Pharmacy school has turned into a complete joke!

[RxStudentatUB]

^This is really sad. I have a friend working now who mentioned he got in with a 2.9 cgpa and a bad pcat....the argument was that he knew what he was doing for his interview and it showed through......that's not the reason.

That is really confusing too, I thought I had a horrible interview at University of Minnesota and I got accepted in a flash. I think interviews for Rx school is just to fulfill the ACPE requirement, but in no shape, form or way does it form as an efficient filtration system

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[RxStudentatUB]

Wow.... If I put all "B" I SHOULD get 25% on the test assuming it's evenly distributed. The probability of getting 100% correct by guessing "B" would be .25^100. I think the OP and his supporters just died from laughter.

???

 

[Chriskahn]

I revisit negative threads like this when I need motivation to study. Works every time.

 

[deleted158872]

That is really confusing too, I thought I had a horrible interview at University of Minnesota and I got accepted in a flash. I think interviews for Rx school is just to fulfill the ACPE requirement, but in no shape, form or way does it form as an efficient filtration system

are you going to pharm school?

 

[SClENCE]

My impression was always that the interview can't really help you, it can only hurt you. The point of it being to weed out clueless people/idiots. If you got an interview you already look good enough on paper, the just want to make sure you aren't socially ******ed/really arrogant/clueless about pharmacy.

This is only a generalization and I could be wrong... I'v heard of some schools weighing the interview as high as 30% of your application... not sure if this is accurate though.

 

[RxStudentatUB]

are you going to pharm school?

If I go, I will choose Uni of Minnesota. I paid my non refundable deposit already, but I might defer a year to really think about things. Medicine is an intriguing choice, but with the way things are going over there I really don't know either. Are you almost done with ACPHS?

 

[8turkeys]

If I go, I will choose Uni of Minnesota. I paid my non refundable deposit already, but I might defer a year to really think about things. Medicine is an intriguing choice, but with the way things are going over there I really don't know either. Are you almost done with ACPHS?

Funny how you mentioned you will go to the U if you go to pharm school, I go there for undergrad. DO NOT GO TO THE UNIVERSITY of MINNESOTA it is too fricking cold. Half of your professors will be over a 100 miles away too because it is one campus on two site. Half profs at minneapolis and half at Duluth, I warned you, do not come here!

 

[engmedpt]

Medicine is an intriguing choice, but with the way things are going over there I really don't know either.

Predicting this med cycle to be the most competitive yet as students who wanted to make sure to get decent MCATs, would've been taking it July to January before the new transition.......and too late for the last cycle to get spots. Apply to 20+ schools easily if you do this.

Approximate acceptance rates for my uni this cycle were:
Dpt 7%
PA 6%
Dent 7%
Pharm 20+%
No vet


Med 3%

 

[RxStudentatUB]

Predicting this med cycle to be the most competitive yet as students who wanted to make sure to get decent MCATs, would've been taking it July to January before the new transition.......and too late for the last cycle to get spots. Apply to 20+ schools easily if you do this.

Approximate acceptance rates for my uni this cycle were:
Dpt 7%
PA 6%
Dent 7%
Pharm 20+% with satellites

Med 3%

Wow! This 3% includes both osteo and allo in the USA? I would have figured maybe 8-10%, but I guess things are getting interesting. I am surprised pharm was not 50%+ with the satellites. It's also a sham DPT is 3x more competitive than pharm, but not as compensated as much. Maybe this will be different in a few years.

 

[RxStudentatUB]

Predicting this med cycle to be the most competitive yet as students who wanted to make sure to get decent MCATs, would've been taking it July to January before the new transition.......and too late for the last cycle to get spots. Apply to 20+ schools easily if you do this.

Approximate acceptance rates for my uni this cycle were:
Dpt 7%
PA 6%
Dent 7%
Pharm 20+% with satellites

Med 3%

Ah, didn't read your post carefully. For YOUR university, those were the stats! Ignore my last post =].

