DVM as a (early) second career?

[WildlifeBiologist88]

Hello all! I have some questions about applying for vet school, but it might be easiest if I describe myself and my current situation first so that we are all on the same page...

-I always wanted to be a vet growing up. Living in an agricultural community, I always pictured myself as being a farm vet one day.
-I did really well in high school, got outstanding SATs, and went to an elite university (Bucknell) with their highest academic scholarship.
-I never felt very comfortable in college, mostly because I never felt like I fit in with the other students. This affected my academics, and I graduated with something like a 3.3 GPA (although I made Dean's list my last 3 semesters, and improved my GPA consistently throughout my four years). My major was a B.S. in Biology with a minor in Environmental Studies, and I fulfilled my pre-med/pre-vet requirements, as they were at the time. I graduated in May of 2011.
-The summer after my junior year of college, I got a job as a wildlife technician doing Indiana Bat surveys (endangered bat that has to be surveyed for when summer tree clearing projects will impact suitable habitat).
-Since college, I have been a full-time employee, and I have gotten several state permits and a federal permit as a Qualified Indiana Bat Surveyor. I am the youngest person I know to have gotten a federal permit (a pretty big deal). I am the only full-time employee of my boss, who started his own company after working for a few large nation-wide environmental consulting companies. By the time I could apply for vet school, I will have at least 5 years of experience working hands-on with wild mammals.

Now, I just turned 25 less than a week ago. I have been thinking that I probably don't want to continue to work as an environmental consultant for the long term (I like working with wildlife, but to make a decent living I would have to involve myself more deeply in the politics of oil, coal and gas exploration, which is tiring to say the least). I know that most careers I would have even mild interest in require at least a MS degree. The only career I still really think that I would be happy in is veterinary medicine (large animal practice, I don't want to deal with family pets). The issues are thus:

-My bachelors degree GPA is not outstanding. I know it does not reflect my academic capabilities in the least. The competitive nature of my university may mitigate that slightly to an admissions department, but I'm still swimming upriver on that one.
-In the few years since I went to college, vet schools have decided to make Microbiology and Biochemistry a prerequisite. I took mostly Conservation Biology-related upper level electives, and I have neither of these courses on my CV. For some schools (like UPenn, since I am a PA resident) I would need to retake Physics II, since I did poorly in it (again, not for lack of ability so much as lack of direction and focus during undergrad).
-I took the GRE after undergrad and did extremely well on the verbal (96th percentile) but my quantitative should have been higher if I'd studied more for it. Cumulative score was a 1340 (verbal+quantitative).

Are we all up to speed? Basically, this would be a second career for me, but I'm not that far out of college. Really, I'm looking answers to the following questions:

1. I know that I can probably find the time to log plenty of hours with local vets, because my field work is slow or nonexistent in the winter months. How much will my five years of working with animals (bats) count for the application process?
2. Does it help or hurt me that I would be a "non-traditional" applicant?
3. How would you recommend going about taking these three courses (biochem, microbio, and physics II) in a way that would allow me to continue to work consistently (April-October at least)? I am getting married in August and it would be pretty difficult to stop working, both for my own new family and for my boss, because I am his only full-time employee since he started his own company.
4. Is there anything else you can add as advice? For more info, my fiance is graduating in May with her BS in Biomedical Engineering (also from Bucknell) and is intending to take a year off, then go to medical school. Assuming I can get these courses finished and my previous college credits are still good for awhile, I can reapply to vet school for years and still make enough money for us to live on, because I have a fairly rare and in-demand skill set for any major land development projects in the eastern US and my busy season only spans 6 months or so.

Thank you very much for any input you can give.

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[LetItSnow]

So yeah, a couple things.

First, I dunno, maybe it's just me, but there's a lot of off-putting stuff in there. "Elite" university (if it's truly elite, you don't need to spell it out for people). "Career" at 25 (I'm old 'n grumpy, but I think you need to be in a job long enough to develop a contour to the chair before you can call it a 'career'.) So... anyway. Grumpiness aside...

Regarding academic capabilities, you need to look at the admissions side of things, not your side. YOU may know your past performance isn't accurately reflective of your capabilities, but why should an admissions group take your word for it? They can only evaluate you on what you can show them. And that's not unfair of them. So keep that in mind as you build out your application. That said, I don't think of a 3.3 as 'bad'. It's a bit low, I think, but it's not in the "ohhhhh... that's a PROBLEM" category. Ya know? And if your trajectory was upward toward the end, that tends to look good. So just go get A's on your remaining pre-reqs and don't look backwards. Especially if you rocked the GRE.

Your working with bats experience is good and will count in the 'animal experience' category, I would imagine. It's interesting, it's unusual, it has a lot of important 'current events' angles. But unless it is veterinary supervised, it does not count as veterinary experience. Most schools place an emphasis on having at least a moderate exposure to vet-med. Typical applicants are applying with several hundred hours of experience under a veterinarian (job as vet tech, shadowing, volunteering, etc.). You need to start getting some and barring pretty major life changes, it takes a bit of time to build up. So start now and find some stable opportunity to build up medical experience. I think you'll find that having post-UG life experience will help bulk out your application, so you probably don't need to worry about leadership activities and extracurriculars as much as many applicants ... but there's no getting around the need for veterinary experience.

