PSOP Student
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- May 11, 2019
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I just finished up a few years at Pacific’s School of Pharmacy (PSOP). I have been meaning to write this review for a long while now, but always avoided doing so because of the time it would require to compose. I hope some students find it beneficial and will help students know what they are getting themselves into. I would like to help others and give an honest review without any bias and be as honest as possible while doing so. I will give my most honest reflection of my time at PSOP, but I will do so without giving away my identity for fear of and blowback. Please don’t ask about who I am and any sensitive information as I will do my best to ensure that my identity is not revealed. I sincerely hope future students sees this post as I hope this post helps them before they dedicate themselves to moving here with their belongings.
My journey started about 2-3 years ago. If I could go back, I would not have allowed myself to have been fooled into coming to PSOP. My advice for anyone that asks me whether they should consider PSOP would be a flat out “NO!” There is no way I would ever recommend or even offer PSOP to anyone that I know. Till this day, my biggest regret in life was allowing myself to be fooled into coming to PSOP. What a horrible time I have had here in Hillsboro.
If you live in Oregon and you want to reside in Oregon in the future, I would suggest you NOT choose pharmacy as a career. That market is oversaturated. Unless you have a job offer that is guaranteed or are relocating to a rural area without any competition, I would suggest you choose another major, seriously all my preceptors tell me the same thing. I am going into pharmacy because one of those options above applies to me, otherwise, I would not consider pharmacy at all. If you live in Oregon with a job guarantee, I would suggest you go to OHSU. I hear that their students are much better prepared for their rotations than PSOP’s students. All my preceptors during my rotations have all said the same thing, “there is a noticeable difference between students that come from PSOP vs OHSU.” After that I would suggest those that can, move to Washington as they like OHSU, have a higher NAPLEX passing rate.
Let’s start from the beginning. PSOP is a business before it is a school, just like many other pharmacy programs. They are out to make money from your tuition. I am not sure how it is at other schools, but PSOP trains their student ambassadors to lie and deflect to interviewing students. PSOP student ambassadors are selected through a screening process. In this screening process, the honest students (like me who will tell it like it is) are weeded out. During the screening process, potential student ambassadors are asked a serious of questions they are supposed to answer. These questions are structured as if they are asked by interviewing students. Here is an example of such questions: “How would you respond to an interviewee that asks you how stressful time at PSOP is? What would you say about the difficulty of the exams and the re-exams? How stressed are you at PSOP?” If a potential student ambassador replies honestly or gives a response that shows the school in a negative light, the potential student ambassador is weeded out. I know this is a fact, because I know the students that were selected and those that weren’t. The selected student ambassadors aren’t the most honest students and are only being ambassadors for the sake of their CV. The actual students that want to help the interviewees are the honest ones that want to give honest feedback to help and show students what life really is like, but they aren’t selected of course. We all know what would happen if a student is too honest and scares the interviewees away. Additionally, the selected student ambassadors undergo training in which they are told what questions to answer, how to answer and not to scare the interviewees away. Anyone that wants to verify this information out, can contact and ask their student ambassadors.
I fell victim to this same scam when I first interviewed at PSOP. It was awkward when I first interviewed because all the student ambassadors were so disingenuous and repetitive with their responses. They always pivoted away from directly answering my questions and always avoided talking about the students that failed, the stress level, the re-exams, the extended learning and the students that were held back 1 year if they didn’t pass 1 course. During my interview prior to enrolling, I talked to so many student ambassadors and they all gave the same repetitive answer. Their responses were the exact same, as if they rehearsed their responses. Years later after becoming a student, I found out that their answers were scripted and practiced. These student ambassadors are the type of students that are only out for themselves and their CVs. I could never do what they did as I am not a person who can keep a straight face and lie to people. To this day, I still remember the student ambassadors that lied to me during my interview. I still know their faces and their names. I know so many other students in my class who are still furious that they were duped with dishonesty too. I would never hire a pharmacist that was a student ambassador as they clearly aren’t in this profession to help people. They have no remorse about lying to others, they can lie with a straight face and worst of all they can sleep fine at night.
Now let’s get to it. What life is like at PSOP? If you are a genius and can learn everything you need to know from sitting in class for 6 hours everyday, 8-3:30 and then take an exam on the material in 1 week on the following Friday, this is the school for you. If you are like most students I know, you will spend the majority of your time at PSOP in class, then at home during the night studying and reviewing that same material over and over again. You will spend the weekend studying and they you will spend the days leading up the exam cramming while attending class in the mornings. You will rinse and repeat this for 2 years. As you can imagine, this gets old and very stressful quickly. This gets worse if you fail your Friday exams and have to re-exam on the following Mondays as you will spend that weekend studying and cramming. The re-exam on Monday is not the same Friday exam, so don’t think you will breeze through it. I know many people who re-exam so often, I am surprised at their ability not to break down.