 

[engmedpt]

Unlikely that the salary will increase much outside of a few thousand based on demand. People don't go into it for the money. Fine as long as they apply smart and minimize debt at 5 figures. This is a good pharmacy school. Its competitive. There is only a med school. I put these percentages up simply to show how hard it is to get in. All the health profession schools are strong at this uni but I don't believe it has the "rankings" top 10 unless dent or vet happen to be there......not sure. Rankings are facetious anyway. Base applications on outcomes.

 

[engmedpt]

"50%+ with the satellites"


Im not even sure bottom tier law schools are that bad

 

[Confused321]

In the 10+ years I've been on this forum I've read variations of this line a 1000 times. I'm going to differentiate myself...I'm going to be different. You have to love the blissful optimism of youth. It allows you to ignore the 99.9% and treat the 0.1% as gospel.

after 10 years of being on SDN do you believe that the recent negativity of pharmacy is anything to worry about?
if people have been complaining for 10 years but so many graduates are still able to get jobs all this time then doesnt that mean its still a good field

 

[gwarm01]

after 10 years of being on SDN do you believe that the recent negativity of pharmacy is anything to worry about?
if people have been complaining for 10 years but so many graduates are still able to get jobs all this time then doesnt that mean its still a good field

The writing has been on the wall for years. It's going from bad to worse and seems to get worse every year. At this point it takes willful ignorance to believe everything is fine.

 

[steveysmith54]

after 10 years of being on SDN do you believe that the recent negativity of pharmacy is anything to worry about?
if people have been complaining for 10 years but so many graduates are still able to get jobs all this time then doesnt that mean its still a good field

Let me give you a crash course in history. Don't know about the rest of the US, but in CA we had four schools until 2004. In 2004, they opened 3. In 2008, when those new three schools graduated their first class, the sign on bonuses and multiple job offers were gone. In 2008, they opened another pharmacy school. In 2012, jobs were even more scarce (people were settling for part time gigs and perdiem jobs). Then three more schools were opened, which have yet to graduate another class. I am predicting chaos when these 3 new schools graduate their inaugural classes in CA. Point is the job market and profession have gotten worse and worse since 2004, just matter of time until we hit rock bottom.

 

[ldiot]

Unfortunately the majority of people just don't have the smarts, but we keep on spoon feeding kids politically correct BS that they are each a special little flower, meanwhile lowering the standards in the name of equality/diversity/money.

I agree with the point you are making, and obviously retail isn't what it used to be, but is it not true that most pharmacy students do get a 6 figure job right out of graduation?

 

[Humble Sloth]

I wouldn't say pharm school is a joke either. I know friends with 3.0+ GPA's and pharm work experience that didn't get into schools this cycle or got interviews despite good LORs. There are still standards, I know people complain and there may be exceptions to the rule with students with lower stats getting in but I don't know of schools with reported averages of under 3.0 GPAs or abysmal PCAT scores being the norm.

Some areas may be saturated, but also consider that the economy went to pot and that's when many markets got scaled back. I have friends in nursing who are having trouble with the job search, I know many others who got laid off and many other professions being saturated. After the economy went down lots of sectors took hits, if I'm not mistaken physicians also typically took pay cuts or didn't see increases with some areas like radiology being "saturated" in certain markets (can't verify this info, just what I've heard). Not only this, but people took huge hits to their retirement investments to many who were set to retire still work to earn money that they lost when their retirement investments crashed with the economy. As the economy recovers it may take a while for things to bounce back as well when it comes to the job world.

Yes new pharm schools have opened, but there was a pretty big projected shortage prior to these schools which is what drove them to open. Sure, some programs see it as a cash cow but others with established rotations, in my opinion, are pretty solid and did open with the mission of being a healthcare focused institution and a PharmD being a beneficial degree for them to award when there appeared to be a mass shortage and job shortage in the future. Now, too many schools probably had this view, but I don't think it's the end of the world that everyone thinks.

