQ in Chicago.
Here's a counterargument though that won't sit well with most of you, but I think ought to be voiced. What would you do if you were in a private school's shoes? Most of you are all money conscious, I have a feeling and I think you do too that you would do the pump and dump oversaturation if it meant that I'd rake in an extra $100-150k a year and quite legally. I know I wouldn't trust myself in that circumstance, so I wouldn't trust you. That's the point of having the accreditation agency, to look after the education interests of the profession and not be financially motivated to make off ourselves. But, we set up ACPE like we did FDA in terms of pay to play, and really, a lot of it is for those petty reasons.
Nice. Now if they can only close more of these unnecessary schools across the country...
I think professors are doing just fine. A lot of them are loving it. It has been well known that professors/administrators make less than retail RPh. I've seen some money hungry ones leave well established schools to take more money in these start up schools. Cough Cough Chapman. Basically demand for "educators" especially with rotation sites have gone up tremendously with all start ups seeking their services. However, when I look at faculty at these start ups most professors seems highly unqualified with very limited experience.
Our private and state pharmacy school bug me all the time to take more amb care interns. I continue to deny them, I am not ready to handle more students and have told them this but they keep pushing...
California pharmacy schools got together and got rid of the 1,500 hours of internship requirement. Students are now graduating with no real pharmacy experience.
All they have been doing is following their professors around and looking at charts. This is not what working pharmacists do because we don't get reimburse for this type of work. The professors don't care because their salary comes from the students tuition, not from the work they are doing.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
While they're following their professors they are also developing a false sense of superiority over dispensing pharmacists. I've seen so many of these kids say things like "oh, you're just a staff pharmacist?"
Just shows how corrupt everyone is in pharmacy. APhA president takes money and flies across the country to open a school in the most saturated city in US and then BOP gets rid of a requirement that is meant to protect the public and has been in places for ages. The change just happens to coincide when interns began complaining that they can't find intern hours (check the meeting notes from BOP website if you don't believe me) from chains when 4 new schools just happen to pop up. In my day, we had one kid who couldn't find an intern job, so he went to volunteer in a local independent as an intern to get his hours.
Same here. Lets be honest, pharmacy is drawing far fewer upper echelon of students than it did in early 2000's when we would see about 20:1 acceptance rate in most schools. Why? The elite students do their homework and know that 120K guarantee is gone, profession is severely devalued.
Stand up to those students!! Tell them their professors are making jack. Tell them many PGY-1s can't find full time work. Do this while you are eating a juicy steak and drinking fine wine.
Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
I think as pharmacists, especially in CA, we need to unite and show solidarity by refusing to precept/hire/or have any affiliation from questionable schools and their leaders.
@$*# Duquesne (or insert your least favorite school, I'll use my alma mater). The time for revolution has come!
(Duquesne and Creighton back in the old days got lots of grief for graduating screw-ups. It's a sad, sad day to know that they aren't the easy target anymore for "dumbest pharmacist" jokes.)
was looking at naplex passing rates.
http://www.nabp.net/system/rich/rich_files/rich_files/000/001/276/original/naplex-passrates-2015.pdf
handful of schools with passing rates in 70's, this means that 1/4 students that they train don't even learn minimum competency. One school below 70%. Damn shame ACPE has such ****ty standards.
I think another main reason is also the absurd cost today versus the early 2000's. I know my public institution was charging about 5000 a year in tuition and fees in 2004 school year. In 2009 the tuition and fees was 13,500. In 2014 the tuition and fees was 18000. My university conveniently doesn't list last years or this years tuition. I'm sure today it is 20k, it is a joke. So basically when the job market was scalding hot and you got multiple offers etc, you could get a pharmacy degree for a total of <20k in tuition and fees. Yet now its minimum 80k and the job market is worse. This doesn't take into account living expenses, inevitably 3-7% tuition increases and the last year tuition being greater due to going to school for the summer semester as well.
Clearly most upper echelon students don't want to take on 6 figures of debt over 6+ years to work in retail pharmacy where hours are dwindling and pay is stagnant, and has fallen in some areas.
