Stateside vet schools-help me pick clinical year location

[Vethopeful8046]

Hi Guys! I'm a 3rd year Rossie, getting close to submitting my 4 choices for where we get placed for clinics. Wondering if you guys can help me out with things you love/hated about your schools clinical year or if you know they have unique rotations. Any info is HIGHLY appreciated. I am STRONGLY equine focused, even better if they have a great therio rotations (embryo transfer, ICSI lab, etc). Also love if they have great shelter med rotations, small animal dentistry.
Schools I'm looking at (and feel free to chime in other options, we have LOTS of affiliates):
1. TX A&M university
2. UMN (minnesota)
3. ISU (iowa state university)
4. Mizzou (MO)
5. UF (FL)
6. Purdue
7. MSU (Michigan State University)

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[JaynaAli]

I think you should also consider Oklahoma state. They have a pretty good equine caseload and do a lot of therio. They have historically even had a specific equine therio rotation offered like once a year that was separate from the regular therio one I think. I can’t guarantee it’s still offered because I’ve been out for a while but worth looking into at least. They have a separate vet Med ranch where they stand a couple studs and foal out mares. When I was there Equine Med and equine surgery were separate rotations and there was a sports medicine elective available too. They’ve changed their clinics structure some since I was there but I think you’d have good opportunities. They have a good shelter rotation. I think some of the small animal services are bare bones or not open right now but I think equine is fully open. I spent time at UF as well and they see a fair number of horses, but as a house officer in a different service it seemed to be less therio and more medicine cases. The other famous hospitals in Ocala and stuff mean the caseload is variable at the vet school in my opinion.

 

[SkiOtter]

Illinois offers a shelter med rotation, has a boarded dentist and dentistry service, and has an equine therio rotation you can take too. We do also accept a good amount of affiliates here too

 

[battie]

I'll second Illinois. If you can arrange your schedule well, you can get a bunch of foal experience during baby season and therio is extremely busy in spring as @SportPonies can atest.

 

[SnowJ]

Hi Guys! I'm a 3rd year Rossie, getting close to submitting my 4 choices for where we get placed for clinics. Wondering if you guys can help me out with things you love/hated about your schools clinical year or if you know they have unique rotations. Any info is HIGHLY appreciated. I am STRONGLY equine focused, even better if they have a great therio rotations (embryo transfer, ICSI lab, etc). Also love if they have great shelter med rotations, small animal dentistry.
Schools I'm looking at (and feel free to chime in other options, we have LOTS of affiliates):
1. TX A&M university
2. UMN (minnesota)
3. ISU (iowa state university)
4. Mizzou (MO)
5. UF (FL)
6. Purdue
7. MSU (Michigan State University)

I personally am not equine focused so I don't have experience with our equine rotations, but UMN has the Piper equine center and a pretty high equine caseload. Our clinicans are great to work with and I LOVE our therio faculty. If you have more specific questions I can reach out to some LA friends to get their perspective!
I think the main downside I've heard about our equine rotations might be the hours, though I imagine that will be the case anywhere

 

[battie]

think the main downside I've heard about our equine rotations might be the hours, though I imagine

My equine rotation was during Foal Apocalypse 2021. Between 90 and 100 hours in the hospital both weeks. So definitely universal depending on the time of year.

 

[SkiOtter]

My equine rotation was during Foal Apocalypse 2021. Between 90 and 100 hours in the hospital both weeks. So definitely universal depending on the time of year.

Whereas mine, we have had 0 appointments the past two days but have had some come in after hours (including one tonight in another hour that I’m on call for 😭) and left at 3:30 pm today

 

[Viscernable]

I’m a first year so take this with a large grain of salt, but honestly from I hear from my fourth-year roommate I wouldn’t recommend Purdue for clinical placements. I love the experience I’ve had so far with the curriculum and culture in the pre-clinical years, but I’ve heard there’s a culture of some clinicians treating their students really horribly, and that island students don’t tend to do well here. This is all second-hand from one person’s experience, but just wanted to put it out there.

 

[SportPonies]

Illinois: Equine therio is extremely busy and extremely hands on. As someone who no longer was equine-focused once clinics rolled around, it was exhausting for me, but I do appreciate how much time and experience it gave us. Each of us was required to rectally palpate and ultrasound at least 20+ mares on our own during the rotation, place a Caslicks, etc

And I absolutely adored our shelter med rotation. By far my favorite rotation of all of them. I did 40+ spays and neuters by the end of the two weeks and I can definitively say that it’s the reason I became so confident and fast in surgery as a new grad.

