Academic performance of day scholars versus boarders in pharmacology examinations of a medical school in Pakistan

Objective: to compare the academic performance of day scholar and boarder students in pharmacology examinations. methods: this comparative study was conducted at rehman medical college,peshawar,pakistan,from june to september,2015. it comprised third-year medical students of the sessions 2013-14 and 2014-15.the record of the results of examinations,which had already been conducted,were assessed. all the exams had two components,i.e. multiple-choice questions and short-essay questions. students were categorised into 4 groups according to their academic performance: those who got <50% marks (group 1); 51-69% marks (group 2); 70-80% marks (group 3); and >80% marks (group 4). spss 20 was used for data analysis. results: of the 200 students,159(79.5%) were day scholars and 41(20.5%) were boarders. in multiple-choice questions,29(70.7%) boarder students were in group 2,while none of them was in group 4. in short-essay questions,11(26.8%) of them were in group 1 and 17(41.5%) in group 2. results of day scholars' multiple-choice questions exams showed 93(58.5%) were in group 2 and 2(1.3%) in group 4. in short-essay questions,63(39.6%) were in group 2 (p>o.o5 each). conclusion: no significant difference was found between the academic performance of boarders and day scholars. © 2016,pakistan medical association. all rights reserved.