Internships during Undergrad

[lynne8832]

Hey everyone! I just finished my first year of undergrad and I didn't have a job or internship during the school year because I wanted to give myself a year to focus on academics. Now that the year is over I have an internship at a local small animal hospital where I intern for 18 hours a week. I basically just watch surgeries and other procedures and follow the technicians around and ask questions. Although this has been an awesome experience so far and I hope to learn a lot more about veterinary medicine this summer, I feel a little bit behind. This internship isn't super hands on and I worry that I won't have the hours or experience necessary by the time I apply to vet school, although I know I still have 3 years until I apply. I was wondering if anyone had any advice regarding internships/ vet experience. I plan on trying to get an internship at a rehabilitation center or aquarium next summer but I'm trying to get as many vet hours as I can right now. Thanks in advance 🙂

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[ajs513]

Hey everyone! I just finished my first year of undergrad and I didn't have a job or internship during the school year because I wanted to give myself a year to focus on academics. Now that the year is over I have an internship at a local small animal hospital where I intern for 18 hours a week. I basically just watch surgeries and other procedures and follow the technicians around and ask questions. Although this has been an awesome experience so far and I hope to learn a lot more about veterinary medicine this summer, I feel a little bit behind. This internship isn't super hands on and I worry that I won't have the hours or experience necessary by the time I apply to vet school, although I know I still have 3 years until I apply. I was wondering if anyone had any advice regarding internships/ vet experience. I plan on trying to get an internship at a rehabilitation center or aquarium next summer but I'm trying to get as many vet hours as I can right now. Thanks in advance 🙂

Remember that vet hours aren’t the be all end all. But if you can get a ton of hours while still doing well in school and doing extracurriculars, go for it. Don’t just apply to programs that call themselves internships, and don’t just apply to large hospitals that will give you experience a couple times a week following people around. That kind of experience can be great, but it’s difficult to get a lot of experience that way since most are only for a few weeks. For me and some of my undergrad classmates, the easiest way was to apply to smaller hospitals (but also sometimes bigger ER/specialty hospitals) as an assistant or a technician. Some will train you on the job before having any hands on experience. I worked for around 20 hours a week during school and a little more over the summer. I did this from the middle of my sophomore year until I graduated. That got me over 2,000 hours. When I graduated I started at a place near my home at around 30 hours a week, and got up to 3,000 hours before applying.

The gist of it is this: shadowing will get you varied experience but usually not a ton of hours. This is good to get exposed to different aspects of veterinary medicine. Working as an assistant/tech will usually get you more hours over a long period of time, and also hopefully some money. That’s great for paying for applications and interviews. I know it really helped me. One kind of experience isn’t necessarily better than others, but they offer different things.

 

[battie]

18 hours a week for the summer comes out to, what, 180 hours for the summer. That's not bad, to be honest. Over three summers, that's 540 hours, which isn't bad at all. Keep chugging away. If you can get other hours elsewhere, even just 5 hours a week during the school year, that can only go better.

Don't stress about it too much at this rate. You're starting two years before I did. And don't let school year hour jeopardize your grades

 

[lynne8832]

Thank you so much for your help! I’m just finding that most places that are hiring technician want somebody that is either licensed or very experienced and I don’t have a whole lot of experience since I just finished freshman year! I’m hoping that after this entire summer of interning I will be able to get an internship during my sophomore year as I have heard that many of the vets around my school take undergraduate students for jobs and internships!

 

[Minnerbelle]

Thank you so much for your help! I’m just finding that most places that are hiring technician want somebody that is either licensed or very experienced and I don’t have a whole lot of experience since I just finished freshman year! I’m hoping that after this entire summer of interning I will be able to get an internship during my sophomore year as I have heard that many of the vets around my school take undergraduate students for jobs and internships!

Do a good job at this clinic. Be engaged, don’t get in the way, ask good questions without being bothersome, and be helpful without overstepping your bounds. If you’re smart, helpful, and pleasant, chances are they’ll hire you later.

 

[Georgethecat]

18 hours a week is a great start and should be enough contact that they will know you well enough to be able to provide you with a letter of recommendation when it comes time to apply to vet school. And as others have said, it might lead to getting hired as an assistant.

While earning money is obviously a good thing, don’t dismiss what you learn from shadowing. Not trying to reignite the shadowing versus working as an assistant/tech. Just saying that you can learn very valuable things from solely shadowing the veterinarian

If you still have time in your schedule this summer I suggest that you contact or preferably visit in person all of the other clinics in your area. Dress nicely and take your resume with you and ask to speak with either the clinic manager or owner and see if they will let you shadow there. There are lots of threads with more info on SDN on how to approach clinics, but the short version is to ask to shadow for a day or week and if it goes well and they see that you won’t be a nuisance then they will be more likely to let you shadow more extensively. Depending on what type of clinic you are currently interning with, you could focus on a different type of clinic Try for an emergency clinic or one that focuses on exotics or a large animal vet for example Double check with your current internship that they wouldn’t consider it a conflict of interest, but since you aren’t an employee it shouldn’t be a problem if you shadow somewhere that is not a direct competitor.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Allifam23]

