Advice for experience!!

[wolfyzheart]

I'm currently a senior in high school and I'm set on being a vet. I've worked quite a few hours at a vet job as a cleaner (Which sadly I had to leave) and then I shadowed a vet for about four hours so far.
For college, I understand I need a lot of experience, I'd love to be accepted even in my Junior year for some schools but i wouldn't mind getting a degree first.
So basically I like to do a lot of pre-planning to make sure I have the best Vet School application possible.
How should I go about getting experience in college? How can I start now, and how can I plan for the future? What are good clubs/activities to partake in college? Anything I should look for program wise in undergrad schools I apply to that'll boost my application?

I really really appreciate any advice, thank you so much!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Beagleholly]

Nice job being so proactive!

My advice:

• Use breaks to get extra experience in something you might not have the time for during the school year. (I have some friends who shadowed large animal or equine vets then, for example)
• Do stuff you find interesting and enjoy doing; it will make your life so much less stressful. Don't just do things that will improve your stats, but that you actually want to do.
• Keep those grades up! You can always get more experience later, but it's hard to improve your GPA if you start off poorly. Bad grades are nothing to freak out about, even the occasional c won't stop you from getting in, but a good GPA is important to many schools. Take it easy on extracurriculars your first term, to start off strong. Obviously, do stuff that you enjoy and make friends and don't hide in the library studying all the time, but don't overdo it. had a friend who did EVERYTHING her first term and didn't study enough and had to retake several prereqs and work to pull her gpa up from a 2.5
• Join clubs you love and get energy from! Get a leadership position if you can. If they have a Prevet club, get involved. If not, see about starting one.
• Start working on prereqs right away! Something like chemistry or biology.
• As for colleges, look for a school with a strong science program that suits your learning style, you can afford (important!! Since vet school is so expensive), and that offers research opportunities for undergrads. You may not want to do research now ( I didn't), but you may change your mind and vet schools love research! There's a whole section On the application for it. Also, I went to a school in the city, so there were plenty of volunteer opportunities and clinics to volunteer at, so maybe consider that too (although maybe that's not for you)

 

[Beagleholly]

Hope some of that helps!

 

[that redhead]

I agree with pretty much everything beagleholly said. The two things I would dispute are the involvement in a pre-vet club and taking pre-reqs right away.

Pre-vet clubs can be great for hearing speakers or participating in vet related events. However, many people find them to be the watering hole for the campus' most, erm, intense pre-vets. There can be a lot of competition and self-promotion (not to mention perpetuation of false information regarding applying) that I personally didn't enjoy. N=1 and I'm sure there are people who really enjoyed and benefited from their school's pre-vet club, so maybe attend a meeting and see what you get. You should also explore other clubs on campus that have nothing to do with vet med or even animals; most schools have club days where you can get an idea of some of the cool things happening on campus.

That all being said, grades need to be your priority. It's important to do non-school things (it's also important to do non-vet things, as blasphemous as that might sound right now) but it's easier to build up some vet hours than it is to struggle with a low GPA. I would advise you to take on responsibilities gradually, especially in your first year of university when things are apt to be more overwhelming. In that same vein, loading yourself down with a bunch of science courses in your first semester is a recipe for disaster many times. Pick something like intro to bio or chemistry to get your feet wet.

As for when to get experience, start looking sooner rather than later, but plan to start over winter or summer break. As time goes on, you may be able to get experience during the school year but at least in my opinion, your first year should be dedicated to learning how to be a university student.

Good luck

 

[LetItSnow]

I agree with pretty much everything beagleholly said. The two things I would dispute are the involvement in a pre-vet club and taking pre-reqs right away.

Pre-vet clubs can be great for hearing speakers or participating in vet related events. However, many people find them to be the watering hole for the campus' most, erm, intense pre-vets. There can be a lot of competition and self-promotion (not to mention perpetuation of false information regarding applying) that I personally didn't enjoy. N=1 and I'm sure there are people who really enjoyed and benefited from their school's pre-vet club, so maybe attend a meeting and see what you get. You should also explore other clubs on campus that have nothing to do with vet med or even animals; most schools have club days where you can get an idea of some of the cool things happening on campus.

That all being said, grades need to be your priority. It's important to do non-school things (it's also important to do non-vet things, as blasphemous as that might sound right now) but it's easier to build up some vet hours than it is to struggle with a low GPA. I would advise you to take on responsibilities gradually, especially in your first year of university when things are apt to be more overwhelming. In that same vein, loading yourself down with a bunch of science courses in your first semester is a recipe for disaster many times. Pick something like intro to bio or chemistry to get your feet wet.

