Experience

[BriannaWV]

Right now I have no experience besides volunteering at an animal shelter adopting out dogs, I know that you need a good amount of experience under your belt to even be considered when applying to vet school. Well, the other day my Biology professor told the class that those of us who were interested in getting experience (for vet school) to see her sometime during the semester and she would refer us to other professors that could get us some experience. I talked to her after class and she told me to ask my one professor (for Animal Nutrition) if I could help his grad students as long as he writes me a good letter of recommendation. I presume that this would be beneficial when applying to vet school. I'm not sure what I'd be doing, but do you all think that it would be a good opportunity?

I just don't understand what helping a grad student has to do with getting experience

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[sumstorm]

I am assuming the professors is a PhD or a DVM. I assume the professor's research involves animals or health or both. So, it qualifies as research which is categorized as vet experience (research is a career field in vet med.)

However, I wouldn't approach it with an attitude of 'trade you hours for a vet shool recommendation' and I would try to find a researcher doing work in an area that interests me. You are more likely to enjoy it and learn from it if you at least find it interesting. Also, you need time with the PhD/DVM if they are going to write a LOR, so you kind of need to feel that out as well.

So, it is valuable experience, but only if it works for you and is a good set up for you and the LOR.

Something to consider; many schools look at variety and length of experience as well and this will contribute to variety and may give you another perspective on vet med careers.

 

[deleted266066]

I second what sumstorm said.

Personally, I've worked with two different professors at my school, but I mostly worked with one of their mentored graduate PhD candidate students, which sounds like what your situation is. In my experience (and including all of my friends who have done research either at a school or a research lab), it's pretty rare to work literally just with the professor / important top person. I think that most often, these professors / important people are actually supervising MANY research projects at once, and really it's the grad students that are doing most of the direct work. So, your situation is common and won't be looked down upon. For example, I've gotten LOTS of hands on experience in this lab exploring White Nose Syndrome in bats, and I'm mainly working with a grad student. Also however, I've met a few times with the main professor to discuss the research and he will be ultimately writing me a LOR.

If I'm wrong someone here can correct me, but that's at least how I've seen things

 

[sumstorm]

In my experience (and including all of my friends who have done research either at a school or a research lab), it's pretty rare to work literally just with the professor / important top person.

Yeah, sorry, wasn't implying that the work had to be done directly (ie side by side) with the PhD/DVM PI.... but that you do want to make sure you won't just be another set of hands in the lab (ie the professor wants to have students in the lab that are planning on pursueing post-bac educational paths and is willing to meet on a fairly regular basis to share the over arching schemes of research, the other tasks in research (grant writing, presenting, etc) and even just to discuss the role of this research in the broader field. These are the sorts of encounters that can help them form an impression of you so that you don't get a LOR that says 'X was a great help to our PhD candidate in pursueing research on Y.' A good LOR requires the LOR writer to have some clue about the individual.

However, for those in small schools, often the work in the research lab is done with the PI. Even at the university level, there are some PI's that are more involved than others. I find that to be very true in wildlife biology and behavior, and less true in molecular work. The PI that I did my honors under was at a state university; I did my initial work to learn techniques directly under his supervision, then did the actual work on my own, did the analysis (toxicology and data) with suggestions from him and instructors at my college, then defended before him, others from my college, and several outside examiners as selected by the dean of the department. I also learned a lot about grant writing, foundation structures, and submissions in the off moments with the PI.