I don't consider you to be a non-trad applicant at 25, but since there's no definition, we all get to call ourselves what we want. I was always told "oh, they love that" in regards to my age/background. Now that I'm through the process - I think it helps, but not in the way people meant. I don't think the admissions people actually care one bit whether you're 20, 25, or 40, so it doesn't help that way. But what age does do is give you more life experience to draw on when it comes time to answer interview questions. I talked to one person (really drawing a blank whether it was an interviewer or interviewee) who talked about an interview where the (young) applicant truthfully said "Hey, I've just never had anything like that happen to me." That's really not the worst answer in the world, but it's also not as good as being able to address their point. So regarding your age ... I'd put it in the "meh" column. It won't hurt you at all, it won't really help you (directly). It may help you indirectly because of experience.

Taking those courses is tough. It depends on where you're at and what your work circumstances are. I know what *I* did was take my post-bacc pre-reqs at a community college to save money. But, you'll hear many people throw out the "community colleges aren't as rigorous, so applications committees won't be as impressed." Personally, I've never seen anyone actually DEMONSTRATE that; as long as the school you're applying to will accept the courses (that's the big caveat), I don't think they really care where the courses come from. And usually, the people promoting that argument paid more to go to a university. On the flip side, there's a whole ton of us who got in with CC courses. So... make of it what you will. Those are the arguments, you have to decide what to believe. (The other issue is that most CCs don't have upper level science courses that are accepted by vet schools because they typically only have 1st/2nd-year college-level classes. Many of them are now creating partnered 4-yr degree programs, though, and have started adding those courses.)

In your shoes I'd just hunt around. Find what schools - CC, university, whatever - offer the courses you need, figure out when they offer them, and see what you can fit in your schedule. Maybe you just do one per semester and delay your application for another year. Sucky, but ... ya gotta look at the long term. And, you mentioned having a 6-month busy season, which implies a 6-month not-busy season; maybe you just take classes in the not-busy part of the year.

GRE: With the changes in the last year (two years? I've lost track), you'll need to look into whether your scores are still reportable. Any of the more recent applicants on SDN can fill you in on that. Maybe it's no issue at all; I dunno.

Last piece of advice ... this may be a big swing 'n a miss, but reading between the lines of your post, I wonder if you wouldn't be interested in a dual DVM/MPH degree. The MPH degree would open the door to the types of jobs that sound like they may be interesting to you. I don't know. But it wouldn't hurt to look into it.

Good luck. And welcome to SDN.

 

[LetItSnow]

(This is what happens when LIS is procrastinating and should be taking a radiology test.)

 

[Cyndia]

By the way, you could also consider taking online courses for some of the prereqs - it's what I'm doing in the spring to fulfill my biochem requirement since I was a credit short on what I needed.

 

[WildlifeBiologist88]

Thanks, LIS and Cyndia for your advice.

LIS, I don't think the DVM/MPH is what I'm really looking for, but I may not have a perfect understanding of what that means. I'm not interested in vet med and agriculture from a public health standpoint. Perhaps you were drawing that from my environmental background? Either way, I have the job I do at the moment because it allows me to work outside with animals, and because I sort of fell into a good opportunity out of college where my boss was able to get me trained up with a lot of permits for bat and wetland work within a few years.

As far as the "elite" university thing goes, I only included that because not everyone knows what Bucknell is. A UPenn admissions person likely would, because both are in PA and there are a lot of people who go to undergrad at one and grad school at the other. However, I do most of my work in WV, OH, and IL and when people out there ask me what college I went to, they usually have never heard of it. Often they squint at me and ask "So, is that a four year school?" Thankfully, our basketball team is slowly changing that thanks to the NCAA tournament ('Ray Bucknell!).

My fiances pre-med advisor seems to think that for both vet school and med school, getting the pre-requisite courses from a community college is fine. It is nice to hear some actual vet students validate that.

Getting vet experience should be no problem. We have a busy season and a slow season, but I am a salaried employee so in the winter I won't starve if I volunteer and shadow with local vets. I've talked to one of my close friends already about perhaps setting up a meeting with his vet (he's a dairy farmer) and following him around for the winter. I will probably have to move to Pittsburgh for my work within the next 6 months, so I guess next winter I can do the same thing out there with a new vet(s).

On a personal note, I get where you're coming from with the whole "it's not a career when you're 25." Actually, you're kind of right and I am trying to avoid having this become my career. There is a pretty decent earning potential, but only once you are a project manager, something I would almost certainly be by the time I was thirty. Watching the project managers that I know, I would not want their jobs so i would like to get out while the getting is good.

Thanks again for the advice!

 

[CalliopeDVM]

I think you really need to talk to the school if you want to know if your work will qualify, and I'm sure it varies from school to school. Whether anyone here knows what Bucknell is doesn't matter, nor does our knowledge of your SAT scores. In fact, I don't think the acceptance committee will care about your SAT scores either.

I went back to university full time at 31 to get required prerequisites and improve my average before applying to vet school (got in on my second attempt), and graduated when I was 38.

 

[Minnerbelle]

I would imagine rabies would be a good talking point during your interview...

 

[that redhead]

LIS, I don't think the DVM/MPH is what I'm really looking for, but I may not have a perfect understanding of what that means. I'm not interested in vet med and agriculture from a public health standpoint.

Careful there - public health is an extremely important aspect in large animal medicine. Producers are marketing a product to the public, and your role as a veterinarian is at least in part making sure that the product that makes it to the consumer is not going to harm them in any way. You'll have to be familiar with what drugs can and cannot be given, their withdrawl times, how certain pathogens may affect the meat/milk/hide/wool/etc and so on.

That all aside, I think one question admissions might have is: how did you go from working with small wildlife to wanting to work with livestock? Why such a change? UPenn is one of the vet schools that likes to see some connection between your previous experiences and your career goals. Getting your hours in with livestock vets would be a great way to address this, and the more you can get (in your non-busy times) the better, in my opinion.

Good luck