As for when to get experience, start looking sooner rather than later, but plan to start over winter or summer break. As time goes on, you may be able to get experience during the school year but at least in my opinion, your first year should be dedicated to learning how to be a university student.

Good luck

I wasn't involved in a pre-vet club, but I certainly believe TRH. It seems like the kind of thing that would happen. That said, there might be some good experience-building opportunities. For instance, at our monthly free clinic that we run in Minneapolis, we welcome pre-vets from UMN and UW to come help out running the front desk, shadowing, restraining.... I've had a few of them pull blood if I thought the animal was compliant and the pre-vet was knowledgeable/comfortable. Even though the club is student run/managed, we have veterinarian oversight, so the time counts as veterinary experience in addition to community service. It looks, I would think, pretty good on an application.

I also agree with TRH and Beagle about grades. You definitely want to be pursuing getting experience, and I've always been a very big proponent here of community service, but those should both be pursued only so long as academics are under control. Grades have to be your first priority because a) they are the first thing many/most schools look at, and b) they are very hard to repair if you let them slip away from you.

I wouldn't take 4 science courses either first semester, but a couple "Bio 101" and "Chemistry 101" type courses shouldn't be unmanageable. I would make a list of the general vet school requirements (it's similar for most vet schools) and then compare that to your course catalog to see when your school offers them and what the pre-requisites are. Then, I'd plot a path taking one or two per semester to get you finished up by the end of your third year. That way, you can spare yourself the expensive of a fourth year and head off to vet school. Most vet schools will award you a bachelor's degree at the end of your first year if you didn't have one when you started.

(That's pretty much exactly what I did: I had a spreadsheet showing exactly when I was going to take each pre-req class. Then I got a stupid amount of enjoyment changing the color of each box from red to green as I completed the classes. A little sense of accomplishment can carry you a long ways.)

 

[wolfyzheart]

Nice job being so proactive!

My advice:

• Use breaks to get extra experience in something you might not have the time for during the school year. (I have some friends who shadowed large animal or equine vets then, for example)
• Do stuff you find interesting and enjoy doing; it will make your life so much less stressful. Don't just do things that will improve your stats, but that you actually want to do.
• Keep those grades up! You can always get more experience later, but it's hard to improve your GPA if you start off poorly. Bad grades are nothing to freak out about, even the occasional c won't stop you from getting in, but a good GPA is important to many schools. Take it easy on extracurriculars your first term, to start off strong. Obviously, do stuff that you enjoy and make friends and don't hide in the library studying all the time, but don't overdo it. had a friend who did EVERYTHING her first term and didn't study enough and had to retake several prereqs and work to pull her gpa up from a 2.5
• Join clubs you love and get energy from! Get a leadership position if you can. If they have a Prevet club, get involved. If not, see about starting one.
• Start working on prereqs right away! Something like chemistry or biology.
• As for colleges, look for a school with a strong science program that suits your learning style, you can afford (important!! Since vet school is so expensive), and that offers research opportunities for undergrads. You may not want to do research now ( I didn't), but you may change your mind and vet schools love research! There's a whole section On the application for it. Also, I went to a school in the city, so there were plenty of volunteer opportunities and clinics to volunteer at, so maybe consider that too (although maybe that's not for you)

Thats actually really helpful, thank you so much! I'll look for schools that seem to have good research opportunities. I've always wanted to get involved in research! What a great excuse

I agree with pretty much everything beagleholly said. The two things I would dispute are the involvement in a pre-vet club and taking pre-reqs right away.

Pre-vet clubs can be great for hearing speakers or participating in vet related events. However, many people find them to be the watering hole for the campus' most, erm, intense pre-vets. There can be a lot of competition and self-promotion (not to mention perpetuation of false information regarding applying) that I personally didn't enjoy. N=1 and I'm sure there are people who really enjoyed and benefited from their school's pre-vet club, so maybe attend a meeting and see what you get. You should also explore other clubs on campus that have nothing to do with vet med or even animals; most schools have club days where you can get an idea of some of the cool things happening on campus.

That all being said, grades need to be your priority. It's important to do non-school things (it's also important to do non-vet things, as blasphemous as that might sound right now) but it's easier to build up some vet hours than it is to struggle with a low GPA. I would advise you to take on responsibilities gradually, especially in your first year of university when things are apt to be more overwhelming. In that same vein, loading yourself down with a bunch of science courses in your first semester is a recipe for disaster many times. Pick something like intro to bio or chemistry to get your feet wet.

