What is/was the fail rate at your pharmacy school?

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gnuel

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I'm curious as to how other schools are like. I was very surprised at how many people fail at my school.

If you fail a course, being a year-round school, you have to wait until next year when it is taught again, pushing you back a year.

Out of the initial ~200 students from the beginning, only ~160 make it to graduation their first try.

Is this normal?
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I don't think that is normal or right. Either your school is taking in people who can't handle it, or they aren't taking any measures to prevent people from failing. It is, VERY, VERY, VERY hard at my school to fail out. Even if you get an F, all you have to do is go through remediation until the professor is satisfied that you understand the material, and you can proceed to the next year.
 
Not high enough.
 
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10% at my school. Your 20% fail rate does sound a little high. Law is also a hard class where I'm at, but I wouldn't say it's something that usually gets people. For us, it's the big classes like pharmacology (second year) or therapeutics (third year).
 
When I came in, they said we have a 95% on time graduation rate. Well, I'm not sure what's going on in my class but we are already down to a little over 90% and we aren't even in the P2 year yet. Maybe the other campus is doing better because if they aren't, they are going to have to revise those figures downward in a couple of years.
 
We started with 78 our P1 year. We have 58 of our original students still on track (P3s now), with about 4-5 students held back one year.
 
I think the national average for pharmacy school is around 8%.
 
In my class it was just me.

I'm special. I managed to probably be the only person in the history of pharmacy education to fail a class I had something like a 78% in (70% was a "C").

Meanwhile, the year before me two girls were caught cheating in front of the Dean and 2 teachers...they hired a lawyer...didn't get kicked out...or held back...graduated on time.

Only in West Virginia...
 
Midwestern CPG is a year round school and in my class only 2 had to go on the 4 year plan and that was because of health reasons. No one failed because of grades. Now on rotations, I hear a lot of people are failing rotations for various reasons and so they have to do an extra rotation so they will graduate 6 weeks after everyone else.
 
rielazegui said:
Midwestern CPG is a year round school and in my class only 2 had to go on the 4 year plan and that was because of health reasons. No one failed because of grades. Now on rotations, I hear a lot of people are failing rotations for various reasons and so they have to do an extra rotation so they will graduate 6 weeks after everyone else.
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I heard this from a couple people/pharmacists- that the Midwestern students sometimes do not perform well on their rotations. I applied there but was sort of worried about the things I heard. Maybe it is just too much to cram in three years, I dunno.
 
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For grades? we lost like... 1 person out of ~75 ish, a few left/deferred for personal/health reasons, and of those, 2 got into other schools as transfers.

we're a 3.0 school also, i'll update this at the end of P-2 with more solid #'s since there's two ways to get DQ'd academically and/or sent to the next class: 1) C- or worse in a single class, 2) <3.0 for 2 consecutive semesters (or 3, i dunno).
 
out of 122 of us who started pharmacy school together, 1 actually graduated a year ahead of us (!), "skipping" a year, 1 dropped out, and one more extended her graduation by a year (took a lower course load in the last 3 years.)

I didn't know UOP had such crazy stats! (stats above are ucsf)
 
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gnuel said:
I'm curious as to how other schools are like. I was very surprised at how many people fail at my school (UOP).

If you fail a course, being a year-round school, you have to wait until next year when it is taught again, pushing you back a year.

Out of the initial ~200 students from the beginning, only ~160 make it to graduation their first try. The biggies that people fail the most are Law and Infectious Disease.

Is this normal?
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stat seems low: 80% graduation rate. Why don't just make it 4 year then? I see USn and lecom Erie has similar stats.
 
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Seems about right. PCAT is easy, undergrad classes can be high school level at some places, some of these kids are there because they couldn't make it to med school, first time they may take a real class with real tests that aren't all multiple choice will be in pharm school, game over.

I'd be more worried about schools that don't fail anyone, whatever remediation is keep the remediated away from the drug supply.
 
WVUPharm2007 said:
In my class it was just me.

I'm special. I managed to probably be the only person in the history of pharmacy education to fail a class I had something like a 78% in (70% was a "C").
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I wonder what you would be doing if you had indeed dropped out of pharmacy school.
 
