How many hours of veterinary experience do you need?

[LadyHitokiri]

Just wondering what the minimum/norm is since some schools don't tell you a minimum (Iowa, Illinois, etc). I'm sure there is an amount that would be too small, or not? Do they only care about if you learned something from your experience? Some of my experiences are 5-10 hours each with three different veterinarians at a zoo and wildlife/production facility but it was during a Brazil Study Tour that I went on during Spring Break but would that look bad to the adcoms? I might be underestimating the hours. With the vets, I observed a lot but did some hands-on stuff too like capturing a peccary and drawing blood from it, castrating a bull, performing a teeth cleaning and physical exam of a sedated ocelot, etc.

Also, is it better to get a wide range of veterinary experience that might be only 5-30 hours each, or to have lengthier experience with only a few species? Obviously it's better to get a wide range and as many hours as possible, but if you had to pick one, which would be better?

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[nyanko]

You're freaking out an awful lot about this experience thing!

It's going to be looked at in the context of your entire application, and each school weights things differently. Everybody has gotten different answers on this from different schools, whether breadth > depth or vice versa. As long as you didn't apply to any places that had a minimum published number that you don't exceed, you should probably stop worrying about it so much or you are going to drive yourself nuts! Relax a little, your experiences look at least like they were fun, and sound unique...

 

[Malhi]

When I talked to Mary Kelm, I only had small animal experience. She told me to get a broader perspective of the field by job shadowing, ride alongs etc. She specifically told me that the hours didn't matter if I was learning something from my experiences. However, I did have quite a few hours in small animal (clinic and shelter ) experience when she told me this.

Maybe take your case to one of the advisors at the vet schools. Other than that, I think if you are confident and able to show that you gained something from the experiences, that should be good for Illinois.

Btw, I did end up putting all my job shadowing experience on there. My zoo animal experience was the lowest at just 15 hrs. The worst part of it was, there wasn't much to experience. Just went on ride alongs with the vet on his inspection rounds and saw only a few procedures . But I guess that was good news for the zoo.

 

[LadyHitokiri]

Thanks you two! I know, I AM freaking out and I need to stop. I talked to Mary Kelm once, but we didn't go into detail about my experiences. I think I talked to her more about the community activities, such as leadership, teamwork, volunteering, showing initiative and creativity, etc. But you made me feel better about everything and I know it won't be the end of the world if things don't go my way. I am stronger than this!

I actually found out that Illinois does not care about the number of hours, but that they want to know what you've learned from your experiences with as many different types of animals as possible. I picked a few unique experiences (relating to the field I want to go into) and talked about what I learned from them in my VMCAS essay, so I should be fine.