As for when to get experience, start looking sooner rather than later, but plan to start over winter or summer break. As time goes on, you may be able to get experience during the school year but at least in my opinion, your first year should be dedicated to learning how to be a university student.

Good luck

Thank you so much! I'll deff take things slow and look at the pre-vet club, I know college is a completely different ball game then I'm used to! Very helpful, thanks so much.

I wasn't involved in a pre-vet club, but I certainly believe TRH. It seems like the kind of thing that would happen. That said, there might be some good experience-building opportunities. For instance, at our monthly free clinic that we run in Minneapolis, we welcome pre-vets from UMN and UW to come help out running the front desk, shadowing, restraining.... I've had a few of them pull blood if I thought the animal was compliant and the pre-vet was knowledgeable/comfortable. Even though the club is student run/managed, we have veterinarian oversight, so the time counts as veterinary experience in addition to community service. It looks, I would think, pretty good on an application.

I also agree with TRH and Beagle about grades. You definitely want to be pursuing getting experience, and I've always been a very big proponent here of community service, but those should both be pursued only so long as academics are under control. Grades have to be your first priority because a) they are the first thing many/most schools look at, and b) they are very hard to repair if you let them slip away from you.

I wouldn't take 4 science courses either first semester, but a couple "Bio 101" and "Chemistry 101" type courses shouldn't be unmanageable. I would make a list of the general vet school requirements (it's similar for most vet schools) and then compare that to your course catalog to see when your school offers them and what the pre-requisites are. Then, I'd plot a path taking one or two per semester to get you finished up by the end of your third year. That way, you can spare yourself the expensive of a fourth year and head off to vet school. Most vet schools will award you a bachelor's degree at the end of your first year if you didn't have one when you started.

(That's pretty much exactly what I did: I had a spreadsheet showing exactly when I was going to take each pre-req class. Then I got a stupid amount of enjoyment changing the color of each box from red to green as I completed the classes. A little sense of accomplishment can carry you a long ways.)

Thats a fantastic idea to draw up a chart! I'll definitely do that at some point. I really would like to have everything organized so I know exactly what I'm going for and when to take what etc. I hope you don't mind me stealing that genius of an idea.

 

[DVMDream]

I agree with pretty much everything beagleholly said. The two things I would dispute are the involvement in a pre-vet club and taking pre-reqs right away.

Pre-vet clubs can be great for hearing speakers or participating in vet related events. However, many people find them to be the watering hole for the campus' most, erm, intense pre-vets. There can be a lot of competition and self-promotion (not to mention perpetuation of false information regarding applying) that I personally didn't enjoy. N=1 and I'm sure there are people who really enjoyed and benefited from their school's pre-vet club, so maybe attend a meeting and see what you get. You should also explore other clubs on campus that have nothing to do with vet med or even animals; most schools have club days where you can get an idea of some of the cool things happening on campus.

The pre-vet club at my undergrad was almost the exact opposite of this. Yes, everyone there "wanted" to be a vet, but I would say that many of them that commitment just was not really there. Most of them had no idea what they were doing in regards to veterinary school or how to get to veterinary school. The only thing the club really did was organize some time to volunteer at the local shelter, which was actually easier to volunteer at if you weren't a part of the pre-vet club. So rather our pre-vet club was more a group of students that just happened to like animals and were maybe thinking of applying to vet school but really had no clue if that is what they wanted. There were no talks, no discussions about veterinary medicine at all, only how to volunteer at the shelter and the yearly fundraiser they did for the shelter. That was it. Needless to say, I didn't stick around for long.



I agree with what everyone else has said though. You do need to get experience and have other things outside of school/vet med that interest you. Try to get some leadership experience but most important is to not allow any of these things to prevent you from getting good grades. Balance your time well so that you can still maintain good grades. It is much easier to shadow a few vets in a year after undergrad graduation than it is to have to spend a year or two and much more money to try to improve bad grades.

Best of Luck!

 

[wolfyzheart]

The pre-vet club at my undergrad was almost the exact opposite of this. Yes, everyone there "wanted" to be a vet, but I would say that many of them that commitment just was not really there. Most of them had no idea what they were doing in regards to veterinary school or how to get to veterinary school. The only thing the club really did was organize some time to volunteer at the local shelter, which was actually easier to volunteer at if you weren't a part of the pre-vet club. So rather our pre-vet club was more a group of students that just happened to like animals and were maybe thinking of applying to vet school but really had no clue if that is what they wanted. There were no talks, no discussions about veterinary medicine at all, only how to volunteer at the shelter and the yearly fundraiser they did for the shelter. That was it. Needless to say, I didn't stick around for long.



