FPGEE® Test ©

In the beginning...

2006-12-31T22:50:00.000-08:00

PLEASE IGNORE ALL DATES FOR THE BLOG - IT IS THE ONLY WAY I CAN GET THEM TO APPEAR IN THE CORRECT ORDER FROM TOP TO BOTTOM

I have passed the FPGEE and this blog is to help others do the same as smoothly and stress freely as possible

I have realised that it is VERY difficult to contact me via this blogsite so am taking the risk that I don't get inundated with spam by giving out my email, but I know SO many people want to email me with their questions and queries and I really do want to help each and every one of you as much as I can, so if you want to email me please do via SCURTISCO at AOL dot COM (If I write it the usual way then I know spambots will trove my address and I really will be sorry!). But please, feel free to email me with any queries, concerns, questions, worries and so on you may have.

Regards and Good Luck to all,

Farmacyst

It was different in my day...

2006-12-30T13:36:00.000-08:00

I've literally only just taken the exam and already everything's changed! The registration was direct with NABP and now it's with a third party called ECE. I couldn't at this point comment on the veracity of their credential checking powers, but I would guess they were likely to be more stringent rather than less. And the NABP have changed the syllabus slightly, of the FPGEE exam itself. No doubt to cover broader subject areas and make the exam harder to pass. Which of course I endorse whole-heartedly, having breezed through with no-effort at all myself, so clearly the exam and is too easy!!

OK, so its getting harder to apply and its getting harder to take, but its still worth it, so don't lose faith. Read on for more help.

And now (January 2009) the NABP have changed the exam itself (hopefully to make it easier to take). Here's the latest update from the NABP's website:

Notice of Change in FPGEE Administration
In spring 2009, the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency Examination® (FPGEE®) will be administered using a computerized format. The FPGEE will be administered twice each year at Pearson VUE test sites throughout the continental United States. The first computerized FPGEE will be administered on Tuesday, April 14, 2009. Please note that there will not be a test administration in June 2009.

So anything I wrote later in this blog about my experiences of the paper and pencil exam will need to be considered as out of date now!

Let me tell you about what I went through, starting with the madness I went through to have my credentials verified!

First of all I filled out the application form for the FPGEE. What you receive is daunting. I got a lovely yellow book explaining what I had to do, plus, at the back were some sample questions to look at.
Now at this point I wasn't too concerned about getting my hands on sample questions, but let me tell you they are VERY important, as will be explained in a later blog posting.

