Advice for Royal Veterinary College CLINICAL YEAR please!

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fluffy408

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Hi all! I am currently attending Ross University for Vet Med located in St. Kitts, West Indies. We have been given the option to do our clinical year and rotations at Royal Vet College of Univ. of London. We are the first class to have this option. If anyone can answer some questions or just give their input it would be appreciated!

How difficult is it to get private accommodations near the school? most of us will be bringing pets
Are the landlords helpful/nice?
We are international students from the U.S. how would we go about transportation to and from campus?
Do you feel that in general, clinicians were passionate about teaching?
Do you feel that you learned valuable information and clinical skills to be a good vet and pass license exam? (aside from drawing blood and technical skills)
Anything else at all, good or bad that you feel is important for us to know please give your input :]

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How are you guys paying for that? Just curious - at SGU we had the option to go abroad, but no federal funding was offered which made most people turn it down.

I don't know anyone who went to RVC, but the others who went to ireland, Scotland, and aaustralia seemed to make it work (housing, transportation, 1st ) without too much fuss.
 
Well, still no federal funding. For the first time we have been offered a private loan from DeVry (they own Ross) on a 15 year term with interest rates that the presenter claimed are lower than those of FAFSA. I'm glad to hear it worked out for the others that went abroad. I am posting on here because I am not getting any response to basic necessity type of questions from any other sources sadly.
 
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Hi all! I am currently attending Ross University for Vet Med located in St. Kitts, West Indies. We have been given the option to do our clinical year and rotations at Royal Vet College of Univ. of London. We are the first class to have this option. If anyone can answer some questions or just give their input it would be appreciated!

How difficult is it to get private accommodations near the school? most of us will be bringing pets
Are the landlords helpful/nice?
We are international students from the U.S. how would we go about transportation to and from campus?
Do you feel that in general, clinicians were passionate about teaching?
Do you feel that you learned valuable information and clinical skills to be a good vet and pass license exam? (aside from drawing blood and technical skills)
Anything else at all, good or bad that you feel is important for us to know please give your input :]

You can live on campus (at Hawkshead), but then you are a 2 mile walk from the train station into London, and I'd recommend having a car, and no pets are allowed on campus. But its an easy commute to the hospital

Or you can rent a house in potters bar, which is what most of us did. There is a shuttle that goes between the train station and campus about every 15-30 minutes, from 7:30 am till 6pm. For rotations you either want a car, or you want someone in your rotation group to have a car, since you'll often need to get there earlier than the shuttle or leave later, and the shuttle doesn't run on weekends. Its pretty easy to find houses to rent though, and many students find ones that allow pets. My landlord all 4 years was great. There is a facebook page and intranet group you can use to try and find housemates to live with (other vet students).
Overall our clinicians are great, and really care about teaching, especially if you show interest. The class size is large though, and rotation groups are up to like 6-7 people per group now I think. If you are outgoing and reach out to clinicians, they are great. But its also easy to dissapear and not get noticed, due to the large class size.
Our small animal hospital is pretty amazing, the largest referral hospital in Europe I think. Its generally fairly busy, and you get to see some cool cases that you might not get to see a lot of other places. The equine hospital struggles a little for caseload sometimes, as does farm. So if you are more interested in those, it might be less ideal.

RVC students (and all UK students) have to do quite a bit of hours of EMS - extra mural studies on our own. Which means basically you book rotations wherever you want. This is can get expensive, but can be a great opportunity if you are considering things like internships, because you can go spend a few weeks at a lot of the hospitals you are interested in. I spent about 2 months in the US visiting various vet schools and private hospitals.

Let me know if you have any other questions. I graduated from RVC in 2015.
 
There is a shuttle that goes between the train station and campus about every 15-30 minutes, from 7:30 am till 6pm. For rotations you either want a car, or you want someone in your rotation group to have a car, since you'll often need to get there earlier than the shuttle or leave later, and the shuttle doesn't run on weekends.

Just wanted to add that the shuttle services in Hawkshead were expanded this year. They run until 8pm during the week, and 10am-5pm on Saturdays and Sundays.
 
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