Friend wants to be a vet. . . please help

[LifeIs2Short]

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Hi everyone, just to update you, i've figured out what i want to do with myself. i've applied for state schools for an informal post-bacc 🙂

Now. . my friend at work wants to become a vet and i told her i would ask the experts at SDN for advice 🙂. she's taken all of her prereqs and did very well, however, she is in her 30's, so these were over 10 years ago. Are there SMP's or programs for pre-vet's that took their reqs over 10 years ago? How should she start out? I'd really like her to reach her goal and was wondering where she should start. We're in California.

Thanks so much.

 

[Truth74]

Hi everyone, just to update you, i've figured out what i want to do with myself. i've applied for state schools for an informal post-bacc 🙂

Now. . my friend at work wants to become a vet and i told her i would ask the experts at SDN for advice 🙂. she's taken all of her prereqs and did very well, however, she is in her 30's, so these were over 10 years ago. Are there SMP's or programs for pre-vet's that took their reqs over 10 years ago? How should she start out? I'd really like her to reach her goal and was wondering where she should start. We're in California.

Thanks so much.

I don't know. You might want to ask on the pre vet forum on this site or the about pre vet and career forum. Honestly, there are more of us (with pre-reqs over ten years old) out there, now a days.
She might have to check with the school she's interested in to see whether they take all of those courses. There is always auditing previous classes to get a feel for todays pacing. [That's if she has that kind of money.]

 

[kate_g]

She probably already knows that CA has two vet schools - Davis and Western. Davis has no "expiration date" on prereqs, but for Western you have to have had the upper division bio (micro, genetics, nutrition) within the past 8 years. Each school basically sets its own policy on that, so if there are non-CA schools she's interested in, she should check their web sites.

I don't think there are veterinary SMPs in the same way as for medicine. One school - Tufts? - might have some kind of second bachelor's degree that may or may not give you some advantage in getting in to their vet program. Several schools seem to have programs for "underprivilidged" type people, but I think they're expecting those to be undergrads. I suspect if she needs to complete prereqs (some schools do have oddball things like nutrition, scientific writing, or statistics that she might not have thought of before) the "informal post-bacc" is probably the best way to go. The UC campuses have open-enrollment programs, but the course selection is often limited. Might have better luck with a Cal State campus. Regardless of requirement it's possible she'd want to re-take some classes to just "freshen up". Doing well in recent coursework can only help the application (and later performance vs. the just-graduated crowd).

Pretty much all schools set an expiration date on the GRE at ~5 years, and at any rate they'll want the "new" GRE with the analytical writing instead of the multiple-choice logic section she would have taken. Thankfully it's just English and math, so it's not as bad as the medical non-trads needing to remember 10-year-old orgo for the MCAT.

I second Truth's recommendation that she head over and browse the veterinary forums on SDN and about.com. The info is pretty general, not much specific for "non-trads". But because the veterinary applicant pool seems more age-diverse to begin with, the general info might be all she needs.

 

[bailey728]

I'm in the same boat as your friend - in my 30's, took pre-reqs about 9 years ago (will be 10+ years by the time I apply). I agree with everything in kate_g's response. Best bet is to contact the schools directly and see what their policy on pre-reqs is. In my case, the school I'm most interested in also does not have a time limit on pre-reqs. I was told that if I'm rusty on any of the subjects that I could retake them but that it was fine that I had taken them so long ago. What I plan to do is take the 2 pre-reqs I never took as an undergrad (Physics) and then brush up on the other subjects I took long ago by trying one of the MCAT reviews (Exam Krackers is supposed to have a good one that had different modules for each of the subjects - bio, chem, orgo, etc). If your friend is interested in schools that don't have a time limit, this might be an option. If she is interested in schools that will require her to re-take them, or if she wants to re-take some to brush up, I agree that an informal post-bacc would probably be the way to go.

I'm not sure of the stats on how many schools have no time limit for pre-reqs, but for myself personally - I would gravitate toward such schools because to have to re-take every pre-req would require years of extra schooling, plus a *lot* of extra money, neither of which I want to spend. Just a thought.