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 transition 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, applications 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 demographic differences that exist between applicants and non-applicants to pharmacy schools among students initially expressing an interest in pursuing a career in pharmacy. A mailed survey was sent in 1998 to 746 students who intended to major in pharmacy at a large midwestern college of pharmacy in the academic years 1994-1997. Measures of students' attitudes toward career commitment, innovativeness, materialism, and other-directedness were collected, as were selected demographic data. Data analysis included descriptive statistics and multiple logistic regression. A total of 228 (32.3 percent) usable 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 increasing the number of applications to US schools of pharmacy and the revision of admission criteria currently used by many schools.