The block system at PSOP:
Many students at PSOP that I have talked to, feel the same way. They feel lied to, they feel tricked and most of all they are so stressed out they regret attending PSOP. I know graduates from PSOP that say they wish they didn’t attend PSOP because of the time they lost out on in life. These graduates say that they wish they could also go back and not attend PSOP. I have talked to students from other programs that say they miss pharmacy school because of the fun they had. I forgot that other pharmacy schools have summer breaks. At PSOP, there aren’t any breaks, especially if you EL, then you get no breaks at all since you will be trying not to get kicked out of the program.
At PSOP, some professors quit because they don’t agree with what the school is doing. The professor turnover rate at PSOP is so high that some professors leave the program after just a few years here. Most professors are here to collect the teaching experience and then leave. Some professor leave because they don’t agree with the way students at PSOP are taught as they don’t believe that students are benefiting. Some professors are open about their disagreement with the program, but I will not name any names. If you are a student at PSOP, you know which teachers I am talking about. Speaking about professors, some professors enjoy having power and control over students. Some professors enjoy holding students back and have no remorse at all.
In addition to all that I have said, there is no dedicated laboratory. During my interview, we were shown a research lab. After enrolling, I find out that this laboratory is only for research that the professors work in. So, students don’t have an actual lab that they can enter and practice in. At PSOP, we are only in a makeshift room where we make suppositories, lip balm and other items once. So, while you are at PSOP, you will be exposed to the laboratory that you can work in maybe for 4 days during your P1 year. After that, you never step foot into the lab again. If you think those 4 days are going to help you during your hospital rotations, think again.
Another horrible part of attending PSOP is the rent. The rent here is so crazy expensive to live in a little town called Hillsboro. Hillsboro is full of nothing but Hispanic farmers and a jail, but the rent here is outrageous. For a 1 bedroom apartment, the average cost is $1,200+. The cost of living basically makes the tuition at PSOP the same as other schools. The rent here is driven primarily by the influx of college students who moved to Forest Grove to attend Pacific’s main campus. As more student move in, the rent for these two little town continues to rise, and the individuals that own all the land here benefit from student loans. The result of this as you can imagine is that the people local to the area are pushed out because you can’t survive on minimum wage here. I talked with some locals who say that they have to bunk with other roommates just to survive in this little town. It is sad to see as the rent continues to increase and locals are forced out onto the streets. Clearly some individuals from the university are benefiting from this as some many apartments continue to be developed around the Forest Grove campus. These newer apartments start at $1,600+ a month the last time I checked, which is crazy considering Forest Grove doesn’t even have much other than the college.
Now, my intention isn’t to tear PSOP down, but rather to show what life is really like at PSOP. I don’t believe that any program should be able to lie to potential students. I believe that they should be as transparent as possible. There are loans that have to be repaid. If these students don’t make it, they will carry these student loans until they are paid off. You shouldn’t be able to flat out lie and hide the reality of the program. Be as honest as possible so that students can make the correct choice and determine if they are a good fit of the program or not. Don’t lie to students, tell them not to worry and then have them drop out with loans they will have to pay back. That is unfair and completely unethical.
For the class of 2021, all the students that were kicked out or dropped out, all have a student debt that they will now have to carry. I sincerely believe that these student debts could have been avoided had the students known what they would be in store for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to be a student ambassador and warn them before they signed up for PSOP.
One very easy thing you can do if you are thinking about whether I am honest is to contact your student ambassador and ask them about what I have wrote. I would do it via a phone call, so you can hear their voice. Another thing you can do is contact students via Facebook. However, I doubt most students will be honest out of fear of what PSOP may do. I think the only way even I would be honest if contacted through Facebook, is to do it anonymously.
Anyways, this is a long post, but I am a person who appreciates the little details and honesty, so sorry. Pick your path wisely as I have given you what I wish someone would’ve provided me before attending PSOP. I wish I could go back in time and attend the other schools I was accepted to. I know I would be happier and better off in the long run. Reflecting on my life choices, attending PSOP is my biggest regret. However, who knows, maybe this is the program for you, it just wasn’t for me and those that I know closely here at PSOP.
If you have any questions, I can try to answer them for you, if I have the time to do so. Life is a journey, not a race. Choose your path wisely.
My journey started about 2-3 years ago. If I could go back, I would not have allowed myself to have been fooled into coming to PSOP. My advice for anyone that asks me whether they should consider PSOP would be a flat out “NO!” There is no way I would ever recommend or even offer PSOP to anyone that I know. Till this day, my biggest regret in life was allowing myself to be fooled into coming to PSOP. What a horrible time I have had here in Hillsboro.
