I just looked up the salaries listed for internships and residencies at the vet school hospitals in the Northeast and was nauseous when I saw that "$25,000" and "$27,000" seem to be the norm. That is less than what a vet tech makes. (I know because I was offered a tech job at one of these hospitals.)

I know you don't go into this field for the money. But how do you live on 25K when you have 150K in vet school debt and, quite possibly, a family to help support? Or even with no family, how do you support yourself? This kind of salary must be enough of a stretch in a low-cost-of-living area, but the hospitals offering these salaries were in Boston and Philly and Ithaca.

Can you defer debt repayment until after the residency or do you start paying off right after graduation? I know specialists have the potential to earn a decent income, but you have to survive for those four years of post-graduate training...

I'm not being facetious here. I really want to know how you can live on so little.

I'm making $30k in northern California as an intern. When you consider the hours I put in (often 60-70 or more hours per week), I truly am making little more (if not less) than a technician. And technicians get to actually eat meals!

I have been paying monthly on my two consolidated loans. But I am now going to request lower payments based on my salary for those 2 (they are groups of loans totalling about $55-60k). Then there are the "rest of the loans" (I am in debt around $200k or more) - these are still in their grace period. I plan on applying for deferment if possible, and if not - forebearance. I'll have to do this all for a residency next year, too. I might even make LESS as a resident since $30k is pretty good for an intern.

I am surviving somehow. I think as the year goes on, my finances will become more and more scary (as the little extra I had left over from my last year's loans wears away). I just have myself, my 2 cats and my 1 bird to take care of in a 1 bedroom apartment with an already-paid-off car. My parents have helped me out by paying car insurance so far...but eventually I should be totally supporting myself.

I agree that making $25K seems like a ridiculously low amount for even a new DVM to make, and that making so little with a huge amount of debt is scary. But it helps to keep this in perspective. Millions of people in this country get by making a similar amount of money or less. My mom raised 2 kids on $15K a year, and for the past 8 years I've supported myself on a similarly pitiful amount. It doesn't seem fair, and it ain't pretty, but it *can* be done.;)

I asked one of my professors about this subject and he had a pretty good view of it... Basically, if you want to do an internship/residency, you have two options. First, you can do it right out of vet school, or second, you can do it after you've been practicing for some years. Some might think that graduating, then working a few years to build some income, pay on the loans, get some experience, then going back to do the residency is a good idea, however, if you think about it, it will be really hard to take that substantial paycut, from whatever you are making, to that 25-27k residency salary. However, if you do it straight out of vet school, you'll be going from making nothing to making that 25k, so it seems like a huge raise! yes, it sucks because it is long (understatement) hours for crappy pay, however, if it's what you want to do, it's easier to do it sooner than later. when you are done, hopefully you'll be able to get a job with a salary high enough to make those 3-4 years of low salary worth it.

Thanks, everyone, for your insights.

I wish I knew how decisions on these salaries are made. Are salaries for an intern in small animal medicine/surgery the same in a big city as they are in a rural town? Or are they adjusted for cost-of-living differences, which is laughable if anyone can call 25K (i.e. the "high end" salary) adequate to meet the COL in Boston or Philly...

Do the powers that be in vet med really have any concept of how much debt today's grads come out with, of how much it costs to rent an apartment, occasionally eat, put gas in a car... in short, survive? Is this some kind of overkill weeding-out process to make sure that only the truly committed (i.e. those for whom food and shelter are optional -- yes, the sarcasometer is about to implode) stay in the profession?

I can only imagine how many talented potential specialists the profession is losing because grads end up going straight into general practice. And this is the last thing the profession can afford given the increasing demand for specialized care by pet owners who each year spend more and more on their pets.

Anyway, I'm glad that on these forums I can bring up these concerns and get genuine, thoughtful feedback.

The first thing to remember is an internship/residency is a training position. You're doing it for the education, not the money. For comparison, consider a graduate student.

As for how the salaries are determined, some universities have guidelines for pay based on how the position is classified. For example, at Davis the veterinary interns/residents are paid the same as the MD interns/residents because they're classified the same (unless that's changed recently).

Also realize the Medicaid and Medicare subsidizes the cost of training MD residents (about 70K a year). There's nothing like that in place for veterinary medicine, so the universities (and a few practices) have to pay for all the costs associated with training DVM residents.

Factor in all that plus the fact that there are far more applicants than positions and that's why the salaries are so low.

As for loans, it depends on the type of loan. In a lot of cases, you can give a deferment for a certain period of time (often 2 years). With a deferment interest doesn't accumulate. In other cases, you can get a forebearance (you don't have to make payments, but interest accumulates). If you do a graduate degree (MS, PhD) during the residency it's easier to get deferments because you're a student. Also realize if you consolidate your loans, the rules can change so if you do that, make sure you're aware of the implications.