Hey guys. I was accepted to SGU last year and I made the decision- after visiting the school- to not attend. Here are my reasons:
A doctor I work with in a specialty practice used to work there as an instructor. She told me that there were many issues with how they budgeted and spending to improve facilities was not in the budget. When I visited I noticed how small and run down things looked.
you must have a skewed perception of "small and run down" because the vet school actually has very nice facilities, nicer than several schools i've been to. updates have certainly been made in the time since i started, and the school is constantly looking for ways to improve academic life for students.
Most of the professors are adjunct faculty wanting to spend time on an island for a bit. Sometimes, you get a top professor in the field that knows their stuff, and cares about their students, but more commonly, you get a SGU grad or foreign professor that is not the top in their field. This can lead to older information being taught as new, and language barriers to those trying to learn from foreign professors. It also leads to graduates with knowledge gaps as veterinarians, which is one of the reasons new grads are discriminated against.
we have some pretty phenomenal and brilliant faculty. guess what? SGU is not a strictly American school, so we do indeed have foreign professors (funny enough, my state-side classmates did as well...) that are well qualified to teach and are not presenting out-dated material. not really sure how you can judge this since you didnt sit through 3 years of classes. do we have some subject weaknesses? yup, but guess what, so does every other school. students at my 4th year institution held the same beliefs that they were stronger in some areas than others based on their faculty. they also had to "suffer" through language barriers and foreign accents too.
our graduates do not leave with knowledge gaps any more significant that other students. new grads are typically not discriminated against, and those who discriminate are usually way more out-dated than is ever worth practicing for.
In addition to these issues, SGU is newly accredited, and has the possibility of loosing accreditation in a few years. This was my number one reason for withdrawing my seat in the class. The doctor I work with did not want to give me too much information on this, but essentially, SGU is in danger of loosing accreditation if they do not fulfill actions required by the board.
unless you are on the AVMA board or the board of directors at SGU, you have absolutely no way of knowing whether or not this is true. i doubt we are in danger of losing accreditation, the school spent a lot of time and money to earn accreditation and they aren't going to let that go to waste. you are assuming what someone told you second hand is true with no exaggeration. our program is much stronger than the several newly opened vet schools.
And finally, I confirmed my decision not to attend SGU by working with interns that recently graduates from there. These interns were frightened by routine ER cases, did not have the proper training to take on cases by them selves (they depended on the other doctors and techs for medical knowledge), and they were all in serious debt from the school. The interns were not allowed to defer all loans taken out during school- some loans were directly from SGU and these had to be paid starting as soon as 6 months out even though government loans could be deferred during an internship.
our graduates are amazing doctors with an excellent knowledge base. the people i know in internship programs are all highly motivated, intelligent people. are there graduates out there that are not as good? of course. guess what, there are some terrible graduates coming out of other schools too. i've known a lot of interns, and i can certainly say that there are some that are better than others, and a majority of them are from state schools. i would personally much rather see someone who wanted the assistance and experience of a senior clinician and the technical staff than someone who thought that they knew it all and could do it all on their own just out of school. your pet is sick, which would you prefer? a team of clinicians or a solo doc with little clinical experience to back up their academic base? i'd pick the team every time. we have people in excellent internship and residency programs, and people working in private practice.
In conclusion, SGU is not the same as in state schools. That being said, one of the same interns that I personally thought has very little medical knowledge fresh out of SGU, is now in a surgical residency in Texas. He is now fulfilling his dreams of becoming a small animal surgeon because he went to SGU, and became a doctor.
SGU academically is the same as the state schools. culturally and socially, it is definitely not. students have to be prepared and willing to accept that fact in order to be successful academically. clearly you are not a good judge of knowledge and medical competency, because people who are incompetent don't get surgical residencies. thats an extremely competitive field and only 1 in 4 applicants landed a residency last year. that means that he was better than 3/4ths of the applicants that applied. programs dont take incompetent people to train. its not worth the significant investment it takes to train a resident.
I am glad you chose not to attend. It doesn't sound like it would have been a good fit for you (if you made it to vet school at all, you have A LOT of growing and maturing to do, because the world is going to stomp on your face if you don't learn to be more open-minded and less judgemental). vet school is a privilege and not a right, and we have no room in this field for people with judgemental, narrow-minded attitudes. there are pros and cons to SGU, as there are for every school.
I am at one of the top private practice internships in the country. Clearly being an SGU grad did not hinder me. Many of my classmates are at university and private practice internships as well so it obviously didn't hurt them either. We have many graduates that are completing competitive residencies and are board-certified specialists. My program director is an SGU grad who successfully placed to and completed a competitive surgical residency. Same goes for people from other schools as well.
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