Pharmacy Residency Applications and Pre-Interview Rankings

The larger residency programs often receive hundreds of applications each year for a handful of residency positions.  Before PhORCAS, large amounts of data would need to be transferred from paper applications to spreadsheets allowing for a fair and consistent comparison of candidates.  As the number of applicants has grown and because the applicant numbers are expected to continue growing, more programs are turning to internal rankings using data pulled from PhORCAS.  A recent study published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacists describes one program's system for determining which applicants to invite for an on-site interview.  Prior to the analysis, they used 13 different characteristics.  After evaluating which factors were most likely to predict whether an applicant received an on-site interview, they removed duplicate factors and came up with 7 applicant characteristics which are starred below:

• Work experience pertaining to pharmacy*
• Professional association involvement*
• Types of rotation experiences*
• Publications*
• Presentations*
• Certifications and skills attained*
• Experience with research
• Grades*
• Recommendation letters
• Service to the community
• Awards and scholarships
• Letter of interest
• Leadership experience

Although letters of recommendation had the highest odds ratio of all of the characteristics (2.04), the 95% confidence interval suggests high variability with the predictability of this characteristic (0.79 - 5.27). The authors noted that most candidates score highly in this area making it a less valuable predictor of whether a student will be extended an offer to interview.

Grade point average was evaluated as a continuous variable in this model.  The applicability of the model to evaluating candidates without a GPA (ex. students from Roseman University) were not evaluated.  They noted that in the future, GPA could instead be used as a dichotomous variable (ex. yes or no to GPA above a certain cutoff) since students with a GPA below 3.0 were not extended an offer to interview.  

The authors felt that this process would be generalizable to other institutions but note that specific factors may vary by institution and that characteristics were not evaluated against PGY1 pharmacy practice residency performance.

Ensor CR, Walker CL, Rider SK, Clemente EU, Ashby DM, Shermock KM. Streamlining the process for initial review of pharmacy residency applications:  An analytic approach. Am J Health Syst Pharm. 2013 Oct 1; 70(19):1670-5.