Fortunately I have several options for vet school, but I am having trouble deciding. I would love some fresh perspectives, especially from current students. I am interested in zoo medicine, but I'm not 100% decided on that. I would love to get more info on the social atmosphere of each school, as well as how approachable and helpful faculty is. I would also like to know if you like or dislike tracking. Also, how much hands on experience you are able to get and how early, as well as training in client interaction. Or just anything else you really like or hate about them. Thank you so much! This decision is killing me!
Louisiana vs. Kansas vs. Minnesota vs. Illinois
- Thread starter DocVet
- Start date
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 6,631
- Reaction score
- 12,604
Hey, second year OOS Illinois student. I answered your questions individually!
I think overall we're pretty social. My class and the current 4th year classes are super social (work hard, play hard sort of thing). I really like my class atmosphere and love the support they've given me over time. Each class definitely has it's own personality across the students within it.
Overall, I've had a great experience with the faculty/staff with very few exceptions. The school really helped me last fall with a family emergency where I was gone for several weeks, including missing our midterm. They arranged for me to take the midterm two weeks late after I was able to get back. They're still supporting me and certain staff/faculty individuals still check up on me from time to time.
There are some individuals I do not like, or I feel like they do not care for teaching/working for students. These individuals are few and far between, and I haven't interacted with them enough.
We don't track at all at Illinois starting with the class of 2019. I personally don't care either way because this was my only acceptance (beggars can't be choosers). But our 4th year seems balanced so that everyone gets the same basic rotations, then we get a certain number of "off campus" rotations.
It depends on how gun-ho you are. If you get involved right away with clubs and such, you can be doing clinical stuff the first few weeks up until spring break of third year. I'm in the wildlife medical clinic, part of our equine emergency team/foal watch team, have spent time in the small animal ER/ICU, among other things. I feel like I have a lot of hands on stuff so far. Then we also have the clinical rotations during 2nd quarter of 1st year, 3rd quarter of 2nd year, and starting 4th year in March of third year. Those have been great. I scrubbed in on an amputation two weeks ago where the clinician walked through the whole thing from beginning to end.
We do have this, including role play in such in our Clinical Skills Learning Center. We're even tested on it. We also have been steadily improving it over time. Its hard for me to say how much of it helps because I did retail for many years. But I think what we do is a good system
Personal pros:
1. No mandatory attendance for core classes. I go to the mandatory things. For everything else, I study in the library/study areas or home.
2. No dress code. #leggingsarelife
3. Wildlife Medical Clinic. I love the clinic and it's my favorite thing about school.
4. 2 tests/quarter, making it 9 tests/year
Personal cons:
1. Tuition. I pay ~51k/year in tuition and then take ~12k/year in COL loans. Adds up
2. Our grade set up is a love hate relationship for me. We get only 1 grade for each quarter, rather than 1 grade per subject per quarter. So when we graduate, our GPA/class rank it made up of only 9 total grades. It makes the GPA/class rank thing for internship and residency insane. The middle third of a class can be within 2% of each other easily because our class rank is based on our overall percentage rather than our GPA. It also makes it so that one bad quarter can tank your GPA (though not necessarily your rank)
I think overall we're pretty social. My class and the current 4th year classes are super social (work hard, play hard sort of thing). I really like my class atmosphere and love the support they've given me over time. Each class definitely has it's own personality across the students within it.
Overall, I've had a great experience with the faculty/staff with very few exceptions. The school really helped me last fall with a family emergency where I was gone for several weeks, including missing our midterm. They arranged for me to take the midterm two weeks late after I was able to get back. They're still supporting me and certain staff/faculty individuals still check up on me from time to time.
There are some individuals I do not like, or I feel like they do not care for teaching/working for students. These individuals are few and far between, and I haven't interacted with them enough.
We don't track at all at Illinois starting with the class of 2019. I personally don't care either way because this was my only acceptance (beggars can't be choosers). But our 4th year seems balanced so that everyone gets the same basic rotations, then we get a certain number of "off campus" rotations.