In my area we have tons of job openings for clinical pharmacy positions and most institutions from what I've seen are considering expansions and more pharmacy involvement in their institutions. Retail may not be a garunteed job with a big salary anymore because many want to go into it, but just from what I've seen clinical pharmacy appears to be growing, and with more awareness going on and possibly provider status paying for clinical pharmacy work in certain areas I think it's going to be more mainstream. Retail may become saturated, but I think clinical pharmacy is expanding.

"some programs see it as a cash cow " more like MANY programs see it as a cash cow

Provider status will never happen. In fact the whole idea of clinical pharmacy is a complete joke. Provider status or rather the dream of provider status was destroyed by PAs and NPs who ate our lunch between 2005 and 2015. Anyone knows that has done a pharmD residency for clinical. You make power points about incredibly useless information that is considered a soft science at best and lots of other BS busy work. Clinical is just a buzz word universities use to try to sucker more student loan money from suckers.

 

[Humble Sloth]

Let me give you a crash course in history. Don't know about the rest of the US, but in CA we had four schools until 2004. In 2004, they opened 3. In 2008, when those new three schools graduated their first class, the sign on bonuses and multiple job offers were gone. In 2008, they opened another pharmacy school. In 2012, jobs were even more scarce (people were settling for part time gigs and perdiem jobs). Then three more schools were opened, which have yet to graduate another class. I am predicting chaos when these 3 new schools graduate their inaugural classes in CA. Point is the job market and profession have gotten worse and worse since 2004, just matter of time until we hit rock bottom.

Agree 100%. It's basic economics. Increase in supply of pharmacist. Demand of pharmacist declines or stays stagnant at best. It doesn't take a Google objective C programmer to do the math. There is still a chance if you graduate before 2020 and get a job at a BUSY and PROFITABLE retail location but after 2020 all bets are off and it's going to be a complete poop show. I expect around 30% of pharmD programs to close by 2025

 

[rph3664]

My impression was always that the interview can't really help you, it can only hurt you. The point of it being to weed out clueless people/idiots. If you got an interview you already look good enough on paper, the just want to make sure you aren't socially ******ed/really arrogant/clueless about pharmacy.

This is only a generalization and I could be wrong... I'v heard of some schools weighing the interview as high as 30% of your application... not sure if this is accurate though.

I know this is an old post, but this was the reasoning behind interviewing medical students. I've heard some schools don't do that any more; however, getting into med school is not as competitive as it was a generation or two ago.

One of my HS classmates appeared to be a shoo-in to medical school based on grades alone, and he was rejected by every school he interviewed at based on this.

 

[pharmacist_retail]

The future is not looking good for pharmacy. My generation got in before it was the next big thing. The next generation should be looking outside of the box and trying to predict what will be big in 5 - 10 years. Med school is a sure thing. However, the student loan debt is ridiculous. I have a Pharm.D., I work retail and I am lucky because my debt is not nearly as high as many M.D.'s. Back in my day, you do 6 years in pharmacy school and starting salary is 100 K. Now, the tuition is twice as high and you are not guaranteed a job because of sheer amount of people trying to do the same thing. I keep questioning whether or not I should have went to med school. I keep coming to the same conclusion, I am glad I didn't. However, now med school is not that much more expensive than pharmacy school. I would recommend going to med school. Also, you will have more respect with a M.D.

 

[Digsbe]

"some programs see it as a cash cow " more like MANY programs see it as a cash cow

Provider status will never happen. In fact the whole idea of clinical pharmacy is a complete joke. Provider status or rather the dream of provider status was destroyed by PAs and NPs who ate our lunch between 2005 and 2015. Anyone knows that has done a pharmD residency for clinical. You make power points about incredibly useless information that is considered a soft science at best and lots of other BS busy work. Clinical is just a buzz word universities use to try to sucker more student loan money from suckers.

Until pharmacists push for expanded scopes "clinical" pharmacy will still very much be lacking. Until it's common place for a clinical pharmacist to be able to manage patients and put in orders you'll be nothing more than a recommendation bot having to continually justify your position. Right now in nearly all states you can have a collaborative practice agreement similar to what enables NPs and PAs to do what they do, but it's not very common to actually have one partially due to insurance not paying for pharmacist services. Honestly it irks me to know what to do, have a higher knowledge about drug therapy and certain disease management parameters and have to "recommend" changes because you can't actually do them despite being fully trained and know full well what to do... See a patient with uncontrolled HTN, DM and CKD with a CrCl of 20 and they're on just a beta blocker and invokana... Can't do anything to optimize their therapy (this was a patient I had at one point). The only change that was made was metoprolol to carvedilol per the cardiologist.