So it appeared what I first needed to do was to get the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain (RPSGB) to write a "letter of good standing" (which, apparently, they write a lot of) to the NABP (presumably now to the ECE) saying that I have never been naughty and am not currently under suspicion of anything.
I also had to ask my old University to send a detailed transcript of all my college results to the NABP too. Apparently they too are very familiar with this! Indeed, both the RPSGB and my University sent the paperwork directly to the NABP.
Then I had to take my Degree Certificate and RPSGB Registration certificate to a "notary public" to have them sign a photocopy (whilst seeing the originals) and put their special stamp on the corner of each, prior to putting them in an envelope, signed, sealed and stamped again on the outside, and only then could I post these doscument to the USA. The only problem in the UK is we don't have an equivalent of a notary public (we have notaries, but they are different - and I may be wrong about the "public" bit, but feel free to correct me).
Anyway, the point is I needed to go to the other option offered, which was a "magistrate". So, there I was, a few days later, paying my £40 fee and having to go in front of a judge, m'lud, for a bunch of signatures and stamps.
Well, let me tell you, don't ever fall foul of the law, a magistrates court is no place to be!
But I met with the court official who explained what would happen, and about 3 hours later (coz he promptly forgot about me) I had the various forms all nicely signed and sealed and off I went on my merry way.
About a month later I got a letter thanking me for the papers I had sent, but informing me that because I hadn't done a degree of sufficient length (then 4 years, now 5 years) I was required to show additional proof of suitability. The request was for copies of my A' levels, which I duly copied and sent.
About a month later the reply came back that the photocopies were required to be notarised as the other paperwork had been. So, back I went to the stinky magistrates court - a slightly quicker effort this time as I was seen before court proceedings started - and sent the paperwork off again.
About another month later I was informed that the papers were insufficient to need, and, get this, they now wanted my secondary school headmaster to write a letter saying I had attended and that I had received the A'level results I claimed!
I finished secondary school in 1987. My school closed down in 1990. My headmaster is dead. I phoned the NABP and asked why they needed further proof of my A'levels when surely, by default, if I had a degree from a British University they must have checked my credentials already. Apparently the problem stems from the fact that my degree was too short, and that the Americans wanted to see some other proof of status and worth, so show comparable stature. Fine, I phoned the school that my school had merged with to become. They apparently destroy all the records of all their students 6 years after they leave. I spoke with the headmaster, and asked if he would write a letter of good-standing verifying my A-level results. He asked if I has proof - I rummaged around my parents house and came up with a poetry reading certificate, a piano recital commendation, and more importantly, the booklet the school produced each year showing all the students O'level and A'level results (I had one for each year I was in them) - plus of course I had all my certificates.
So, I rushed over to the school on a lovely summers day, with the roof down on my Mercedes 500SL, and drove in to my old secondary school like I was the most successful student they had ever had! I was advised by some security people on entering the grounds to put the roof up on my car or the bastards would steal things from inside it. Ho hum, nothings changed about my school then :-)
And then I met the lovely headmaster, who was about 3 years older than me, and we had a lovely chat about his Dad having to re-qualify when he moved from England to Scotland, and about my impressive piano playing and poetry reading skills, and, of course, he wrote me a lovely letter, put it in an envelope, sealed it, signed it, and stamped the envelope, and we shook hands and I thought - my God he's young to be a headmaster!
And about a month later, finally, I received a letter saying that I had met the criteria to be allowed to sit the bloody exam. My wife was of course delighted!
I can't recall exactly when I was told I was eligible to sit the December 2006 exam, but I think it was around May, and therefore much too late to sit the June exam. The letter informed me that paperwork would be posted in August explaining the procedure for "applying" to sit the December exam.

I shall discuss that total mess-up in my next blog.

Farmacyst

One thing wrong leads to another...

2006-12-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

So I've told you about all the fun and hysterics of getting through the validity checking procedure for sitting the FPGEE exam. And now I was sitting back and waiting for the summer when I would receive the forms for applying to sit the December exam.
In the meantime it just so happened that some close friends who live in New York announced their engagement. When? The first weekend of December. When is the FPGEE usually? Only the first weekend in December! So now I really needed the paperwork from the FPGEE so that I could confirm my registration in New York, and book flights and hotels accordingly.

August, nothing comes.

September, nothing.

My wife's going mental.

I phone the NABP. Sorry, we don't communicate by phone. I email, sorry we require a fax. I fax, sorry, you need to refer to the letter we sent. I didn't get the f letter. I go to the website, and spot an email link for the Executive Director/Secretary
exec-office@nabp.net and I write a letter to them explaining both the reason for the delay (I hadn't yet received the letter) the reason for my anxiety (I can't communicate with anyone there in a manner that gets a logical response) and the reason for my urgency (that I wanted to sit in New York rather than Chicago or San Somewhere or other, because I had a wedding in New York the very same weekend).

I received an email asking me to phone and speak to a certain person. I phoned. He was out. I waited a day and phoned. I spoke with the person. I explained the situation. He said I needed to send a fax. I explained more clearly, he said the person he needed to speak to was out. I said I would phone back the next day.

Overnight I received an email! It said we understand you have had difficulty applying for the December FPGEE, and understand you wish to sit in New York, we have therefore entered you for that exam in that location.

Halley-frickin-looya.

The very next day the NABP website declared the New York option full.

Blimey!

However, that was still the start of the story, but more will be revealed in my next installment.

Farmacyst

Getting busy with it..

