Other Loan Funds

Other loan funds may be available to pharmacy students. Information about these loans is available from the Office of Student Affairs, Pharmacy Building 5.112.

Advising for the University of Texas at Austin pre-pharmacy/undergraduate students is provided by assigned academic advisors in their colleges and by the Health Professions Office in the College of Natural Sciences. University students interested in the profession of pharmacy should contact their office early in their college careers.

Pre-pharmacy students from outside the University should seek information from our College of Pharmacy website, from their institutional academic advisors or Health Professions Office, and from an admissions representative from the College of Pharmacy.

Academic Warning and Dismissal

A student is placed on academic warning in the College of Pharmacy if he or she receives a grade of D+, D, D-, or F in any required pharmacy course. If the grade received is an F, the student must repeat the course and may not progress to courses for which it is a prerequisite until he or she has earned a grade of at least C- in the failed course. If the initial grade received is a D+, D, or D-, the student may progress to courses for which the course is a prerequisite. The student may choose to repeat a course in which he or she received a D+, D, or D-, if the course does not conflict with other courses the student would normally take in the same semester; however, this choice affects the student’s release from academic warning as described in the following section.

Professional Liability Insurance

Professional liability insurance is required of all students each year of the professional pharmacy curriculum. Coverage in the amount of two million dollars for each claim and six million dollars in the aggregate per year is provided through the insurance policy. The annual premium is less than $20.00 but is subject to change, and is payable by the student. The policy covers the period September 1 through August 31 and must be secured each year of the program through the University of Texas System.

Medical Clearance Requirements

In addition to the University’s immunization requirements, students must meet additional immunization requirements for students in healthcare programs as articulated in Title 25 of the Texas Administrative Code, Rule 97.64, and as mandated by the practice sites in which students participate in practicum experiences.

Students who are enrolled in a pharmacy program at another institution and who wish to transfer to the University should follow the normal Pharm.D. application process. Upon admission to the University and the professional curriculum, the student may request advanced standing in the pharmacy curriculum. Placement is contingent on availability of space and on transcript evaluation to determine University equivalencies for the student’s coursework.

As a condition of admission to the college, each student must sign a statement that he or she agrees to accept assignment to any one of the college’s experiential (internship) regions throughout the state. Cooperative arrangements for pharmacy education exist with academic units and health care institutions in the following internship regions: Austin/Temple/Waco, Dallas/Fort Worth, Galveston/Houston, San Antonio, and the Rio Grande Valley. Experiential regions may be added or deleted at any time based on the availability of resources.

Students assigned to San Antonio must spend the last two years of the professional program in that region. Students assigned to the other regions spend only the final year of the program (the fourth professional experiential year) in their assigned region.

Students are assigned to experiential regions through a computer-generated random assignment system that takes students’ ranked preferences into account. Since most students relocate to experiential regions outside the Austin area, region assignment occurs during the latter part of the first professional year to allow students adequate time to make personal and financial arrangements. There are no exceptions to the region assignment process. If a student fails to agree to accept assignment to any region, he or she will not be admitted to the college.

Additional Personal Factors

The information specified below is submitted either via PharmCAS or through the college's supplemental application.

1. Pharmacy and other related work experience
2. Organizational, service, and volunteer activities that demonstrate community involvement and leadership potential
3. Teaching, tutoring, and mentoring experience
4. Research experience
5. Honors and awards
6. Interview. Applicants are screened for interviews based on academic record, direct work experience in the profession, special life circumstances, and any other compelling factors. If the applicant is invited for an interview, then other factors are considered; these include but are not limited to the following:
   1. Knowledge of and motivation for pharmacy as a career
   2. Lifelong learning strategies
   3. Critical thinking skills
   4. Communication skills
   5. Compassion and commitment to care
   6. Respect toward others
   7. Organizational efficiency
   8. Integrity and ethical reasoning
   9. Relationship-building skills
   10. Leadership skills
   11. Teamwork
7. Special life circumstances; these include but are not limited to the following:
   1. Single parent
   2. Socioeconomic status of family
   3. First generation attending college
   4. Overcoming adversity
   5. Resident of an underserved area of the state or an area of Texas with a health professions shortage
   6. Race and ethnicity
   7. Cultural background

Because the University is a public institution, preference is given to applicants who are legal residents of Texas and to applicants from states without colleges of pharmacy. Applicants are strongly encouraged to examine the admission statistics published by the college on its admissions website.

Application Deadlines

The deadline to apply for admission to the college is specified on the PharmCAS website and linked via the College of Pharmacy.

Admission Requirements

While not required for acceptance or matriculation, applicants are encouraged to also complete a biochemistry and a communications or speech course.