 

[musicplease]

I'm not even sure why people are still entering this profession! Seriously, are there no other options out there or do students with 2.5 GPAs want to waste 200k because someone promised them that they'd make 120k after graduation?

Can someone please explain to me why students still think they have a future with this career?

The only future they have is to be a retail slave...

answered your own question.

 

[VeeSee]

I know this is an old post, but this was the reasoning behind interviewing medical students. I've heard some schools don't do that any more; however, getting into med school is not as competitive as it was a generation or two ago.

One of my HS classmates appeared to be a shoo-in to medical school based on grades alone, and he was rejected by every school he interviewed at based on this.

lol are you kidding? Getting into a US MD school is much harder than it has ever been. It's the opposite of pharmacy school. Gaining admission into a US MD school becomes more and more difficult while gaining admission to pharmacy school becomes more and more of a joke.

 

[PikminOC]

I have visited different medical subdivision threads and in and every single one there are posts on how abysmal their profession is. Optometry, dentistry (they complain about the loan amounts they have to take out which are double that of pharmacy), pharmacy. Its all the same.

Psychology psyd schools are popping up like weeds as well. It's all about making money....for the school!

 

[PikminOC]

Are We in a Medical Education Bubble Market?
David A. Asch, M.D., M.B.A., Sean Nicholson, Ph.D., and Marko Vujicic, Ph.D.

N Engl J Med 2013; 369:1973-1975November 21, 2013DOI: 10.1056/NEJMp1310778

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp1310778

But the standards don't change. It is highly standardized with numerous licensing exams.

 

[MountainPharmD]

after 10 years of being on SDN do you believe that the recent negativity of pharmacy is anything to worry about? If people have been complaining for 10 years but so many graduates are still able to get jobs all this time then doesnt that mean its still a good field

We are finally at the tipping point of oversupply. It's been a gradual climb. Now that we're here I think we will start to see a rapid worsening of the employment prospects. Even tne pharmacy mags are starting to report on it.

 

[Humble Sloth]

We are finally at the tipping point of oversupply. It's been a gradual climb. Now that we're here I think we will start to see a rapid worsening of the employment prospects. Even tne pharmacy mags are starting to report on it.

I don't think we are quite there yet. Maybe a few more years, like in 2020 will the oversupply and weak demand become very apparent with around 2/5 new pharmacists being out of work and another 2/5 only able to find part time hours.

 

[Caffeine QAM]

With these new pharmacy schools opening up, the market hasn't even reached steady state yet. What's the typical half-life of a pharmacist? If pharmacists retire after 40 years on average, and assuming no additional pharmacy schools open up during the next 40 years, it'll take at least 60 years for market steady state (~90%) to be reached. That's an entire lifetime. Until then, the influx of pharmacists will outpace the elimination of pharmacists (ignoring job growth/decline) and competition will continue to increase unless drastic changes happen.

 

[wagrxm2000]

With these new pharmacy schools opening up, the market hasn't even reached steady state yet. What's the typical half-life of a pharmacist? If pharmacists retire after 40 years on average, and assuming no additional pharmacy schools open up during the next 40 years, it'll take at least 60 years for market steady state (~90%) to be reached. That's an entire lifetime. Until then, the influx of pharmacists will outpace the elimination of pharmacists (ignoring job growth/decline) and competition will continue to increase unless drastic changes happen.

Pharmacy is a 25 year career. I could never imagine standing all day in my late 50s and 60s.

Does anyone know the statistics for new grad lawyers?

