- Joined
- Mar 2, 2012
- Messages
- 323
- Reaction score
- 189
You definitely can still finish it by that time, if you choose. I have a couple friends starting the program this summer going into their second year. I'm only 7 credits in so far since I didn't go to the public health institute last year, and I fully expect to be able to be mostly done except for a few transfer credits by the time I enter clinics. You definitely need to load up your summers, but it's doable. I'll be almost halfway through my degree by the end of the summer (and that's a scary thought...). If you don't work full time in your summers, it's pretty reasonable to fit in 6 credits of online courses, which is considered a full time courseload (doable if you work full time, but tough... that's what I did last summer and I had no free time ). If you're able to attend the public health institute full time for all three weeks as opposed to just half days or only 1 or 2 weeks, you can reasonably get another 6 credits there (plus 1 credit for the required power of collaboration course your first summer). Technically you can fit in as many as 7 credits (not including the collaboration course), but they consider 5-6 credits to be a fairly rigorous schedule, so not sure I'd recommend it. All that adds up to about 12 credits. Do that both summers, and use all possible 14 transfer credits, plus the 1 credit of your externship that is required to be through the school of public health rather than vet rotations, and you're almost there! Plus, although it's an option, you don't have to do your 3 master's project credits as transfer credits from the vet school if you would rather use all 14 transfer credits on regular classes from your vet curriculum (I'm hoping to do this, but I can't figure out with the new curriculum if all the classes on this list of possible transfer classes will still exist)... which brings you to a grand total of 42 credits! (That's how many you need).
I'll also throw in that there is a 1 credit public health elective you can take spring of your 1st year in the vet curriculum at UMN (it's lots of fun, despite being an evening class ), and you can transfer that into your MPH even if you haven't started your MPH yet. So, you can get a 1 credit head start!
Hopefully that all made sense and wasn't more information than you were looking for.
Thanks a lot for the info, it's really helpful and it definitely made sense. It's a relief to know I could complete the degree along with the DVM. Since I don't plan to work or come home during the summers, I think I'll be able to go through the program as you suggest, with ~12 units during summer. I'll also look into that elective; it would be nice to get a head start