Advertisement - Members don't see this ad
To answer the OP:
I've gotten both semi-truth and lies at my school. A couple of professors have been heard to half heartedly mutter things about the job market being a bit tougher than it once was. Another one of my professors (who is a big, big deal in the pharmacy world in my state) says ridiculous things like "you'll all be rich pharmacists one day". These kids around me that don't have a single day of pharmacy experience under their belt eat this s*** up. Meanwhile, none of us can get intern jobs so most of us are raking in loans or taking crap retail jobs to keep the loans a bit under control. For me, having worked in pharmacy for 12 years, to be looking for anything to pull in a buck right now is painful. No one will hire me as a tech because I'm a licensed intern now, but there are no intern jobs so deliver pizza?
I've gotten both semi-truth and lies at my school. A couple of professors have been heard to half heartedly mutter things about the job market being a bit tougher than it once was. Another one of my professors (who is a big, big deal in the pharmacy world in my state) says ridiculous things like "you'll all be rich pharmacists one day". These kids around me that don't have a single day of pharmacy experience under their belt eat this s*** up. Meanwhile, none of us can get intern jobs so most of us are raking in loans or taking crap retail jobs to keep the loans a bit under control. For me, having worked in pharmacy for 12 years, to be looking for anything to pull in a buck right now is painful. No one will hire me as a tech because I'm a licensed intern now, but there are no intern jobs so deliver pizza?
There's about 140+ pharmacy schools in comparison to the other professions. When I was attending interviews, the dean of the pharmacy school did mention saturation, but he also said something along the lines of, "once you graduate you'll get a degree that will attest to the hard work at which you've put in, and also a stable career".
If these schools keep opening, the profession won't have the same outlook. There NEEDS to be less schools, but with so much variety, the admissions criteria is getting lower and lower. So, it's reasonable to say that people are greedy. Keep in mind the dean of this particular pharmacy school was responsible for the upbringing of the pharmacy school in Hawaii, and eventually abandoned ship to open another one.
"I'm tryin to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. It's hard to be legit and still pay tha rent." -2Pac (and probably a majority of the newer pharmacy schools)
If these schools keep opening, the profession won't have the same outlook. There NEEDS to be less schools, but with so much variety, the admissions criteria is getting lower and lower. So, it's reasonable to say that people are greedy. Keep in mind the dean of this particular pharmacy school was responsible for the upbringing of the pharmacy school in Hawaii, and eventually abandoned ship to open another one.
"I'm tryin to make a dollar out of fifteen cents. It's hard to be legit and still pay tha rent." -2Pac (and probably a majority of the newer pharmacy schools)
Last edited:
I thought this was a relic from the BSPharm days. At least that's what they told us in Iowa when they removed the requirement. Previously there were no APPE or IPPEs, but now that is all included in the PharmD program? Maybe I'm off on that part. Technically in Iowa the hour requirement is still there, but now it can be satisfied by in-school intern hours.
Arizona, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Minnesota actually had harder rules before my time where you had to have 500 hours at least outside school. I think PA, NJ, and NY still keep that requirement. Honestly, I wish they would reinstate that rule. I don't want to license anyone who has not been a paid intern or practiced unsupervised due to the chain and hospital crowdsourcing ability to weed out useless people where a school would be permissive about admissions. School hours are protected, but outside hours are where you were committed to working for a paycheck.
Then again, I was the last group to take the MN practical (which was a cakewalk for anyone who worked as an intern for basically anywhere) and one of the last to do the WI practical that tested the same problem, did the candidate actually have any real world experience whatsoever before entering practice (in terms of verifying scripts and being able to do basic compounding with sterile technique)? That used to fail a bunch of people for lack of practice experience, which was the entire point.
My school successfully lobbied to drop the intern requirements back in 2012 with the help of a few students. Their argument was that the P4 year and summer rotations met that experiential requirement. As someone who worked for three years as a hospital intern I wholeheartedly disagree, but what can you do. We basically took away the barrier that was holding back new graduates from surrounding states from working here. As luck would have it, no one wants to work in Arkansas and we have not been hit by saturation as hard as other parts of the country. That said, we are now in an era where a pharmacist could enter the job market having never worked a single shift in a pharmacy. Rotations have education value, but most of us would agree that they do usually expose you to actual working conditions.
Similar threads