Remember that vet hours aren’t the be all end all. But if you can get a ton of hours while still doing well in school and doing extracurriculars, go for it. Don’t just apply to programs that call themselves internships, and don’t just apply to large hospitals that will give you experience a couple times a week following people around. That kind of experience can be great, but it’s difficult to get a lot of experience that way since most are only for a few weeks. For me and some of my undergrad classmates, the easiest way was to apply to smaller hospitals (but also sometimes bigger ER/specialty hospitals) as an assistant or a technician. Some will train you on the job before having any hands on experience. I worked for around 20 hours a week during school and a little more over the summer. I did this from the middle of my sophomore year until I graduated. That got me over 2,000 hours. When I graduated I started at a place near my home at around 30 hours a week, and got up to 3,000 hours before applying.

The gist of it is this: shadowing will get you varied experience but usually not a ton of hours. This is good to get exposed to different aspects of veterinary medicine. Working as an assistant/tech will usually get you more hours over a long period of time, and also hopefully some money. That’s great for paying for applications and interviews. I know it really helped me. One kind of experience isn’t necessarily better than others, but they offer different things.

What would you have to do to be an assistant or tech for undergrad? Wouldnt you need some sort of experience to become those?

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Hey everyone! I just finished my first year of undergrad and I didn't have a job or internship during the school year because I wanted to give myself a year to focus on academics. Now that the year is over I have an internship at a local small animal hospital where I intern for 18 hours a week. I basically just watch surgeries and other procedures and follow the technicians around and ask questions. Although this has been an awesome experience so far and I hope to learn a lot more about veterinary medicine this summer, I feel a little bit behind. This internship isn't super hands on and I worry that I won't have the hours or experience necessary by the time I apply to vet school, although I know I still have 3 years until I apply. I was wondering if anyone had any advice regarding internships/ vet experience. I plan on trying to get an internship at a rehabilitation center or aquarium next summer but I'm trying to get as many vet hours as I can right now. Thanks in advance 🙂

I volunteered/worked at a small animal shelter med (nonprofit) hospital for 8-10 hours a week during the school year in undergrad. This amounted to 6-700 hours when I applied. Besides that I only had 20-30 hours vet hours. I had to spend 2 hours working at nonprofits for my scholarship, and did so at a wildlife rehab and nature center. The other summer I spent doing paid neuroscience research. I got into 3/4 schools I applied to. I would say as long as you have 500+ hours (as long as you have good grades, recs, and GRE, etc), you're fine. I know people who have gotten in with much less. A lot of schools want to see quality of hours, not just sheer quantity. People on here talk about the thousands of hours they had, and it is truly not necessary. Don't let it scare you! When I was worried about the # of hours I had, I emailed schools. And the current school I go to said the average applicant (I think accepted applicant) had something around 400.

As someone else said, absolutely don't compromise your GPA for getting more hours. You can always take time off to get more hours. Salvaging a poor GPA can be very challenging.

 

[Minnerbelle]

What would you have to do to be an assistant or tech for undergrad? Wouldnt you need some sort of experience to become those?

A lot of areas are desperate for good help. If you can commit to a schedule and not be flakey, be willing to start out in reception/kennel work, and make a good first impression, many places are willing to train. Personality, professionalism, maturity, attitude and customer service skills count way more than amount of experience you come in with. Most people are duds in these areas, which is what makes me deny applications from random prevets.

If someone seems stellar in those areas and would get along with the rest of my phenomenal staff, I’m happy to train newbies to whatever they’re capable of. Some kids just have 0 skills, don’t have good intuition when it comes to animal handling, and are slow learners... so they take a long time before they’re able to do too much. But others pick up fast, and I’m happy to move them from restraining animals, to blood draws, catheter placement, etc... My CVTs are amazing about giving aspiring techs/prevets and vet students opportunities to learn.

 

[ajs513]

What would you have to do to be an assistant or tech for undergrad? Wouldnt you need some sort of experience to become those?

It depends on the state you live in. Most states don’t require any sort of prior training to be an assistant. Some (like my home state) don’t require any to be a tech. Email local hospitals or go in person to drop off your resume. Like Minnerbelle said, many vets are happy to train motivated pre-vets if they show that they’re not going to be a detriment to the office. Just be straightforward about your lack of experience. Nearly every veterinarian was in your position at some point, so you’re not going to seem like a black sheep of the community.

My advice if you want to find some place quickly is to look for foreign veterinary grads who own hospitals/clinics. You may not have many/any in your area depending on how diverse your town is, but you might. My area had a lot. They know how difficult it is to become a vet and went through an even more difficult process to get licensure than American grads. From my experience and my peers’ experience, they’re more likely to hire you without prior experience. However, they won’t have much input or advice about applying to school or what American programs are like since they obviously didn’t go through any of that.

