Experience Question

[rexosaurus]

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Hey all,
I have a concern about my experience. I have over 5000 hours of vet experience in small animal, emergency, and lab animal medicine. I have a couple hundred in large animal/exotic animal experience (I visited a large cat sanctuary for a couple weeks), and large animal (I had a ride along, once!). So my question is, do I invest in more "animal experience" in the large animal department (like horses and cows), or is this sufficient? Dr. Sherry Stewart at Colorado State said this was plenty, but I am still skeptical, as she only speaks for her school. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

 

[cowboyup]

You obviously have the min hours to apply covered. The real question is are they quality hours for each exp, meaning:
1. Can you write about them in a concise pg on your app
2. Do you have meaningful experiences you can easily discuss with an interviewer, how much do you remember about your lg animal ride along? procedures done? what kinds of cats did you work on, what vet needs did you address? ect?
3. MOST importantly, how did these hours strengthen and focus your desire to pursue veterinary medicine?

If you can relate experiences you had in the hours you have, rock on, but if you cant then might need some more hours.

An interviewer told me that there is nothing worse than someone who says they have an exp, but in reality does not. good luck

 

[kate_g]

I have a couple hundred in large animal/exotic animal experience (I visited a large cat sanctuary for a couple weeks), and large animal (I had a ride along, once!).

This isn't what you were asking, but... This sounds like you're listing that large animal ride-along as "animal experience." If you rode along with a *vet*, then you were shadowing and that counts as veterinary experience. (If you rode along with a ranch hand or someone who was not a vet, then it's animal experience.)

I think that *most* applicants probably have the opposite concern - they have loads of non-vet animal experience because they've worked at a barn since they were 6, raised puppies for seeing eye, volunteered at the petting zoo in the summer, all because they love animals... But there's really only so much veterinary experience one can gain before the age of 22. My guess, personally, is that the "animal experience" category exists for that reason - if only "veterinary" things counted, there would be a lot of very experienced people who'd end up looking terrible on paper.

I had a lot more "vet" than "animal" experience too, and nobody expressed any concern about that during any of my interviews. But like cowboyup said, the most important thing is that you can speak intelligently about anything you list!

 

[rexosaurus]

As far as what Cowboyup brought up, I can speak well about my vet experiences, and my memory of the ride-along (which is a vet experience, just to clear that up) is a little rough. My large cat experience i remember quite well, but it was mainly behavioral observation and enrichment involvement. So I suppose I have my bases covered, but I wasn't clear if my "animal experience" needed to bulk up. It sounds like I will be okay? I can find an opportunity this summer (I think!) to work with some horses, but I'm not sure if its necessary because I will be piling quite a bit onto my plate and I don't want to overwhelm myself. I'm a bit on the fence, can ya tell!?!?!

 

[cyrille104]

Dr. Sherry Stewart at Colorado State said this was plenty, but I am still skeptical, as she only speaks for her school.

If Sherry Stewart said it was plenty then it's plenty - CSU's adcoms expect much more when it comes to experience than many other schools do.

 

[soxbox]

I was basically in your same position rex... I had around 10,000 hours of vet experience (ranging from private practice, research, and in a vet teaching hospital... covering a lot of species, both small and large) but had ZERO animal experience... all the experience I had obtained were all vet hours... but that seemed to be enough for me to get in to a couple schools (and yep, CSU was one of them)

Once I decided to apply, I didnt worry any about gaining any animal experience... I needed to finish up some some pre-reqs and thought it was in my better interest to concentrate on that and my GREs... (though I was still getting vet expereince everyday from my full time job)

Hope that helps a bit! Good Luck 🙂

 

[rexosaurus]

Thanks everyone for your input, I appreciate it. All things considered, I should really concentrate on my GRE and boost that sucker sky high, then I won't have to worry about a thing! (just kidding 😀)