Relationship between attitudes, demographics and application decisions among pre-pharmacy students: An exploratory investigation

Pharmacy education in the United States is currently in a state of transiti on as the nation's schools of pharmacy move from the five-year Bachelor of Science degree to the Doctor of Pharmacy degree. At this same time, applica tions to pharmacy schools have fallen for two consecutive years. Because of these trends, a potential concern for pharmacy educators is losing highly qualified students to other educational pursuits. The purpose of this study was to investigate: (i) the attitudinal differences, and (ii) the demograp hic differences that exist between applicants and non-applicants to pharmac y schools among students initially expressing an interest in pursuing a car eer in pharmacy. A mailed survey was sent in 1998 to 746 students who inten ded to major in pharmacy at a large midwestern college of pharmacy in the a cademic years 1994-1997. Measures of students' attitudes toward career comm itment, innovativeness, materialism, and other-directedness were collected, as were selected demographic data. Data analysis included descriptive stat istics and multiple logistic regression. A total of 228 (32.3 percent) usab le responses was obtained. Applicants were more likely to have higher grade point averages, higher career commitment scores, and to have decided on a career in pharmacy earlier in life. Results have implications for increasin g the number of applications to US schools of pharmacy and the revision of admission criteria currently used by many schools.