It is normal for a 4 year school to have more than 20% of its students to not finish within 4 years? That 20% included students who are either held back or dismissed...
 
startingover11 said:
It is normal for a 4 year school to have more than 20% of its students to not finish within 4 years? That 20% included students who are either held back or dismissed...
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No. Most of the 4 year schools have very low failure rates.
 
Some classes can be made up in the summertime (with the student footing the bill) if you don't pass, but generally you end up one year behind when you fail a course here. Our P1 class was on track to lose about 4.7% of the class, I heard, if they couldn't make up required courses over the summer.
 
A huge percentage of my class, if not the outright majority, would have "flunked out" if we had to maintain a 3.0! We only had to have a 2.0, and there were many people who got exactly that more than once.
 
Not high enough.



hahahahahahahahah

2 years later, exact same answer. I should probably look at the age of the thread.
 
gnuel said:
I'm curious as to how other schools are like. I was very surprised at how many people fail at my school.

If you fail a course, being a year-round school, you have to wait until next year when it is taught again, pushing you back a year.

Out of the initial ~200 students from the beginning, only ~160 make it to graduation their first try.

Is this normal?
Click to expand...

i've talked to a lot of people about that school of yours. for some reason they enjoy failing students. they give preferential treatment to specific "professional frat". it's just how it is, i guess. when a handful of professors, who are in power positions, are alumnis of that frat, getting hookups is the norm!
 
Sparda29 said:
My class started with 66, and 63 are graduating.
Click to expand...

that's a pretty low attrition rate, how many of those 3 are academic related? I personally don't count "life event" attrition when asking.
 
Sparda29 said:
My class started with 66, and 63 are graduating.
Click to expand...
I think about the same for my class, don't recall the exact amount starting, but it's pretty close to that. One left in the first week of class (she was kinda crazy, not really sure what happened there), one left 2nd semester P2 after realizing pharmacy was not for him, one left 1st semester P3, probably related to having a child and poor attendance, one failed a class so repeated P2 therapeutics, one spaced out his P3 classes for some reason so that it'll take him 2 years to complete it (he passed therapeutics and pharmacology with us, but didnt take the counseling, immunizing, and research project courses so he won't start rotations until next year).
 
confettiflyer said:
that's a pretty low attrition rate, how many of those 3 are academic related? I personally don't count "life event" attrition when asking.
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I believe one had a family member get really sick so she moved back to California and I believe they let her to a transfer to Touro CA. Another one decided first semester that pharmacy wasn't for her. And one for academic reasons, but that person is graduating in 2013.
 
Sparda29 said:
I believe one had a family member get really sick so she moved back to California and I believe they let her to a transfer to Touro CA. Another one decided first semester that pharmacy wasn't for her. And one for academic reasons, but that person is graduating in 2013.
Click to expand...

So ONE person dropped down for academic reasons? That's a 1.5% academic attrition rate.

Either all your students are awesome, your school is way too easy, or it's really easy to pass but difficult to get an A...or some combo of all 3.
 
I remember talking to someone at UH Hilo and they said one person dropped out the first week of school because of a volcano eruption alert...they were so distressed by it that they packed up and left. Hahah
 
confettiflyer said:
So ONE person dropped down for academic reasons? That's a 1.5% academic attrition rate.

Either all your students are awesome, your school is way too easy, or it's really easy to pass but difficult to get an A...or some combo of all 3.
Click to expand...

Hypothetically they could also just be really, really good at selection/screening. I offer Sparda as evidence for this hypothesis.
 
confettiflyer said:
So ONE person dropped down for academic reasons? That's a 1.5% academic attrition rate.

Either all your students are awesome, your school is way too easy, or it's really easy to pass but difficult to get an A...or some combo of all 3.
Click to expand...

There are very few ways to fail out.

A- You get a F in a class and can't remediate it. Or get more than 3 Ds and can't remediate.
B - If you drop below 2.0, you're placed on academic/financial probation. You have to get your cumulative back up to above a 2.0 to continue on.
C - Cheating/Violence/Drug Dealing/Spycams in pharmacy bathrooms,etc - Auto Fail

On the other hand, it's also very hard to get an A. We only had 1 person who sustained a 4.0 throughout, and a handful above 3.5.
 
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