THE University once again dominated the June 2013 Pharmacy licensure examinations, with six Thomasians entering the Top 10.
Data from the Professional Regulation Commission (PRC) showed that 293 out of 365 Thomasians made the cut this year, or an 80.2-percent passing rate. This was lower than last year’s 88.92 percent, with 281 passers out of 316 examinees.
UST emerged as this year’s third top-performing school. Last year it was second.
Leading the new batch of Thomasian pharmacists is Clinical Pharmacy summa cum laude Ryan Justin Raynes, who ranked second with a 93.65-percent score.
Other Thomasians in the Top 10 are Marc Oliver Armeña (92.45 percent), Noel Tan, Jr. (92.30 percent), Joshua Santos (92.27 percent), and Shervin Cruzado and Pamela Berilyn So (92.05 percent), who took the third, fourth, fifth, and seventh spots, respectively.
Franchesca Choi from the University of the Philippines-Manila is the topnotcher with a 93.70-percent passing rate.
Among the 293 passers from UST, 292 were first-time takers and only one passed from 13 repeaters.
New Pharmacy Dean Ma. Elena Manansala said the faculty is planning for new strategies to make sure that next year will be better.
She said the new UST topnotchers would be invited to a conference so they could give suggestions on how to improve UST’s licensure performance.
Manansala added that the school would make sure board-exam takers would “really attend the review classes.”
“We will have the course audit this second semester,” she explained. “We will see [to it] that the students will be attending because we will be implementing the requirement that they attend at least 80 percent of the review class.”
Saint Louis University was again named the top-performing school with a passing rate of 98.39 percent, or 122 passers out of 124 examinees. It was followed by Our Lady of Fatima University-Valenzuela with a 91.04-percent passing rate.
UST remains the top producer of licensed pharmacists in the country.
PRC requires an at least 80-percent passing rate and a minimum of 50 examinees to be named as a top-performing school.
This year, the national passing rate went down to 58.96 percent, or 1,385 passers out of 2,349 examinees, from last year’s 63.11 percent. Celton F. Ramirez