It depends on how gun-ho you are. If you get involved right away with clubs and such, you can be doing clinical stuff the first few weeks up until spring break of third year. I'm in the wildlife medical clinic, part of our equine emergency team/foal watch team, have spent time in the small animal ER/ICU, among other things. I feel like I have a lot of hands on stuff so far. Then we also have the clinical rotations during 2nd quarter of 1st year, 3rd quarter of 2nd year, and starting 4th year in March of third year. Those have been great. I scrubbed in on an amputation two weeks ago where the clinician walked through the whole thing from beginning to end.
We do have this, including role play in such in our Clinical Skills Learning Center. We're even tested on it. We also have been steadily improving it over time. Its hard for me to say how much of it helps because I did retail for many years. But I think what we do is a good system
Personal pros:
1. No mandatory attendance for core classes. I go to the mandatory things. For everything else, I study in the library/study areas or home.
2. No dress code. #leggingsarelife
3. Wildlife Medical Clinic. I love the clinic and it's my favorite thing about school.
4. 2 tests/quarter, making it 9 tests/year
Personal cons:
1. Tuition. I pay ~51k/year in tuition and then take ~12k/year in COL loans. Adds up
2. Our grade set up is a love hate relationship for me. We get only 1 grade for each quarter, rather than 1 grade per subject per quarter. So when we graduate, our GPA/class rank it made up of only 9 total grades. It makes the GPA/class rank thing for internship and residency insane. The middle third of a class can be within 2% of each other easily because our class rank is based on our overall percentage rather than our GPA. It also makes it so that one bad quarter can tank your GPA (though not necessarily your rank)
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2013
- Messages
- 14,558
- Reaction score
- 37,411
I'm going to copy how @batsenecal did it because it looks organized and nice. Third-ish year at Minnesota here.
I can't answer the client interaction training particularly well yet because most of that is going on now for my class, and I'm not in the DVM curriculum. We did do some during the fall semester - discussions and role playing exercises, but I haven't really experienced it yet.
Personal pros:
1.) We also don't have a dress code.
2.) All of our lectures are livestreamed and recorded, which is super swell for study purposes.
3.) We have a lot of exams, which I like because it helps me focus my studying and also means that we have a little bit of a buffer if we have an off day. Illinois' system sounds utterly terrifying to me.
4.) The research opportunities being at a huge public university with so many professional programs on one campus are insanely good.
5.) We have a raptor center right across from the small animal hospital, so if birds are your thing, there are a lot of chances to see them over there. I am afraid of birds. I have been in the raptor center 1 time. It was still pretty cool.
Personal cons:
1.) The weather here kind of stinks sometimes
2.) Minnesota drivers are literally the worst drivers I've ever encountered.
3.) Tuition is expensive for OOS.
I feel like we're a tight-knit community and very supportive of each other, not just within our class but from one class to another. Minnesota works pretty hard to foster the attitude that we're not competing with each other anymore; we had to compete to get here, but now we are all colleagues and need to support one another through the program. I'm quite introverted, so I don't tend to hang out with my classmates outside of school (aside from my close friend group), but people who want to definitely do some fun stuff.
The faculty here are, IMO, the best part of the school. I have yet to meet a faculty member who didn't genuinely want us to learn and understand what they teach us, and because everyone is teaching their particular specialty, I feel like they're as excited to teach us as we are to learn. We also do fun things with our faculty - there's an annual trivia night (you get to find out which professors are super competitive people) and there at least used to be an annual skit night, where the first years would do skits making fun of the faculty and the faculty would do skits making fun of them. It was a lot of fun and was very popular when my class did it, but the professor who oversaw skit night has been busy with other aspects of life, so I'm not sure if it's happening this year or not.
So caveat here - I'm answering this having stepped out of the DVM program immediately prior to the semester where tracking really starts, so I haven't actually experienced it yet. That said, I do like the idea of tracking. I know what I want to do career-wise and I appreciate being able to tailor my later coursework and my rotations to get me the most experience in that area. Because tracking doesn't start until second semester 3rd year, I feel like we get a solid foundation in everything up to that point, so while food animal medicine will never be what I'm into, I'm not panicking that I won't be prepared for the NAVLE.
