To Track or Not To Track

[VelcroSky]

I know this topic has been looked at before here but I thought I'd start another thread on this. I was wondering what you all felt about tracking. I'd like to get prospective student, current student and graduate opinions if possible.

On the one hand, if you're not tracking it seems better for passing your boards and you may also be exposed to some things that you would never have known interested you.

But on the other hand, let's face it, after graduation, much of the stuff that you have been made to learn may become useless to you and had you tracked you could have furthered your education in an area that is really pertinent to what you want to do.

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[VAgirl]

Thanks for starting this thread! I, too, am spending a lot of time thinking about this. Ultimately, I don't think whether or not a school tracks is going to be the deciding factor for me in picking a school, but it's certainly something to think about!

I work with a lot of vets (a pathologist, several public health vets, a few USDA folks, some active duty and retired military vets) and almost without exception they have said that they think the best thing one can do for themselves in vet school is to get the broadest education possible. Most of them agreed that vets often end up switching their area of interest, not necessarily while they're in school, but once they've finished up, gotten out into practice, and learned more about their chosen area of vet med.

I believe these vets that I know started out in either large or small animal clinical practice and ended up finding out that they're more drawn to the more government/public health side of things (which is what they're doing now and how I've met them). Admittedly my sample probably has a number of biases built into it. But it is definitely something that has gotten me thinking. Hope that helps somehow!

 

[VetMed555]

I like the idea of tracking. I am not sure EXACTLY what I'll end up doing, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be along the lines of small animal medicine. So to me, tracking is more beneficial. There is a lot to learn in vet. school. And, although breadth of education is a great thing, I think vet. med in general is leaning towards specialization, which means tracking is more beneficial to those who want to go into specialty medicine. I prefer depth of the experience over breadth at least for what I want to do. I think, breadth of experience is better in undergrad years, but vet. school would have more focus for me. Plus, at least at VMRCVM, you're not required to track until second year.

 

[Tsuky2008]

Is there any other thread that would describe what tracking is? The search page isn't really turning up anything that I can find. I can take a rudimentary guess but as far as specifics go, I'm not sure what it entails, or for that matter, which schools track and which don't. Any advice?

 

[VelcroSky]

Is there any other thread that would describe what tracking is? The search page isn't really turning up anything that I can find. I can take a rudimentary guess but as far as specifics go, I'm not sure what it entails, or for that matter, which schools track and which don't. Any advice?

In a nutshell, tracking is just a pre-selected direction in your education. You may track in small animal, for example, and concentrate most of your studies in that field. The ways the different schools do it vary and probably the best way to find out is to look at the websites and catalogs of the schools, usually in the curriculum area.

 

[VetMed555]

Is there any other thread that would describe what tracking is? The search page isn't really turning up anything that I can find. I can take a rudimentary guess but as far as specifics go, I'm not sure what it entails, or for that matter, which schools track and which don't. Any advice?

VMRCVM has 5 tracks: Small Animal, Equine, Food Animal, Mixed Animal, and Public/Corporate. Basically, you take required courses with everyone, but then you get more specialized education depending on what you are interested in (as VelcroSky already mentioned). I was looking into both: SA and Public/Corporate, but recently leaning towards SA.

 

[VAgirl]

Yea, I'm getting the sense that schools approach tracking differently in the details. Some start after year one. Some after year two. At VA-MD there are 5 tracks. At UC Davis there are 9. Also, a student at UC Davis was telling me that at their school, there are lots of scholarships that students can apply to, but lots of scholarships are only open to people in specific tracks. So there seem to be a lot of details that one can/should find out about tracking at an individual school. I'm still trying to understand the take on tracking at Davis, so if any 3rd/4th years there can enlighten me, especially for people interested in public health for example, that'd be great.

 

[hoodle]

Of note about tracking - in terms of getting a broad education. At no school can you track in cardiology, or emergency care, or radiology, or reproduction, etc. The tracks are based in animal size, for the most part!

So... even if you're a large animal track, you get exposed to all of the various specialties within large animal medicine, as well as a fundamental in small animal stuff (from the basic core curriculum). It's not like tracking is akin to a residency - fewer residencies are "large animal" or "small animal" - they're small animal internal medicine, or large animal repro, etc.

Personally, I'm OK with tracking. I like delving deeper into subjects, and I like the flexibility of choosing what I want to "major" in, rather than always being of the receiving end of firehose of broad-based information for all four years! I'm also not particularly concerned about what to track in: at Davis, for example, there's all sorts of combinations (equine/small animal, etc) so it seems like something will work out! I hope there'll be a moment in which the right track becomes self-evident!

 

[VetMed555]

Of note about tracking - in terms of getting a broad education. At no school can you track in cardiology, or emergency care, or radiology, or reproduction, etc. The tracks are based in animal size, for the most part!

Yes, that's true. My point is, if you know you want to do small animal emergency or large animal internal medicine, you would find tracking in SA or LA more beneficial than general curriculum. It's narrowing it down before you have to further narrow it down to a specialty field. For example, the clinic I currently work at is the emergency clinic, where we deal with small animals 99.9% of the time. If I truly wanted to do exactly that, I would track in SA and then do a residency in emergency and critical care. I guess, tracking is most beneficial to those who have at least a general idea of what they want to go into. I'm a big supporter of tracking, however, I do think we need a relatively large percentage of non-tracking students that would be able to adapt to any field and would be great in a mixed-practice setting or clinical/research combination.

 

[lailanni]

For me personally, I'm glad my state school is a non tracking school.

My experiece in mostly small animal, but I really am interested in goats, llamas, sheep, pigs, cattle etc. The only reason I haven't had experience with these animals is because I'm in a more suburban envrionment and people don't have the yard space/zoning requirements for these creatures.

I love small animal, and will most likely end up in a small animal practice, but I would like to learn more about mixed/large animals -- who knows, I may like it so much I could change my mind, or seek out a different kind of practice.

I think tracking is a great thing for people who know what they want, but the non tracking option is great for people who would like to explore a little more and I fit in this category.

 

[hoodle]

But lailanni, it's not as if you can track until relatively late in the process! As in, you have all of your first, second, and sometimes even third years, in which most schools will have you learning to do physicals on cows, horses, dogs and cats. Plus, you have all sorts of exposure from student clubs, and you can get jobs or volunteer in large animal or small animal hospitals outside of your schoolwork. Also, many schools retain a "mixed" track, or have interdisciplinary tracks like food animal/small animal (again, I know davis has this).