UHCOP Class of 2020 Graduates Post 4th Straight Year with Highest First-time Pass
Rate in Texas, 6th Highest in Nation Among Peers
March 23 — UH College of Pharmacy's Pharm.D. Class of 2020 achieved a 96.26% first-time
pass rate on the North American Pharmacy Licensure Examination® (NAPLEX®), which extends
the college's streak for the highest pass rate in Texas to a fourth consecutive year.
According to the newly released results from exam administrator, the National Association
of Boards of Pharmacy (NABP), UHCOP 2020 graduates' first-time pass rate was the sixth
highest in the nation among accredited pharmacy programs with at least 100 first-time
test takers. The national average first-time pass rate for all 2020 graduates from
the 140 programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Pharmacy Education (ACPE)
was 88.43%.
"In a year that brought unimaginable challenges to successful completion of academic
work and experiential clinical rotations, not to mention adhering to safety protocols
while both preparing for and taking the licensure exams, we're truly in awe of the
resilience, focus and commitment to the profession shown by our Class of 2020," said
UHCOP Dean F. Lamar Pritchard, Ph.D., R.Ph. "We also are immensely appreciative of
the efforts and flexibility of our preceptors, sites, alumni, faculty and staff in
helping our graduates succeed in achieving their dream of providing outstanding patient
care for our communities under such difficult circumstances."
According to the NABP, the NAPLEX "is designed to evaluate general practice knowledge
and is taken by recent college of pharmacy graduates shortly after they receive their
degree. The NAPLEX is just one component of the licensure process and is used by the
boards of pharmacy to assess a candidate’s competence to practice as a pharmacist."
For Ying Xu, a Ph.D. candidate in Pharmaceutical Sciences at UHCOP, cardiovascular research is both scientific and personal. Inspired by her family’s history of heart disease and hypertension, Xu studies the molecular drivers of cardiac dysfunction. With support from a predoctoral fellowship from the American Heart Association, Xu is investigating how disrupted signaling inside heart muscle cells contributes to heart failure.
Luqi Zhao, M.D., University of Houston College of Pharmacy postdoctoral fellow, is working to uncover a new mechanism in left ventricular non-compaction with the help of a two-year, $163,864 American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship award.
For the second consecutive year, the UHCOP Chapter of the Student Society of Health-System Pharmacists (SSHP) has been recognized as a 2025-26 American Society of Health-System Pharmacy (ASHP) Outstanding Professional Development Award recipient for its Residency Bootcamp. The chapter was one of 17 nationwide to receive the honor from the ASHP Pharmacy Student Forum.