2006-12-28T15:36:00.000-08:00

What did I know about the FPGEE at the time I was accepted to sit it? Approximately nothing. All I had was the yellow information book that I had received from the NABP that listed the information (books) the American colleges used to teach their students, and the subject matters covered in the FPGEE with corresponding percentages in the exam. I also knew the exam was sat over two sessions (morning and afternoon) each for 3 hours, and was taking place on Saturday 2nd December 2006 (my friends Wedding day don't forget).

So I did what every student would do these days - Google!

Suddenly a wealth of information sources sprung up at me. Two I take the opportunity to share here, since these were the only two that saw me through to passing the exam. The first (and I wont be too specific as there are lots of options and I don't think it fair to prejudice your choice) was joining a Yahoo! Group. Just type in FPGEE and you'll see loads with good membership numbers that are very active.
The other stroke of luck I happened to come across (and for certain would have been one of the various texts often mentioned on the Yahoo! group) is a site called http://www.pharmacyexam.com/ which is a site selling books by Manan H Shroff dedicated to passing the various pharmacy exams and, more importantly, has study aids and reference books to help pass them. For the benefit of the FPGEE the site recommends a whole array of books. I chose two, which I have downstairs and am too lazy to go get now, but one was the Question and Answers book from here:

which was excellent, and the other I read was the pharmacy management book from here:

which I think will be updated soon to reflect the new changes to the course. The former book offers genuine insight in to the style of questions that appear on the test, the latter helps explain the various systems in use in the States, which I would otherwise have had no knowledge of whatsoever.

Did I go through all 1000 questions? No! But I did enough to get a good "feel" for the exam, and when I sat the exam there were no surprises in its style at least. Did I read all of the management book? No, it was awfully boring and had the worst use of English I've ever seen in a book. But I absorbed some information about US systems, where before I had none.

From the NABP website (current the last time I looked at it on April 12th 2009) it says:

Area 1 - Basic Biomedical Sciences - 21%
Area 2 - Pharmaceutical Sciences – 29%
Area 3 - Social/Behavioral/Administrative Pharmacy Sciences – 15%
Area 4 - Clinical Sciences – 35%

I think Area 1 + 2 are the morning exam (150 questions) and Area 3 + 4 are the afternoon exam (another 150 questions)

These areas are given a much more in-depth breakdown on the website:

http://www.nabp.net/ftpfiles/NABP01/FPGEEBlueprint.pdf

And that was about that. I had my two Manan H Shroff books. I had my pals on my Yahoo! Groups, and I had my desire to study and pass the exam.

And then I did what I did at University.

Nothing.

Months went by and before I knew it I was on the plane to New York and hadn't even started looking at the books in earnest, and I slept most of the flight!

In my next blog I'll tell you how the exam went.

Farmacyst

The Exam - part 1

2006-12-27T16:23:00.000-08:00

Flying to New York is always going to be fun. Flying in just before Christmas for the pre-Christmas shopping means its going to be fun, and hectic. Flying in to New York just before Christmas for a friends wedding means its going to be fun, hectic and socially busy.

Very busy.

If you've never been to New York expect to gain 30 pounds a day trying to spend $3,000 a day.

Its a wonderful place.

Just a shame I was supposed to be taking an exam.

So, it gets to Friday night, and the pre-wedding party has subsided and I go back to my hotel room in the Inn at Great Neck a classy hotel in a beautiful idyllic suburb of New York about 45 minutes by train that runs direct to Pennsylvania Station in the heart of New York itself. It's 1 am and I am wide awake and I decide to do some last minute cramming. By 2.30am I'm bored and tired, and I need to get up at 5am to head in to New York.

I wake up at 5am, have a shower, and get dressed. I can't take my book on the train because the paperwork the NABP sent clearly forbids it in the exam hall. Likewise I don't take my cellphone.

I catch the 5.45am train. I look out of the window. I can't revise so I just relax.