I agree with what everyone else has said though. You do need to get experience and have other things outside of school/vet med that interest you. Try to get some leadership experience but most important is to not allow any of these things to prevent you from getting good grades. Balance your time well so that you can still maintain good grades. It is much easier to shadow a few vets in a year after undergrad graduation than it is to have to spend a year or two and much more money to try to improve bad grades.

Best of Luck!

Sounds like a fun pre-vet club experience.

Thanks so much DVMDream :3 I will definitely work on keeping grades up as high as possible.

 

[Hopeful_DVM]

When I moved to the town where my undergrad was, I drove around town to every clinic and dropped off my resume. I got two job offers from this, and ended up working at one of the clinics for about a year before I had to leave for an internship. Even if a clinic is not necessarily hiring, a resume and cold cover letter can often get a clinic manager or the veterinarian to have you at least come in for an interview. And remember, even if you are not successful at every clinic interview that you may have, this build valuable experience for interviews that you may have in the future. Also, since almost all of the pre-vets at my undergrad institution were members of the pre-vet club, I wanted something to make me stand out from the rest of them. So, I joined the Wildlife Disease Society. Hope this helps.

 

[bbeventer]

Everyone has provided with you great advice so far.

My little piece of the pie... don't focus so much on getting to vet school just yet, but instead enjoy undergrad.

 

[wolfyzheart]

When I moved to the town where my undergrad was, I drove around town to every clinic and dropped off my resume. I got two job offers from this, and ended up working at one of the clinics for about a year before I had to leave for an internship. Even if a clinic is not necessarily hiring, a resume and cold cover letter can often get a clinic manager or the veterinarian to have you at least come in for an interview. And remember, even if you are not successful at every clinic interview that you may have, this build valuable experience for interviews that you may have in the future. Also, since almost all of the pre-vets at my undergrad institution were members of the pre-vet club, I wanted something to make me stand out from the rest of them. So, I joined the Wildlife Disease Society. Hope this helps.

Thanks so much, thats a great idea!!

Everyone has provided with you great advice so far.

My little piece of the pie... don't focus so much on getting to vet school just yet, but instead enjoy undergrad.

May I ask why I shouldn't focus on getting into vet school?

 

[LetItSnow]

May I ask why I shouldn't focus on getting into vet school?

I don't think bbeventer meant not to focus on it at all (she did say "dont' focus SO MUCH"). I think she's just saying - your undergrad years are an opportunity to do a lot of different things. Learn a new sport you've never played. Find a club that's focused around an interesting hobby. Get involved in community service (which looks good on a vet-school resume, too). Travel and do a semester abroad if you can arrange/afford it.

Obviously if your goal is vet school you want to keep that in mind in the big picture and make plans that give you the appropriate trajectory to get there: which means keeping a good GPA (don't tolerate a B when you can get an A, and don't tolerate a C when you can get a B, but don't beat yourself up over the occasional B or even C), racking up those veterinary experience hours, and researching the application requirements for schools you might be interested in. But making yourself a broader person is enjoyable and might end up helping give you resiliency against burn-out. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I'd imagine that's what she was trying to convey.

You're on the right track, don't worry!

 

[wolfyzheart]

I don't think bbeventer meant not to focus on it at all (she did say "dont' focus SO MUCH"). I think she's just saying - your undergrad years are an opportunity to do a lot of different things. Learn a new sport you've never played. Find a club that's focused around an interesting hobby. Get involved in community service (which looks good on a vet-school resume, too). Travel and do a semester abroad if you can arrange/afford it.

Obviously if your goal is vet school you want to keep that in mind in the big picture and make plans that give you the appropriate trajectory to get there: which means keeping a good GPA (don't tolerate a B when you can get an A, and don't tolerate a C when you can get a B, but don't beat yourself up over the occasional B or even C), racking up those veterinary experience hours, and researching the application requirements for schools you might be interested in. But making yourself a broader person is enjoyable and might end up helping give you resiliency against burn-out. I don't want to put words in her mouth, but I'd imagine that's what she was trying to convey.

You're on the right track, don't worry!

Ah that clears it up. Thanks so much!!