. Let me know what you like about the school, the curriculum, hands on experience, location, the people, the price, and anything else you would like to comment!
I'm at SGU:
School: overall, the school environment here is wonderful. The professors and administration are very supportive and make a wide variety of resources available to students to help them succeed. The student atmosphere is like one big family. Because we're a bit more isolated here on the island, there definitely is a strong sense of we're all in this together and camaraderie. Everyone helps each other out. The upperclassmen generally make themselves available to help out and provide us with previous study guides and homemade exam review questions. oh, our facilities are nice and fairly new here and nice. 4 of the 6 semesters of class are spent in the vet building and the other 2 are in an older single lecture hall. the surgery suite is very new (and shiny!), the anatomy lab is a separate building (idk if it's nice or not compared to other schools, who knows what they put into labs! but we do have comfy chairs haha), and the small animal clinic is being constantly updated and improved upon. the large animal farm has also been receiving updates and fancy equipment.
curriculum: not too sure what you're looking for here, at the end of they day we all get the same degree/license.
🙂 we have 3 years of classroom and then 1 year of clinicals
hands on experience: we have intro to clinical orientation 1st term which teaches basics or handling and PE with 6 labs. 2nd term we have PD 1 which has 1 lecture and 1 lab a week covering all the topics of exam more in depth. i.e. one week of cardio/resp ascultation, a week in the sim lab, a neuro week, ophtho, ortho, etc. 3rd term you repeat the same thing for large animals. not sure if there's anything for 4th term. 5th term you take intro to clinical med which has morning rotations with the teaching hospital clinicians (you go for a week at a time in the morning and are split into groups with the clinicians as they see cases). 6th term gets into LA ambulatory med, shifts at the clinic, and farm stuff.
location: aside from the fact that you're really far away from friends and family, you pretty much can't beat the location (though I'll throw one in for Blacksburg being gorgeous! just cold haha). i love the weather (its nice to walk in during the 20 mins i spend outside each day). although the breaks for exams and studying are rare, the island is a beautiful place to explore (but you pretty much won't ever have time to go to the beach haha)
people: since i've already commented on the students above, i'll toss in that the islanders are very nice. it is a very nice culture to live in. things have a very laid back and relaxed feel to them, which i definitely find soothing when i'm not studying like mad.
price: the estimated COA for the year was $52k and i'm estimating spending about $42-45k. tuition is about $28k per year. for me, it was cheaper to come to SGU than to go OOS, so rather than reapplying to OOS schools next year, I opted just to come here and have a smaller debt burden.
*one thing i'll throw out there is that you have to match with a 4th year school. you fill out an application, LORs, GPA considered, that sort of thing. that being said, if you maintain a competitive GPA its not a big worry or if you dont want to go to some of the more sought after schools (penn, UGA for example) then it's not a big worry either. you also have to option to go abroad.
