Examining Student Life and Academic Outcomes: Are We Seeing the Full Story?

By: Seun Lagbenro, Pharm.D. Candidate, W. Renee’ Acosta, R.Ph., M.S.; and Kenneth A. Lawson, Ph.D

The challenge of identifying predictors of success

Pre-admission indicators such as overall GPA, science GPA, and math GPA are commonly used to predict early academic performance in pharmacy programs.¹ Our prior work, including Predicting Student Success in Pharmacy School: Are We Missing the Bigger Picture?, highlighted their ongoing value. However, these metrics do not fully capture what shapes student performance after matriculation.

Pharmacy students navigate rigorous coursework while balancing employment, financial pressures, and personal responsibilities. Increasingly, conversations in pharmacy education are shifting toward how factors like stress, time management, engagement, and overall well-being fit into the picture of student success.² Yet, these experiences are often considered separately rather than as part of students’ day-to-day academic lives. To better understand this, we took a closer look at how students’ daily routines, both inside/outside the classroom, relate to academic performance. The goal was not just to examine grades, but to explore the lived experiences behind them and how they might inform student support.

What we did and what we found

To explore this question, we surveyed first- through third-year pharmacy students at The University of Texas at Austin College of Pharmacy. Students were asked how they spend their time and how daily experiences affect their academic performance. This included managing coursework, time for hobbies/social activities, student organization involvement, financial pressures, and stress impacting daily functioning. A total of 188 responses were collected, with 138 included after excluding incomplete or non-consented surveys. We examined how these experiences related to self-reported GPA.

Nine of 30 survey variables were significantly associated with GPA. Overall, students with higher GPAs were more likely to report effective management of academic and personal responsibilities, regular involvement in student organizations, and time spent on hobbies/social activities. In contrast, students with lower GPAs more frequently reported feeling overwhelmed by coursework, experiencing financial strain, and reporting stress that affected their daily functioning. Lower GPA was also associated with greater use of tutoring/office hours, which may reflect students seeking help after challenges develop.

Table. Student experiences correlated with GPA

Survey item	Spearman’s rho	p-value
Managing academic and personal responsibilities effectively	0.221	0.009
Student organization involvement	0.211	0.013
Time spent on hobbies or leisure activities	0.270	0.001
Social time with friends or non‑academic activities	0.195	0.022
Tutoring or office hour attendance	−0.313	0.0002
Feeling overwhelmed by coursework	−0.244	0.004
Financial concerns affecting academic focus	−0.229	0.007
Stress negatively affecting daily functioning	−0.184	0.031
Stress related to time constraints	−0.180	0.035

The survey included experiences across study habits, work, extracurricular involvement, and daily routines such as sleep, exercise, and commuting. Several commonly assumed factors were not significantly associated with GPA, including total study time, study method, work hours, and general lifestyle measures. This suggests that how students manage time may be more important than total hours spent.

These findings suggest that pharmacy student performance reflects more than academic preparation alone. Factors related to well-being, time management, engagement, and stress were meaningfully associated with GPA.³ Students reporting time for social connection, hobbies, and organizational involvement tended to have higher GPAs, while those reporting stress, financial concerns, and feeling overwhelmed had lower GPAs. The inverse relationship between tutoring or office hour use and GPA may reflect differences in how students use academic support.

Together, this work supports a more holistic view of pharmacy student success that integrates academic preparation with personal well-being and early intervention.

Moving forward

Academic support literature consistently shows that early outreach and proactive advising are more effective than waiting for students to self-identify concerns.^4-5 These findings highlight opportunities to better support students at both individual and structural levels.

At the student level, early and universal skills development in time management, stress management, and financial awareness may help students navigate competing demands before challenges escalate. Encouraging balanced engagement, including social connection and extracurricular involvement, may also support both well-being and academic performance. At the program level, these findings point to the importance of proactively identifying students experiencing financial strain or feeling overwhelmed early in the curriculum. This may include strengthening advising sessions, creating more accessible support systems, and normalizing help-seeking behaviors through faculty-student relationships. Institutions may also consider how curriculum design and academic workload contribute to feelings of overwhelm and whether additional preparation or early intervention opportunities are needed to help students succeed.

At our institution, these findings are informing discussions around early student support, including when resources are introduced and how students are connected to them. While approaches may vary across programs, creating environments that support both academic performance and well-being remains a shared priority.

Supporting pharmacy students requires not only strong academic preparation, but also thoughtful attention to the day-to-day experiences that shape their success.

References 

1. Polley S. Determining undergraduate factors that predict academic success in pharmacy school. Graduate Capstone Project. University of Kentucky; 2014.
2. Harris SC, Gandavarapu S, Zeeman JM. Scoping review of programmatic well-being interventions and outcomes to support pharmacy students. Am J Pharm Educ. 2024;88(2):100638. doi:10.1016/j.ajpe.2023.100638
3. Cassidy S, Mawdsley A, Langran C, et al. A large-scale multicentre study of academic resilience and wellbeing in pharmacy education. Am J Pharm Educ. 2022;86(3):8998. doi:10.5688/ajpe8998
4. Lochtie D, McIntosh E, Stork A, et al. Effective personal tutoring and academic advising in higher education. 2nd ed. London, UK: Routledge; 2025. doi:10.4324/9781041055266
5. Robinson CD, Loeb S. High-impact tutoring: state of the research and priorities for future learning. Annenberg Institute for School Reform at Brown University; 2021. doi:10.26300/qf76-rj21

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Author Bio(s):

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Pulses is a scholarly blog supported by a team of pharmacy education scholars.