I have questions for people who have decided to get a dual degree:
How did you decide to pursue it?
How much research experience did you have to get in?
Have you regretted the degree?
What are the options post-grad? Are there ways to be a practicing clinician and a researcher, or do you have to pick?
I am in the final year of a concurrent-track dual program.
I was working in biomedical research as a technician prior to my starting vet school and knew that I was interested in the intersection of research and clinical practice. At the time, I was advised to consider a dual program by some of the eventual members of my committee; others advised that I do the PhD later. Obviously I didn't listen to them
My program offers the option of doing the degrees concurrently (2.5 years DVM --> PhD --> 1.5 years DVM) or consecutively (DVM --> PhD); I chose to do it concurrently because I knew I wanted to pursue internship and residency and didn't want to have 4 years of gap time between when I was on clinics and when I was trying to match.
You need to have a good solid amount of research experience. A dual program is an enormous commitment and you have to have a clear idea of (1) why you want to do it, (2) why you need to get both degrees at the same time to accomplish your goals, (3) why you need both degrees at all for what you want to do. I think there are quite a few people who discover that they could do what they're interested in with either of the degrees, not necessarily both at the same time.
I don't regret getting my PhD, but I do somewhat regret doing a dual degree program to get it, in all honesty. I got lucky because I'd already been working for my PI prior to vet school and had some large, high-impact projects already going that ended up being the main part of my thesis; I don't think that the time constraints of a dual program really allow for very high impact research otherwise, nor is the funding for dual degree students worth it, depending on your program (some programs it very much is). In hindsight, I wish I had done a residency/PhD instead, but there are upsides to having my PhD already too. I'm not kicking myself for doing things the way I did, but I can look back on it and think that I might have been happier doing it other ways, and while the time issue wasn't a factor for me because I had these projects in the works, I think you can do a much more thorough body of work in a PhD that is NOT part of a dual program. Having my PhD now has helped me be a better clinician and hopefully will help to open some doors for me, so like I said, it's not like it's all bad or anything.
There are plenty of options post-grad, to the point that I'm not going to list them all, it would be too lengthy. But you will almost certainly need to pick which area you want to focus on more, clinical practice or research, because it will affect the kind of post-grad training you pursue, positions you seek out, etc. You are unlikely to have a 50/50 split in doing both. Other splits, like 70 research/30 practice, are more realistic.
