I am about to enter my senior year of college and until recently had been planning to go to medical school. However, lately I have been thinking that I would be much happier as a vet and so I think I want to go to vet school instead. Overall I think I am a pretty strong candidate, ~3.95 cum and sci GPA as physics major, a year of research in biophysics lab and will be writing thesis this coming year, and I am a 3-season DI athlete. My only concern is that for veterinary school it seems that the most important factor is how much animal/veterinary experience one has, and it seems most applicants have 1000's of hours of experience with animals. Unfortunately since I just recently decided I wanted to be a vet I have almost no aminal experience (I have some clinical volunteer and medical research experience but it is all involving people, not animals). I plan to take a year off after I graduate to get some animal/veterinary experience
but even then I will be working full time and so I don't think I will be able to get much more than 1000 hours of experience and I am worried that that still won't be enough to give me a good shot at getting into some of the top schools. How much experience does one need to be a competitive candidate, and are vet schools understanding of the fact that people who don't decide they want to be vets until later on in life won't have as much experience as someone who has known they wanted to be a vet since they were 12?
but even then I will be working full time and so I don't think I will be able to get much more than 1000 hours of experience and I am worried that that still won't be enough to give me a good shot at getting into some of the top schools. How much experience does one need to be a competitive candidate, and are vet schools understanding of the fact that people who don't decide they want to be vets until later on in life won't have as much experience as someone who has known they wanted to be a vet since they were 12?