 

[Vethopeful8046]

Illinois: Equine therio is extremely busy and extremely hands on. As someone who no longer was equine-focused once clinics rolled around, it was exhausting for me, but I do appreciate how much time and experience it gave us. Each of us was required to rectally palpate and ultrasound at least 20+ mares on our own during the rotation, place a Caslicks, etc

And I absolutely adored our shelter med rotation. By far my favorite rotation of all of them. I did 40+ spays and neuters by the end of the two weeks and I can definitively say that it’s the reason I became so confident and fast in surgery as a new grad.

Wow!! You guys are really making me look hard at Illinois! Thank you for the insight!!

 

[Vethopeful8046]

I personally am not equine focused so I don't have experience with our equine rotations, but UMN has the Piper equine center and a pretty high equine caseload. Our clinicans are great to work with and I LOVE our therio faculty. If you have more specific questions I can reach out to some LA friends to get their perspective!
I think the main downside I've heard about our equine rotations might be the hours, though I imagine that will be the case anywhere

I’m actually from MN, only 20 min from the vet school 😎 if you’ve got the time- I’d love to know if your LA friends feel if they are getting good hands on experience, not just standing behind an intern/resident? I know It’s the hardest thing to get in the equine world with owners being so particular with high dollar animals. Wondering about actually doing rectal palpation/ultrasounds for therio or colic cases.

And your opinion of rotations you loved at MN? Any of them, not just LA related. I’m all ears.

 

[SnowJ]

I’m actually from MN, only 20 min from the vet school 😎 if you’ve got the time- I’d love to know if your LA friends feel if they are getting good hands on experience, not just standing behind an intern/resident? I know It’s the hardest thing to get in the equine world with owners being so particular with high dollar animals. Wondering about actually doing rectal palpation/ultrasounds for therio or colic cases.

And your opinion of rotations you loved at MN? Any of them, not just LA related. I’m all ears.

Ill check in with some of them and get back to you! Feel free to PM me to remind me or ask other questions

I ended up having a lot of externships and online-only rotations over the summer so I can't speak for a lot of the rotations, but Cardio has been my favorite so far; the staff are fun, it's very applicable to general practice, and well organized. I also love Derm for similar reasons.

I personally enjoyed small animal surgery even though the hours are long. I felt like I was doing and learning a lot, though the pacing of the day varied a lot.

 

[alleycat03]

I'm a little late to the conversation, but at KSU we do have several shelter medicine rotation options. Our shelter medicine trailer and wellness on wheels (WOW) vehicles are both very popular with shelter medicine-focused students. Most students do 50-60 surgeries during that rotation. I know we have island student do their clinical year rotations here as well. We also have a small animal dentistry rotation. I am not much of a horse person, but we do have the recently-opened equine performance testing center and a lot of large animal people have spoken highly of our large animal experiences. I do think there's a lot of equine therio, but again not my area so I'm not super familiar with the specifics.

 

[DVMoftheFuture]

Hi Guys! I'm a 3rd year Rossie, getting close to submitting my 4 choices for where we get placed for clinics. Wondering if you guys can help me out with things you love/hated about your schools clinical year or if you know they have unique rotations. Any info is HIGHLY appreciated. I am STRONGLY equine focused, even better if they have a great therio rotations (embryo transfer, ICSI lab, etc). Also love if they have great shelter med rotations, small animal dentistry.
Schools I'm looking at (and feel free to chime in other options, we have LOTS of affiliates):
1. TX A&M university
2. UMN (minnesota)
3. ISU (iowa state university)
4. Mizzou (MO)
5. UF (FL)
6. Purdue
7. MSU (Michigan State University)

Haven't been on here forever, so sorry for the late response, but I am a current UF 4th year. I will caveat my response by saying I know there are some differences in how off-shore students do rotations at UF compared to UF students, so potentially not everything I say will be applicable to your specific situation. Students who track large animal will get to do 4 weeks of large animal medicine and 4 weeks of large animal surgery, which will be heavily equine. Outside of these rotations though, I have heard complaints from large animal students about how few large animal patients they see. Every other rotation is either exclusively or predominantly small animal patients (this may be the case at other schools too? I'm not super familiar with clinical rotations outside of UF). You can pick up elective LAM and LAS rotations, but you'll definitely end up seeing a fair number of small animals. I would also agree with JaynaAli that the large animal caseload can be pretty variable - when I was on LAM, we had less than 1 inpatient/student, but I know someone who had it just a rotation or two before me and said they were absolutely slammed. We do have a really nice shelter med department and they offer two different clinical rotations that seem to be well-liked. We technically have a small animal dentistry rotation, but it's difficult to get - I know at least for the UF students, there are only 14 spots for the whole clinical year. There is a therio rotation, which I believe is equine-focused but not equine-exclusive. Therio is so not my thing, so I have not spoken to anyone about how good the rotation actually is.