That’s just a small piece of advice that may make it easier to start getting experience early on, and a lot of people don’t know about it. I’d definitely recommend working for an American grad if you can because of the fact that they can help you through the process and will know about the rigors of American vet schools, but vet experience is vet experience as long as you’re being taught how to do a lot of things and you enjoy where you work. Others may disagree, but for me and my friends it worked out very well.

 

[that redhead]

The biggest thing I’d add is not to focus all of your vet hours at one place. Quality is definitely more important than quantity, but I would make an effort to get at least some large animal shadowing in there. Are you set in small animal GP work? I thought that’s what I wanted but I started working with lab animals and I realized that appealed to me (I ended up doing SAGP anyway but that’s another story.) Vet med has many other parts to it and I think showing that you understand that breadth by having a couple different experiences is important - think shelter work, wildlife work, even zoo or aquarium work, etc.

 

[EngrSC]

My advice if you want to find some place quickly is to look for foreign veterinary grads who own hospitals/clinics. You may not have many/any in your area depending on how diverse your town is, but you might. My area had a lot. They know how difficult it is to become a vet and went through an even more difficult process to get licensure than American grads. From my experience and my peers’ experience, they’re more likely to hire you without prior experience. However, they won’t have much input or advice about applying to school or what American programs are like since they obviously didn’t go through any of that.

Totally an n=1 experience but in one of the practices that I volunteer/shadow one of the vets is from India and went to vet school there. She is hilarious and I absolutely love working with her. She’s quirky and gives me little bits of advice here and there that I haven’t heard from American grads. She has some really cool stories from practicing in India and taking the exam here to be able to practice in the US. If you end up shadowing or working for a foreign veterinary grad, definitely pick his/her brain!

Also, are there any low cost clinics in your area? The one where I live is big and busy and has a high rate of turnover (nature of the beast) but they hire and train techs with little to no experience. And because it’s so busy it’s a really great environment to get comfortable with tech skills very quickly.

 

[blueheeler]

And the current school I go to said the average applicant (I think accepted applicant) had something around 400.

Oregon? I applied last year and got rejected. In my file review, they said the average number of veterinary experience hours for accepted non-residents was 1,700. 😱

 

[ajs513]

Oregon? I applied last year and got rejected. In my file review, they said the average number of veterinary experience hours for accepted non-residents was 1,700. 😱

I do want to add that for accepted applicants overall, the average this cycle was around 1,200 hours for vet experience. So while many students do get accepted to schools with just over the required amount of hours set by the school, on average accepted applicants have way more than that.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Oregon? I applied last year and got rejected. In my file review, they said the average number of veterinary experience hours for accepted non-residents was 1,700. 😱

Oregon State, yep. That number was told to by our admissions person but it was prob 2-3 years ago. I'm also not sure if it was for IS or all applicants.

I do want to add that for accepted applicants overall, the average this cycle was around 1,200 hours for vet experience. So while many students do get accepted to schools with just over the required amount of hours set by the school, on average accepted applicants have way more than that.

I don't really think using the average is a very important stat in this instance, personally. We have several people in our class who have been a tech 10+ years and would artificially inflate the average by having 20k+ hours. I think knowing the median would be more useful, though I don't know what that is.
Edit: even having 3 people with 20k hours in my class of 72 people, which my class has at a minimum, assuming everyone else has 1k hours, would double the average hours. So yeah, average isn't that useful imo and just makes people feel worse when they could be very close to the median, but off the mean. Also, osu doesn't have minimum hours. I was talking the average provided per the school to me a couple years ago.

 

[Minnerbelle]

Oregon? I applied last year and got rejected. In my file review, they said the average number of veterinary experience hours for accepted non-residents was 1,700. 😱

Eh, I wouldn’t fixate on those numbers. It doesn’t mean much out of the context of your entire application.

For some applicants it doesn’t matter how many thousands of hours they have if their academics are poor. For some applicants who have excellent qualifications otherwise, it may only take a few hundred hours of good quality experience. And some schools don’t really care as much exactly how many hours are accumulated for these applicants who may have other qualifications (strong academics, strong research, distinguished in their previous lives that may be helpful as a vet, etc...), as long as they can demonstrate that they have had enough experience to understand the profession.

And it matters where these hours came from. Someone who’s worked as a receptionist/assistant for years at one private clinic and had thousands of hours, and maybe a hundred or two from shadowing other things, may not look more favorable than let’s say a non-trad applicant who really went out of their way to accumulate four hundred hours of quality and varied experience.

 

[blueheeler]

Eh, I wouldn’t fixate on those numbers. It doesn’t mean much out of the context of your entire application.

That’s the only feedback they had for me. Get more veterinary experience hours and a stronger rec from a veterinarian. I found out through file reviews that the vet I had asked wrote a pretty generic letter.

 

[Minnerbelle]

That’s the only feedback they had for me. Get more veterinary experience hours and a stronger rec from a veterinarian. I found out through file reviews that the vet I had asked wrote a pretty generic letter.

Did you ask if they could write you a strong letter of recommendation?

 

[blueheeler]

Did you ask if they could write you a strong letter of recommendation?

Yeah. I asked different veterinarians at the practice this time around.