Looking for advice for post college, pre-application experience

[stenodactylus]

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Hello all,

I am new and this is my first post! I am looking for advice for what I should do right now to make myself competitive. I have finished all my undergraduate coursework and plan on applying this October; my goal is to become a veterinarian at an animal shelter. I have a decades worth of animal shelter volunteer experience, one year as paid staff at a limited intake facility and I am considering taking a full-time position at animal control or a veterinary assistant position at an SPCA, or perhaps an assistant position at a regular vet.

I have never actually worked as a paid employee at a private vet hospital, but I have volunteered. Do you think its possible to get into vet school without such experience? Especially since I want my focus to be shelter medicine, would it be more beneficial to work at animal control or a vet? Animal control has a much better salary and would help me be able to actually AFFORD vet school while working as a vet assistant would be a major financial struggle.

So, any advice? I'm so conflicted!

 

[Rocky922]

I have never actually worked as a paid employee at a private vet hospital, but I have volunteered. Do you think its possible to get into vet school without such experience?

Yes, it is very possible! I have not seen your other stats, so I can't tell you if you are competitive of not, but I can tell you that I have been accepted to 2 schools so far and I have never had a paid position at a vet clinic. I applied with lots of volunteer hours at a humane society and lots of hours shadowing an equine vet, but thats it as far as vet experience. I don't think that it matters at all if it is paid or volunteer, as long as you have had hours under a veterinarian. I think the biggest issue would be diversity in your experience; it seems as though you have a lot of small animal experience and no large animal. Before applying, you definitely want to try and get some equine, zoo, wildlife, and/or food animal experience. Diversity is key and will make your application much stronger. Also, if the hours you already have are just animal experience and not veterinary experience, you need to make sure you get veterinary experience (which like I said, does not have to be paid....shadowing or volunteering is fine).

 

[stenodactylus]

Yes, it is very possible! I have not seen your other stats, so I can't tell you if you are competitive of not, but I can tell you that I have been accepted to 2 schools so far and I have never had a paid position at a vet clinic. I applied with lots of volunteer hours at a humane society and lots of hours shadowing an equine vet, but thats it as far as vet experience. I don't think that it matters at all if it is paid or volunteer, as long as you have had hours under a veterinarian. I think the biggest issue would be diversity in your experience; it seems as though you have a lot of small animal experience and no large animal. Before applying, you definitely want to try and get some equine, zoo, wildlife, and/or food animal experience. Diversity is key and will make your application much stronger. Also, if the hours you already have are just animal experience and not veterinary experience, you need to make sure you get veterinary experience (which like I said, does not have to be paid....shadowing or volunteering is fine).

Thank you! I'm currently completing an internship at a zoo but I do need more large animal veterinary experience. A friend of mine has a ranch that they invited me to visit in the spring and castrate cattle. I have some sheep experience because I took a sheep husbandry class at school, but large animal and equine is my weakest area. Did you just e-mail or call vets out of the blue to ask to shadow them? I can be a little bit shy so I've had a hard time finding good volunteer opportunities.

My other "stats" are that I graduated from UC Davis with a 3.52 and had a verbal GRE of 680, quantitative 670 and a 5.5 on analytical writing.

 

[Rocky922]

I actually lucked out and already knew the equine vets from when I owned a horse, but I know that a lot of vets are more than welcome to let you shadow them if you just give them a call! Don't be shy, they are used to getting phone calls about shadowing and I think a lot of vets are happy to help out. Also, calling them may help you get out of your shell a little bit, which will certainly help you when vet school interviews come along! As far as your stats, they look good. Your GPA is not exceptionally high (but definitely not low), but if you get some diverse experience, I think your overall application will look pretty strong. Go check out the "successful applicant stats" pages from last year and the new one from this year to get an idea of what a competitive applicant looks like for each school.

 

[nyanko]

I think the biggest issue would be diversity in your experience; it seems as though you have a lot of small animal experience and no large animal. Before applying, you definitely want to try and get some equine, zoo, wildlife, and/or food animal experience. Diversity is key and will make your application much stronger.

I think this depends on the school though; some prefer depth in your area of interest to breadth.

 

[Minnerbelle]

I have never actually worked as a paid employee at a private vet hospital, but I have volunteered. Do you think its possible to get into vet school without such experience? Especially since I want my focus to be shelter medicine, would it be more beneficial to work at animal control or a vet? Animal control has a much better salary and would help me be able to actually AFFORD vet school while working as a vet assistant would be a major financial struggle.

I never worked as a paid employee at a vet hospital, or even volunteered or shadowed at one. Of the 7 schools I applied to, I was only rejected by one and waitlisted by one, so I don't think that in itself is an absolute no no. My only real 'vet' experience was at a humane society volunteering for 4 years and working for a summer in the vet services dept. I did 7 months of full time animal care in wildlife rehab and exotics/farm animal sanctuary, and ran a cat rescue for about a year. In the traditional sense of vet/animal exp, that was it. I did do 2 years of full time research in a relatively high producing lab under an MD at a human hospital where my faculty boss and I were responsible for all research and management of our 7 or so mice strains. Zero LA vet experience whatsoever. The rest of my stats were pretty similar to yours

I know the research helped me a ton, but my entire ps was focused on shelter med and how all my experiences at shelters and rescues shaped my view on euthanasia. I'm not sure if I would have been a recycle bin applicant had I not done the research... so I really can't say for certain that you don't need sa private practice experience. But I was not questioned once about my decision not to.

Can you work for animal control and shadow at a clinic on your weekends? That way you can get the best of both worlds. I'd personally say that the AC job would make you stand out more, since SA is important, but is something that everyone does. What exactly will you be doing at AC?

 

[orcagirl]

...My other "stats" are that I graduated from UC Davis with a 3.52 and had a verbal GRE of 680, quantitative 670 and a 5.5 on analytical writing.

Be sure to double check with the schools you are applying to, but some schools are going to require you to take the new GRE to have the new scores from the revised test. However, they are pretty good and I've heard most people do the same if not better with the new test.

 

[stenodactylus]

Can you work for animal control and shadow at a clinic on your weekends? That way you can get the best of both worlds. I'd personally say that the AC job would make you stand out more, since SA is important, but is something that everyone does. What exactly will you be doing at AC?

This is actually a very good idea. At animal control, I will be cleaning cages and kennels and processing new animals: performing brief physical exams, vaccinations, weights etc and I will also become euthanasia certified and perform euthanasia. I also do customer service helping people adopt new pets or search for their lost ones. I'm working there as a temporary employee right now and I really enjoy it.

 

[Fireflysushi]

You remind me a LOT of myself!! I had over 11years of shelter experience at the time I applied. I was denied my first application cycle with just over 1000 hours of veterinary experience and thousands of hours in shelters. I was told that I needed more large animal experience. In my year after graduating from undergrad, I worked/ currently work hehe in a research lab that gets me large and exotic experience. It has been a real ethical struggle for me to work in an area where animals are routinely killed in the name of science, when all of my previous experience was in shelter medicine and SA practice. I talked a lot about this in my personal statement- how I work at a research facility and a no-kill dog shelter at the same time. I made sure to mention how even though I am getting this new experience, I go to the shelter every weekend and thus my real passion is shelter medicine. I think this must have really strengthened my application because I got in this round at multiple schools (only denied from Davis-the stinkers, but I am OOS). I would definitely broaden your experience some more. The zoo experience is great, but I had exotic and conservation experience my first go around as well and they still said no. Go meet some cows and you should have no problem getting in!!