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I'm a freshman non-trad student who is starting to work on accruing animal/vet hours. I also work, so I have the (comparatively modest) goal of 1000 hours of combined animal/vet experience by the time I apply the first time. I've started volunteering 3 hours a week at an animal shelter in the vet clinic area. My job is cleaning up after animals and making sure everyone has food and water and a clean litter box and all that. I picked this position rather than looking after the adoption-ready animals because it puts me in the clinic area.
The shelter allows one person at a time to shadow as often as they like, pending space, during the first half of the day when the doctor does surgeries. If I'm watching surgeries or shadowing a vet, but not assisting, does this count as "veterinary experience"?
I'm also wondering if it's useful on a vet school application to have shadowing experiences with a number of different small animal/exotic vets. I was thinking of trying to shadow vets in my area that run specialty practices, like eye car or cancer, as well as an avian/exotic practice or two. If I only have 10 hours or so with many different vets, does that make me look noncommittal, or is it good to show variety? I think most of my hours will be in small animal in one way or another, but I'm happy to make those hours diverse.
In another thread, someone mentioned that Cornell requires a letter of documentation from every single experience you want them to count. What kind of letter would I want to be collecting from shadowed vets, exactly? Do other schools have requirements about documentation/proof that I should be aware of before I do anything else?
Finally, I'm going to have to travel to get horse/farm animal experience, and possibly for wildlife as well. Does anyone have suggestions for animal sanctuaries or programs that are friendly to pre-vet students who would want to do a full time week of volunteering rather than an afternoon every week? It can be anywhere in the country, but hopefully located reasonably near to an airport. (I gather that RAVS does horse clinics, but only abroad?)
The shelter allows one person at a time to shadow as often as they like, pending space, during the first half of the day when the doctor does surgeries. If I'm watching surgeries or shadowing a vet, but not assisting, does this count as "veterinary experience"?
I'm also wondering if it's useful on a vet school application to have shadowing experiences with a number of different small animal/exotic vets. I was thinking of trying to shadow vets in my area that run specialty practices, like eye car or cancer, as well as an avian/exotic practice or two. If I only have 10 hours or so with many different vets, does that make me look noncommittal, or is it good to show variety? I think most of my hours will be in small animal in one way or another, but I'm happy to make those hours diverse.
In another thread, someone mentioned that Cornell requires a letter of documentation from every single experience you want them to count. What kind of letter would I want to be collecting from shadowed vets, exactly? Do other schools have requirements about documentation/proof that I should be aware of before I do anything else?
Finally, I'm going to have to travel to get horse/farm animal experience, and possibly for wildlife as well. Does anyone have suggestions for animal sanctuaries or programs that are friendly to pre-vet students who would want to do a full time week of volunteering rather than an afternoon every week? It can be anywhere in the country, but hopefully located reasonably near to an airport. (I gather that RAVS does horse clinics, but only abroad?)