About 6.30am the train arrives at Penn State. I get a coffee. I walk towards the exit. I bin the coffee and get a taxi to the exam hall - a well known complex the size of about 6 football pitches called the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in Manhatten. I arrive at just before 7am. Check-in is down as starting at 7.30am.

There are loads of people milling around.

I get another coffee.

Come 7.30am I realise that half the people are sitting some maths exam, the pharmacy crowd are downstairs. I go to the loo. I go to the hall. People are holding see-through plastic bags. I don't think I need one. I enter the hall. On the left are about 30 lines of people queuing up to register. I have my registration number, known as an EE#. I get in the line for my number. At the front people are showing 2 forms of I.D. and told to sit down. I show my passport and drivers license and registration form (with my photo on it) and am told my seat number.

Someone tells me I should have taken my coat off outside. I plead ignorance and ask to leave to put my coat outside. I am told I cannot leave now that I am inside. I am told to hang my coat up near the toilets at my own risk. Fine. I go toward the toilet. I am told I cannot go to the toilet without a yellow form from a proctor. Never heard that word before. Apparently its American for pseudo-Gestapo unit patrolling the exam hall. I go to my seat. I am told I cannot go to my seat until I have been seated by my proctor. My proctor asks me to sign something and gives me a pencil. I ask for the yellow slip to go to the toilet. He gives it to me. I go to the loo.

When I come back I return the yellow slip to the proctor and sit down. 7.45am. A woman at the front starts telling us rules. You may not wear a coat. You may not talk. You may not get water or go to the bathroom unless you have a yellow slip. Each proctor only has one slip, so only one person from each section can go at any time. Lots of people's hands go up. You may not wear a watch - oops I have a watch on. All your personal possessions should be in a see-through bag on the floor under your seat. I put my hand up. You may not talk when you get a drink. You may not talk about the exam during lunch-break. you may not talk about any exam question EVER, to anyone. If you have a mobile phone (sorry, cellphone) and it rings during the exam you have failed the exam.

I am glad I don't have my phone. I tell the proctor I need a see-through bag for my watch.

One of the Uber-proctors whispers in the proctors ear and leaves. The proctor goes up to the chap in front of me and tells him he can't wear his jacket as it has a pocket in it. He cries foul, saying it wasn't mentioned anywhere and he'll freeze without it on. He is offered to re-sit in 6 months time if he likes. He takes his jacket to where my coat is hanging up.

People are arriving all the time. Some people smile at others. I think they have been studying together. I count tables. About 15 in front of me and 8 behind, plus me, thats 24. I can count about 60 rows along, but I'm guessing. Perhaps 1,500 tables, so 1500 candidates? I look at the registration area. About 30 lines and each line has numbers up to 100 apart. Hmm...maybe 3,000 candidates then. And three centres across the country. Wow, 9,000 foreign pharmacy graduates sitting simultaneously. Nah, lots of empty seats - maybe 6,000 sitting?

In the UK I think about 1,200 qualified annually when I did. Here are 6,000 perhaps trying to qualify simultaneously.

The girl to me left sits down. She's 9 months pregnant. She sits in a yoga position with her legs folding under her nicely. Blimey. She's Chinese. I can see her passport in the see-through bag.

The girl in front and to my right in Korean.

The rest of the room look Indian.

8.15am. I go to the toilet again. I am wide awake, slightly bored, and not the least bit excited or nervous about the exam.

Still more people are coming in. They are soooooo clever. Why didn't I stay outside until nearer the start time? I could have had another coffee. I love coffee.

The woman at the front is still going on about rules: No calculators. Just the pencil. If you don't have a pencil please ask for a pencil. If you make a mistake on the sheet you may use a rubber. The exam is multiple choice. You do not get marked down for a wrong answer so if you don't know the answer it is in your interest to guess. We are about to hand out the exam papers. Please do not touch the exam papers. We are handing out forms to sign. You must sign in English. (I can't decide if my squiggly signature counts as English - I decide to use a "new" English signature.) Now fill in the address where you want the results sent. Please date the form and hand the forms to your preceptor. I hand my form in. I have an internal debate. I put my hand up. I ask the velocoraptor for my form back. I rub out my "new" signature and draw my "normal" one over it. It looks a mess. I hand the form back. I feel stupid.