If you live in Oregon and you want to reside in Oregon in the future, I would suggest you NOT choose pharmacy as a career. That market is oversaturated. Unless you have a job offer that is guaranteed or are relocating to a rural area without any competition, I would suggest you choose another major, seriously all my preceptors tell me the same thing. I am going into pharmacy because one of those options above applies to me, otherwise, I would not consider pharmacy at all. If you live in Oregon with a job guarantee, I would suggest you go to OHSU. I hear that their students are much better prepared for their rotations than PSOP’s students. All my preceptors during my rotations have all said the same thing, “there is a noticeable difference between students that come from PSOP vs OHSU.” After that I would suggest those that can, move to Washington as they like OHSU, have a higher NAPLEX passing rate.
Let’s start from the beginning. PSOP is a business before it is a school, just like many other pharmacy programs. They are out to make money from your tuition. I am not sure how it is at other schools, but PSOP trains their student ambassadors to lie and deflect to interviewing students. PSOP student ambassadors are selected through a screening process. In this screening process, the honest students (like me who will tell it like it is) are weeded out. During the screening process, potential student ambassadors are asked a serious of questions they are supposed to answer. These questions are structured as if they are asked by interviewing students. Here is an example of such questions: “How would you respond to an interviewee that asks you how stressful time at PSOP is? What would you say about the difficulty of the exams and the re-exams? How stressed are you at PSOP?” If a potential student ambassador replies honestly or gives a response that shows the school in a negative light, the potential student ambassador is weeded out. I know this is a fact, because I know the students that were selected and those that weren’t. The selected student ambassadors aren’t the most honest students and are only being ambassadors for the sake of their CV. The actual students that want to help the interviewees are the honest ones that want to give honest feedback to help and show students what life really is like, but they aren’t selected of course. We all know what would happen if a student is too honest and scares the interviewees away. Additionally, the selected student ambassadors undergo training in which they are told what questions to answer, how to answer and not to scare the interviewees away. Anyone that wants to verify this information out, can contact and ask their student ambassadors.
I fell victim to this same scam when I first interviewed at PSOP. It was awkward when I first interviewed because all the student ambassadors were so disingenuous and repetitive with their responses. They always pivoted away from directly answering my questions and always avoided talking about the students that failed, the stress level, the re-exams, the extended learning and the students that were held back 1 year if they didn’t pass 1 course. During my interview prior to enrolling, I talked to so many student ambassadors and they all gave the same repetitive answer. Their responses were the exact same, as if they rehearsed their responses. Years later after becoming a student, I found out that their answers were scripted and practiced. These student ambassadors are the type of students that are only out for themselves and their CVs. I could never do what they did as I am not a person who can keep a straight face and lie to people. To this day, I still remember the student ambassadors that lied to me during my interview. I still know their faces and their names. I know so many other students in my class who are still furious that they were duped with dishonesty too. I would never hire a pharmacist that was a student ambassador as they clearly aren’t in this profession to help people. They have no remorse about lying to others, they can lie with a straight face and worst of all they can sleep fine at night.
Now let’s get to it. What life is like at PSOP? If you are a genius and can learn everything you need to know from sitting in class for 6 hours everyday, 8-3:30 and then take an exam on the material in 1 week on the following Friday, this is the school for you. If you are like most students I know, you will spend the majority of your time at PSOP in class, then at home during the night studying and reviewing that same material over and over again. You will spend the weekend studying and they you will spend the days leading up the exam cramming while attending class in the mornings. You will rinse and repeat this for 2 years. As you can imagine, this gets old and very stressful quickly. This gets worse if you fail your Friday exams and have to re-exam on the following Mondays as you will spend that weekend studying and cramming. The re-exam on Monday is not the same Friday exam, so don’t think you will breeze through it. I know many people who re-exam so often, I am surprised at their ability not to break down.
The block system at PSOP:
- Each block/topic starts on Wednesday and goes through until the next Friday. So, you have 9 days in total to master the topic with 1 weekend. On the Friday you must pass your exam with > 90%.
- If you don’t pass, you must retake the exam on the following Monday with > 90%. For some teachers, it doesn’t matter if you score an 89.99999%. You need to score a 90% or above to pass. Regardless, you will spend the weekend studying to pass your Monday re-exam.
- If you don’t pass that Monday re-exam, you get an EL (extended learning). The EL occurs during the winter (2/3 weeks break) and summer breaks (1 week break). During this time, you will get to self-study and attempt to pass the block with > 90%.
- If you don’t pass 1 course during the semester, you get held back 1 year, if you choose to come back to the program. During this sit out period, you are waiting for the next cohort to start in August.
- If at anytime during the program, you get 4 Els, meaning you didn’t pass 4 block exams, you get automatically kicked out. At this point you can choose to wait 1 year and come back to the program again the following year with the next cohort.