 

[PikminOC]

With these new pharmacy schools opening up, the market hasn't even reached steady state yet. What's the typical half-life of a pharmacist? If pharmacists retire after 40 years on average, and assuming no additional pharmacy schools open up during the next 40 years, it'll take at least 60 years for market steady state (~90%) to be reached. That's an entire lifetime. Until then, the influx of pharmacists will outpace the elimination of pharmacists (ignoring job growth/decline) and competition will continue to increase unless drastic changes happen.

Winner winner chicken dinner!

 

[Caffeine QAM]

Pharmacy is a 25 year career. I could never imagine standing all day in my late 50s and 60s.

Does anyone know the statistics for new grad lawyers?

If most pharmacists now start working at age 27 (not statistics, just a rough guess), after 25 years, they will be only 52... can they really retire that soon? Or career switch? Especially with the social security situation nowadays compounded with higher debt load, it's going to be even harder to retire "on time". Not to mention, if life-expetancy continues to rise as per the trend over the last several decades...

 

[wagrxm2000]

If most pharmacists now start working at age 27 (not statistics, just a rough guess), after 25 years, they will be only 52... can they really retire that soon? Or career switch? Especially with the social security situation nowadays compounded with higher debt load, it's going to be even harder to retire "on time". Not to mention, if life-expetancy continues to rise as per the trend over the last several decades...

I won't retire but I'll be part time when I hit 25 years. These knees won't be able to handle 12 hour shifts anymore.

If you do a quick calculation of maxing your 401k, ira, and assume $5000 company match that's a total of $28500 ($23500 being from you). Do that for 25 years and a conservative 5% return you will have about 1.4 million. If you then never touch it for another 15 when you are 65 it will be 3 million.

So yes a pharmacist should only need to work full time for 25 years.

 

[Humble Sloth]

Pharmacy is a 25 year career. I could never imagine standing all day in my late 50s and 60s.

Does anyone know the statistics for new grad lawyers?

I believe real unemployment for JD/lawyers is around 20-25%. So law is about five years ahead of pharmacy is this respect.

 

[Caffeine QAM]

I won't retire but I'll be part time when I hit 25 years. These knees won't be able to handle 12 hour shifts anymore.

If you do a quick calculation of maxing your 401k, ira, and assume $5000 company match that's a total of $28500 ($23500 being from you). Do that for 25 years and a conservative 5% return you will have about 1.4 million. If you then never touch it for another 15 when you are 65 it will be 3 million.

So yes a pharmacist should only need to work full time for 25 years.

Would be really hard to put 30k a year towards 401k. Sounds do-able, but mutually exclusive with saving. If I personally did that, I might have to say goodbye to buying a home. I guess while hopsital pharmacists don't have to stand on our feet all day, we also get paid less than retail...maybe it's the fate of hospital pharmacists to work past 65 years of age...

 

[wagrxm2000]

Would be really hard to put 30k a year towards 401k. Sounds do-able, but mutually exclusive with saving. If I personally did that, I might have to say goodbye to buying a home. I guess while hopsital pharmacists don't have to stand on our feet all day, we also get paid less than retail...maybe it's the fate of hospital pharmacists to work past 65 years of age...

23.5k is closer to 20k then 30k. Depending on your salary you can live a fine life on 55k after taxes.

 

[wagrxm2000]

I believe real unemployment for JD/lawyers is around 20-25%. So law is about five years ahead of pharmacy is this respect.

This is what I'm getting at. Once we start seeing these numbers then we know its bad. This is right around the corner.

 

[Humble Sloth]

This is what I'm getting at. Once we start seeing these numbers then we know its bad. This is right around the corner.

I mean bad is all relative. It will just be a lot more competitive/cut throat. Even now i know lawyers doing very well. A ranking system for pharmD's will form and if your not from X, Y or Z you will not have low employment prospects.

 

[knight on horse]

I'm not even sure why people are still entering this profession! Seriously, are there no other options out there or do students with 2.5 GPAs want to waste 200k because someone promised them that they'd make 120k after graduation?

Can someone please explain to me why students still think they have a future with this career?

The only future they have is to be a retail slave...

People are dumb buddy. I just wish I had gotten more sleep so I could have steered my own path then