In two minutes you may open your exam booklet. You may go to the toilet during the exam but you will require a yellow form. You may leave early if you wish to do so, but not in the last 15 minutes of the exam. The exam is three hours. Lunch will commence at 12.30 and we will reconvene at 1.30pm sharp. Please open your exam books...

The rest of the day I will describe in the next blog entry.

Farmacyst

The Exam - Part 2

2006-12-26T17:54:00.000-08:00

On your marks, get set...

Actually, I can't even open the bloody exam paper. Its got some kind of blue sticky thing holding it shut and I can't open it. I stick my pencil inside and open it like an envelope with a knife. Et Voila!

Question 1. A picture and words. What does it all mean? I read the words, I look at the picture. I understand. I could do with a calculator though! If 1 is 100 then 2 is 50 so 3 is 25 and then 4 is 12.5 so 8 would be , err, about three quarters, so what the hell would 10 be. Look at the answers: not A or C, B is too small, must be D. Good.

Question 2. Easy. Straightforward. Pharmacy.

Question 3. Tricky. American non-specific post-modern surreal question. Could be anything, will go with the obvious.

Question 4. Science - easy.

Question 5. Hmmm....I'll come back to you.

Question 6. Easy.

Question 7. Must be b or c. Hmmm. Go with b.

And so it goes on. I did my pharmacy degree between 1988 and 1991 and the science hasn't changed. I don't know all the formulae or all the standard blood levels without looking them up, but my science background is good. And it showed.

I've had 15 years experience in retail pharmacy. I keep up to date. I go to meetings once a month on the latest scientific topics (I've been the chairman for 9 years) and I read my Pharmacy Journal more often than not. I know pharmacy and I know science. I didn't need to revise any of that - and I didn't!

Everyone on the net groups talks about CPR, Morris Cody and Mannan Shroff. I think they're for people who want to LEARN pharmacy. If you KNOW your pharmacy already I really don't think you need these books. I didn't. (Well, I glanced at the Shroff 1000 Q and A's but I didn't read them all). I think a lot of applicants are learning pharmacy, they're not actually practicing pharmacists. There's a difference in my opinion. But if the NABP are happy with the system who am I to argue? Anyway thats a bit too political, so apologies, forgive me, I didn't mean it, OK!

The only questions I was troubled by were the American system questions, which I should have known if I hadn't found the book so boring. And some of the science questions were a bit specific (you need to know what the letter R is in an unknown frickin equation - guessed that wrong! Or what the normal blood level for hormone F is, jeez louise, thats what reference books are for, not exam questions)

I found the three hours flew by. I managed to finish the 150 questions and go through about 80 of them a second time. I may have changed 4 or 5 of my answers.

I went to lunch. I got a salad and a coffee. Thank God for good, strong, American coffee.

I started chatting with a few people. One girl had taken it in June, she said this exam was much easier, the June one had had a lot more chemistry, which she hadn't understood. She was German but working in a US pharmacy. She claimed it hadn't helped her at all working in the pharmacy. We spoke with a Frenchman, who was working in New Orleans. He had also failed in June. We spoke about property prices and imagined pharmacist incomes. I spoke with a girl from England. She was with Lloyds, near Cheshunt. It was her first try. I asked her about the one question I wasn't sure about and she told me I had got it wrong, which I had. Damn.

It was time to go back in.

We sit. We are familiar now with the experience. The lady at the front talks about the rules. If we leave with any of the exam questions we will be disqualified. The question papers will be collected and checked that every page is present. If any pages are missing you will be disqualified. And so she goes on. The preceptor asks if we need more pencils. He's no longer our enemy. We know him. We are given the second set of questions. Another 150 questions to answer in three hours. There is a huge clock at the front. I know how to open the question paper now.

