Special Readiness Program for Newly-Enrolled Pharmacy Students

Mar 2, 2017 | Customer Solutions

Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program is designed to help pharmacy programs identify and remediate newly-enrolled students who may be weak in their foundational prerequisite subject matter knowledge and provide detailed evaluations of those students to Pharmacy educators.
Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program is designed to help pharmacy programs identify and remediate newly-enrolled students who may be weak in their foundational prerequisite subject matter knowledge. Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program provides Pharmacy educators with a detailed evaluation of each newly-enrolled student’s strengths and weaknesses in their core foundational pharmacy prerequisite subjects. This will enable the pharmacy educator to assign appropriate remediation prior to the individual student becoming at-risk of failure or falling behind in the rigorous pharmacy curriculum.

Specifically, Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program provides Pharmacy educators with the necessary tools in the form of benchmark exams and their accompanying score reporting. The purpose is to efficiently evaluate students within their 1st semester of enrollment on their knowledge and competency in the college prerequisite course material that are the foundational building blocks of their Pharmacy education.

Upon students’ completion of each exam, the pharmacy educator will receive a detailed score report showing each individual student’s strengths and weaknesses in specific core topics and subjects for each benchmark readiness exam.

Here is a partial list of the benchmark readiness exams in Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness program:

  • Algebra
  • Statistics
  • General Chemistry
  • Biochemistry
  • Organic Chemistry
  • Anatomy and Physiology
  • Biology

 

When are these benchmark Readiness Exams administered?

Normally during the first 60-days of enrollment within the Pharmacy program.

 

How are these benchmark Readiness Exams structured?

A sample breakdown of each benchmark readiness exam is available from Exam Master training staff. Most exams are organized by Topic, Subject and Category.

 

What are the desired outcomes of each Pharmacy benchmark Readiness Exam?

Each benchmark readiness exam is written not to determine a student’s general knowledge of a specific course, like organic chemistry. But is designed to specifically identify each student’s core knowledge within the specific subject in relation to the knowledge and competencies needed to succeed as a Pharmacy student. These exams can be customized to adapt to a program’s course objectives.

 

Why is a Readiness Program needed for Pharmacy education?

For a number of years now the ratio of applicants to available entry seats in Pharmacy schools has been moving in an adverse direction. In other words, with the growth in the number of pharmacy schools, there has not been a corresponding increase in the numbers of students applying to these schools. Thus, Pharmacy programs, to maintain sustainable enrollment levels, have been required to be less selective in their admissions criteria. There are many different factors for this reduction in applicants, from insufficient marketing and promotion of Pharmacy as a career, to the rise of other attractive health science careers like Physician Assistant, to the reduction of the need for retail pharmacists, particularly in urban areas.

No matter what the reason, due to this reduction in the proportional applicant pool the quality of applicants that schools can pull from has been reduced. This has led to schools enrolling more students who academically might not have been offered enrollment in the past. This does not mean these students cannot be trained to be competent pharmacists. But, more students are entering Pharmacy schools with lower a GPA and, in some cases, a weaker grounding in the core math and science subjects needed for success in the pharmacy curriculum.

 

What is the difference between Exam Master’s in-school Pharmacy Readiness Program and an entrance exam like PCAT

Exams like the PCAT are designed to be a predictor of a student’s success within a program like Pharmacy. Their purpose therefore is to help programs select students likely to succeed. Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program is not designed as a predictor, but is used after the student has been enrolled and is used as a true measurement tool to determine the student’s weakness within specific prerequisite subject areas that have the greatest impact on the individual student succeeding in mastering their pharmacy courses.

In an important way, the fact that a Pharmacy program may need to accept a lower PCAT score as one admissions criteria in the face of a declining applicant pool supports the strategy of better assessing those students who are accepted under the lower admissions criteria.

Also Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program can be customized over time based upon the feedback from the individual school as these exams are administered to newly-enrolled pharmacy students. For example, if more of a school’s students are struggling in a specific topic within Algebra like Solving quadratic equations and inequalities or in a topic within Organic Chemistry like Properties of organic compounds, Exam Master is able to create additional questions for those topics within these specific subjects. This would lead to a truly customized readiness exam based upon the program’s individual student’s strengths and weaknesses within these prerequisite foundational pharmacy subjects.

Exam Master’s Pharmacy Readiness Program is delivered through our Academic Manager online testing platform. This allows faculty to assign exams and receive real-time score reporting for each individual student taking these readiness exams. Also the score reporting per exam is broken down into topic and subtopics per subject for efficient evaluation of needed remediation. Remediation and self-directed study can also be administered through the Academic Manager testing platform.