1. The applicant must have completed at least 69 semester hours in total, and must have completed the following 45 hours in prerequisite courses prior to enrolling in the professional pharmacy curriculum:
   1. Six hours of biology, including cellular and molecular biology, and structure and function of organisms
   2. Eight hours of general chemistry with laboratory
   3. Three hours of freshman-level rhetoric and writing
   4. Three hours of humanities
   5. Three hours of calculus 
   6. Three hours of statistics
   7. Eight hours of organic chemistry with laboratory
   8. Four hours of microbiology with laboratory
   9. Four hours of physics with laboratory
   10. Three hours of anatomy, physiology, or anatomy/physiology
   11. The remaining 24 hours should be from Core Curriculum.
2. The applicant must remove all deficiencies in high school units by the means prescribed in the General Information Catalog before seeking admission to the professional curriculum.

Admission Procedures

1. All applications for the Pharm.D. program will be handled through the national Pharm.D. admissions system, PharmCAS. Students must adhere to the deadlines for admission specified. The PharmCAS application process will include a supplementary application to the college (with a nonrefundable supplementary application fee) necessary to acquire additional academic information for University admission. Candidates will be notified if additional information is required.
2. Selected applicants will be asked to appear for a personal interview. The personal interview will follow a multiple-mini interview (MMI) format.
3. The applicant is considered on the basis of overall academic performance, with emphasis on grades in the required Pharm.D. prerequisite courses. In accordance with University policy, courses in which the applicant earned a grade of D+, D, D-, or F at another institution are not transferable and may not be used to fulfill any degree requirements. However, courses in which the student earned a grade of D+, D, or D- are considered when the student’s admissibility to the professional curriculum is determined.
4. Applicants who have been offered admission to the University and to the Pharm.D. program will be asked to pay a nonrefundable enrollment deposit to the University. If the student does enroll in the program that fall, the deposit will be applied to the semester’s tuition bill.
5. All students accepted for admission in the Pharm.D. program will be processed for admission to The University of Texas using the information in the PharmCAS application. Additional materials for University admission may be required:
   1. A high school transcript, if the applicant’s foreign language requirement was completed in high school. Official transcripts must be sent to the University’s Office of Admissions.
   2. Scores on the Texas Higher Education Assessment (THEA) test (or an appropriate assessment test), if and only if the student is required by state law to take this test.
   3. Credit earned by examination. These reports should be sent directly to the Testing and Evaluation Services—Student Testing Services at the University. This would be done if and only if the student had not previously claimed credit showing on the transcript.
   4. Official transcripts for all colleges/universities attended.
6. An applicant who has been admitted to the University and to the professional curriculum but fails to enroll in either, and who wishes to enter the professional curriculum in a subsequent fall semester, must reapply both to the University and to the College of Pharmacy and must meet all requirements in force at the time of reapplication.
7. An applicant who has been admitted to and enrolls in the professional curriculum but subsequently withdraws, and who wishes to reenter in a subsequent fall semester, must apply for readmission to the professional curriculum and must meet all requirements in force at the time of reapplication. A student who has been out of the University for a semester or more must also apply for readmission to the University.

Technical Standards

“Technical standards” are the observational, communication, sensory/motor, and intellectual skills, the behavioral and social attributes, and the ethical values required for the completion of the professional curriculum and for the practice of pharmacy. These standards are described on the College of Pharmacy’s website. Each applicant must attest that they have read and understand the technical standards. Any applicant who believes he or she may have difficulty meeting them should contact the college’s director of admission.

Registration

The General Information Catalog gives information about registration, adding and dropping courses, transfer from one division of the University to another, and auditing a course. The Course Schedule published before registration each semester, includes registration instructions, advising locations, and the times, places, and instructors of classes. The Course Schedule and General Information are published on the Office of the Registrar’s website.

Each semester the academic advisor for the college provides registration guidance that is specific to the College of Pharmacy.

Registration as a Student-Intern

Upon matriculation to the first professional year, each student must register as a student-intern with the Texas State Board of Pharmacy. This is accomplished through completion of the Pharmacist-Intern Student Application. Each student must be registered as a student-intern in order to complete the academic requirements for the degree.

Requirements for Completion

The Honors Program allows a student to learn about the research method and conduct a research project under the supervision of one or more faculty members over a series of four sequential courses. Each course contains a different written component. These are a research proposal (PHM 290H), a research report (PHM 291H), a research project (PHM 292H) and a Research Honors thesis (PHM 293H). Requirements for the completion of the Honors Program are:

1. a grade point average of at least 3.00 in all required professional courses;
2. completion of PHM 187R;
3. completion of PHM 290H, PHM 291H, PHM 292H, and PHM 293H;
4. presentation of research results (poster) at a research symposium or college event;
5. approval of the Honors thesis by the Honors Program Committee and
6. completion of the regular curriculum for the degree. 

The statement “Research Honors in Pharmacy” appears on the transcript of each graduate certified to have completed the honors program.