The second session I find easier. I don't know why. I finish very early. More than an hour to go. I debate leaving. I decide to go through my answers again. On one question I try all the answers before giving up and just guessing b. I re-check all 150 questions. I probably change 40. But are they the questions that matter?

There are 300 questions but only 200 are "live". The other 100 are test questions to see if the questions are too easy, too hard or just right to be used in future exams. They should solicit the correct distribution of answers from a large field to produce the desired result. I presume they want about 25% to pass. So they don't want a question that everyone will get right, or maybe they'll be forced to pass everyone! Or conversely too hard and they have to fail everyone. The exam is a scaled score, which means it can be tweaked, but not by enormous measures.

One question actually appeared twice. The exact same question. But only two of the answers were the same. A and b. I didn't know the answer, but I had two options: same or different. One way I'm guaranteeing one is right, the other I'm gambling all or nothing. I decided it couldn't possibly be a real question to appear twice, so I gambled on b in both, hoping I was right or that it wouldn't matter.

Some people were leaving. It was hard to tell if they were fast finishers or were leaving frustrated. I was getting bored re-checking again. I missed my cell phone and my wife who was at the wedding party. And I missed my kids back home.

Finally time was called. The papers were collected. I get my coat from near the toilet. I get a taxi back to Penn State and the train back to the hotel at Great Neck. I go to my hotel room and pick up my cell-phone. My wife has phoned me 10 times and left me a voice message. She is bored and misses me. I google that exam question that appeared twice - and I have got that one wrong too. I hope it wasn't in the "real" exam either!

I go to the party and dance the night away. Perhaps a little more tired than I should have been for such a wonderful party, but it had been a long day.

Next up, the results, or how to mess that up as well!

Farmacyst

Getting the results....or not

2006-12-25T14:16:00.000-08:00

So, you've sat the exam, you've chewed your nails off, you've worried yourself stupid waiting for the results, and now you hear they've been posted by the NABP, so you wait eagerly for the postman to come...

I sat the December 2nd 2006 Exam and word filtered out from the NABP that the results had been posted on the 17th January 2007. People started commenting on the net about their results around the 20th, but here in the UK I think things took till the 25th or thereabouts, and some people in India were still waiting for their results over a week later than that. But they did arrive there eventually.

The results for those that fail, or so I am led to believe, is in 2 pages. The first page says that you have failed and explains what your possible options are regarding re-sits and re-marking of the test (come on guys, its a computer sheet with pencil marks on - has ANYONE ever had a re-scored mark amended? Let me know if you have, but otherwise I'd be VERY surprised if there's any point in wasting your $50 even if you missed it by just 1 point). The second page is a report on the various categories of the test (chemistry, pharmacology, etc) with a mark out of 10 I think, for each part. You need to gain a pass in ALL sections to pass overall, so a 10/10 in four sections and a 3/10 in pharmacoeconomics would, I believe, have a sufficient drag factor to reduce the scaled score down to a fail - again email me and tell me this isn't so!
What that means is, if you were close but weak in one area, you are directed to hone your studies in the area of your proven weakness. Likewise if you were close in all subjects I imagine seeing the closeness to a pass would boost your confidence for having another attempt at the FPGEE. On the other hand, since no-ones really knows what a scaled score really means, it could be some serious statistical nonsense that increase all the failed scores to just UNDER a pass, so that all those who were miles off the mark would get the wrong impression but still spend their mighty Dollars flying to America, staying in an American hotel, eating American food, taking an American taxi, and, more importantly, paying American Dollars to the NABP for sitting the FPGEE exam again and again. Or am I being too cynical? Of course I am, they're not in it for the money are they. Are they?

Now, if you pass, you also get a two page letter. This time page one congratulates you on passing the exam, and page two gives your scaled score, presumably of 75 and above (max 150).
And thats that.

In theory.

Somehow it didn't work out like that!