- Rumors are that the class of 2021, they had the most amount of P1 students to have ever dropped out of the program. Additionally, whispers are that the class of 2021 is the poorest performing class to date in terms of examination failings and ELs.
- Rumors also say that this year they have new professors who are making up new courses to hold students back. This course is called APPE Prep. This is a block that tests you on all the material from the prior years. The worst part of this course is that because these new professors aren’t aware of the curriculum, they created exams on topics that were never covered at PSOP. Predictably, some students didn’t pass their exams and are being held back for not knowing the answers to topics that they were never taught, but yet some how expected to know the answer to.
Many students at PSOP that I have talked to, feel the same way. They feel lied to, they feel tricked and most of all they are so stressed out they regret attending PSOP. I know graduates from PSOP that say they wish they didn’t attend PSOP because of the time they lost out on in life. These graduates say that they wish they could also go back and not attend PSOP. I have talked to students from other programs that say they miss pharmacy school because of the fun they had. I forgot that other pharmacy schools have summer breaks. At PSOP, there aren’t any breaks, especially if you EL, then you get no breaks at all since you will be trying not to get kicked out of the program.
At PSOP, some professors quit because they don’t agree with what the school is doing. The professor turnover rate at PSOP is so high that some professors leave the program after just a few years here. Most professors are here to collect the teaching experience and then leave. Some professor leave because they don’t agree with the way students at PSOP are taught as they don’t believe that students are benefiting. Some professors are open about their disagreement with the program, but I will not name any names. If you are a student at PSOP, you know which teachers I am talking about. Speaking about professors, some professors enjoy having power and control over students. Some professors enjoy holding students back and have no remorse at all.
In addition to all that I have said, there is no dedicated laboratory. During my interview, we were shown a research lab. After enrolling, I find out that this laboratory is only for research that the professors work in. So, students don’t have an actual lab that they can enter and practice in. At PSOP, we are only in a makeshift room where we make suppositories, lip balm and other items once. So, while you are at PSOP, you will be exposed to the laboratory that you can work in maybe for 4 days during your P1 year. After that, you never step foot into the lab again. If you think those 4 days are going to help you during your hospital rotations, think again.
Another horrible part of attending PSOP is the rent. The rent here is so crazy expensive to live in a little town called Hillsboro. Hillsboro is full of nothing but Hispanic farmers and a jail, but the rent here is outrageous. For a 1 bedroom apartment, the average cost is $1,200+. The cost of living basically makes the tuition at PSOP the same as other schools. The rent here is driven primarily by the influx of college students who moved to Forest Grove to attend Pacific’s main campus. As more student move in, the rent for these two little town continues to rise, and the individuals that own all the land here benefit from student loans. The result of this as you can imagine is that the people local to the area are pushed out because you can’t survive on minimum wage here. I talked with some locals who say that they have to bunk with other roommates just to survive in this little town. It is sad to see as the rent continues to increase and locals are forced out onto the streets. Clearly some individuals from the university are benefiting from this as some many apartments continue to be developed around the Forest Grove campus. These newer apartments start at $1,600+ a month the last time I checked, which is crazy considering Forest Grove doesn’t even have much other than the college.
Now, my intention isn’t to tear PSOP down, but rather to show what life is really like at PSOP. I don’t believe that any program should be able to lie to potential students. I believe that they should be as transparent as possible. There are loans that have to be repaid. If these students don’t make it, they will carry these student loans until they are paid off. You shouldn’t be able to flat out lie and hide the reality of the program. Be as honest as possible so that students can make the correct choice and determine if they are a good fit of the program or not. Don’t lie to students, tell them not to worry and then have them drop out with loans they will have to pay back. That is unfair and completely unethical.
For the class of 2021, all the students that were kicked out or dropped out, all have a student debt that they will now have to carry. I sincerely believe that these student debts could have been avoided had the students known what they would be in store for. Unfortunately, I wasn’t allowed to be a student ambassador and warn them before they signed up for PSOP.
One very easy thing you can do if you are thinking about whether I am honest is to contact your student ambassador and ask them about what I have wrote. I would do it via a phone call, so you can hear their voice. Another thing you can do is contact students via Facebook. However, I doubt most students will be honest out of fear of what PSOP may do. I think the only way even I would be honest if contacted through Facebook, is to do it anonymously.
Anyways, this is a long post, but I am a person who appreciates the little details and honesty, so sorry. Pick your path wisely as I have given you what I wish someone would’ve provided me before attending PSOP. I wish I could go back in time and attend the other schools I was accepted to. I know I would be happier and better off in the long run. Reflecting on my life choices, attending PSOP is my biggest regret. However, who knows, maybe this is the program for you, it just wasn’t for me and those that I know closely here at PSOP.
If you have any questions, I can try to answer them for you, if I have the time to do so. Life is a journey, not a race. Choose your path wisely.
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