On my preferred Yahoo! Group some people who had received their letters were complaining that although their page 1 letter had their name on, the second page with the pass mark had the name of the person with an EE# one less than theirs. And of course without the correct second sheet no one could be absolutely certain whether the page 1 letter was correct or not.

My letter came.

Page 1. Congratulations on passing the FPGEE....

Page 2. Dear Mr Someone-Else, you passed the FPGEE with a scaled score of...

Ho Hum. I suppose it was bound to include me in the mess up.

I went to the NABP website, and took a look at all the pages where I though they might post an apology! Nothing. I wrote an email to which they replied the next day that they would be resending the SECOND PAGE only again.

Another weeks wait. Luckily for me, one one of the Yahoo! Groups someone had received my FPGEE results sheet and were kind enough to advise me of its contents by email. And that was of course confirmed when I received the replacement sheet from the NABP the next week.

I had passed.

I scored 89 (not a terribly good score, but way over 75!)

**New info**
Now that the FPGEE® is a computer-based exam, there are quite a few changes to how the exam is taken and the results are issued. Of note, and this list may grow as people inform me of other difference, are:
1. You can go forward and back during the exam, but once you press ENTER to a question that removes it from the list.
2. You can flag questions/answers to remind yourself to go back to them.
3. You can (I think) rule out certain answers to focus on the ones that you believe are still possible correct choices.
4. The results are now available online, via the NABP® website, requiring your EE# and date of birth. The link to that area is HERE.

And I guess that SHOULD be the end of this story. But its not. Its just the beginning.

This concludes my blog on the FPGEE® and things now move over to my next blog in this series at http://h1b-lottery.blogspot.com/ which, as the name suggests, tells the highs and lows, pitfalls and blind alleyways along the tortuous path to (hopefully) obtaining an H1B visa.

But before you click the link I would just make the process of becoming a US Pharmacist a little bit clearer, in case you are as ignorant as I was!

So, for foreign pharmacy graduates, it goes like this:

1. Apply and meet all the criteria required by the ECE®.
2. Apply to the NABP® to sit the FPGEE®.
3. Apply and pass the iBT TOEFL® with sufficiently high scores in all categories*, and get them to send the result to the NABP®.
4. Receive the FPGEC® certificate.
5. If you have a green card, work permit or similar, jump to number 10!
6. Apply for an intern license in the state of your choice (if you don't have a Social Security Number they will send you a "deficiency letter" which is what the sponsors want to see) .
7. Find a sponsor who wants to offer you a job.
8. Get the sponsor to petition the US immigration for an H1B visa on your behalf.
9. Obtain visa in their annual lottery (each April), obtain the all-important Social Security Number, upgrade the deficiency letter to a full blown intern license and then, finally...
10. Start work!

Does that sound easy? Trust me, its a nightmare and a half, and I have it all recorded for your pleasure and delight at http://h1b-lottery.blogspot.com/

Farmacyst
* - there has been a huge amount of debate on the internet about the difficulty and inconsistency in passing the speaking section of the iBT TEOFL®. It is not my place to comment on the wider injustice of the system, but please note that I, born and bred in England, schooled in England, and who speaks English pretty bloody fluently therefore, I only got 29/30, so it is really a tough bugger of a test. Is it too tough? I leave that to others to debate.

Now just go down a bit and to the right a bit and click on the link marked "older posts" for the next part of this story

Some useful information

2006-12-24T11:02:00.000-08:00

I found the following information really interesting so I thought I would add it in. It's a shame the NABP don't tell us the pass rate or passing mark, but there you go, you can't have everything.

On June 23, 2007, the Foreign Pharmacy Graduate Equivalency
Examination® (FPGEE®) was administered to approximately 2,150
individuals, the largest number since 2003. In comparison, 1,865
individuals sat for the examination in June 2006 and 1,618
individuals in December 2006. Of the 2,150 individuals who tested in
June, approximately half were repeat test takers.

If you find any more useful (or more current) stats please email me with the URL and I'll add it to the site.

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