A lot of this, probably at any school, is going to be dependent on you. I got a ton of hands-on experience right out of the gate outside of classes, but I'm the type of person who will just awkwardly ask faculty if I can shadow them. We start hands-on learning first week of first year, and we have so many clubs that there are some really neat wetlab opportunities (fish surgery always stands out to me but there are tons), and the more opportunities you create for yourself by asking about the things you're interested in, the more chances you'll get.
I can't answer the client interaction training particularly well yet because most of that is going on now for my class, and I'm not in the DVM curriculum. We did do some during the fall semester - discussions and role playing exercises, but I haven't really experienced it yet.
Personal pros:
1.) We also don't have a dress code.
2.) All of our lectures are livestreamed and recorded, which is super swell for study purposes.
3.) We have a lot of exams, which I like because it helps me focus my studying and also means that we have a little bit of a buffer if we have an off day. Illinois' system sounds utterly terrifying to me.
4.) The research opportunities being at a huge public university with so many professional programs on one campus are insanely good.
5.) We have a raptor center right across from the small animal hospital, so if birds are your thing, there are a lot of chances to see them over there. I am afraid of birds. I have been in the raptor center 1 time. It was still pretty cool.
Personal cons:
1.) The weather here kind of stinks sometimes
2.) Minnesota drivers are literally the worst drivers I've ever encountered.
3.) Tuition is expensive for OOS.
- Joined
- Dec 9, 2013
- Messages
- 3,040
- Reaction score
- 4,211
I'm a third year at Kansas State! First of all this is a great place to come if you're interested in zoo med, Dr. Carpenter is world-renowned in the exotics field and is the vet for the Sunset Zoo here. OOS tuition here is definitely expensive, but if you're OOS for all of these schools, K-State is only slightly more expensive than Minnesota or Illinois according to the VIN map.
I've posted some more pros and cons about K-State here: Factors when picking a school as well as some updates here: Factors when picking a school
Like bats said, it kind of depends on each class, at least here there's not a whole lot of intermingling between classes (although they're trying to improve that some with the house system). I don't think my class is as social as 2019 or 2021, we established not really cliques but friend groups pretty quickly, although they have changed somewhat over the years. I wouldn't say we're competitive at all, everyone is just trying to make it through and we're regularly sharing study guides on our class Facebook group. I tend to stick to hanging out with my few friends and don't branch out too much, but I still feel like I could go to almost anyone in the class if I needed something, there are only a few people that I really don't get along with.
For the most part I think our faculty are really helpful, I don't tend to ask questions or go to office hours much, but most professors are really good about holding review sessions, answering questions during class, etc. and really want to help us understand the material and do well. Even some professors that I've felt weren't the greatest at teaching are still nice people who really want to help us out, I can only think of maybe 2 clinicians who are the scary, "out to get you" type. And I don't want to get too specific on here, but unfortunately there is one faculty member that I have heard has said some less-than-encouraging things to multiple students, e.g. telling people in their third year that they might be better off dropping out just because they're struggling in a class or two.
We don't track, but you can still tailor the curriculum to your interests somewhat with electives in 1st-3rd year, and even more so with 4th year electives and externships. For me it's slightly annoying being required to do large animal rotations 4th year, but hopefully they will prepare me well for those species on the NAVLE. Like bats, this was my only acceptance, so the lack of tracking isn't a big deal to me.
So for my class, the answer is very little before 3rd year, but starting with the c/o 2021 they added clinical skills to the 1st and 2nd year curriculum. I've heard mixed things about how helpful it is, and I believe the majority is with models rather than live animals, but they're continuing to work on improving it, and my take is that anything has to be better than the paltry amount of clinical skills training that my class has gotten - we were learning suture patterns for the first time 2 weeks before our live spay/neuter labs started last semester. And I know they do cover client interaction in clinical skills as well, which would have been nice to have, but we do at least get some feedback on our communication skills during our Pet Health (small animal GP) rotation 4th year. And aside from clinical skills, there are ways to get hands on experience if you look for it and make the time for it, such as club wet labs, various jobs in the hospital, and of course any experiences you set up during summers or other breaks.
I've posted some more pros and cons about K-State here: Factors when picking a school as well as some updates here: Factors when picking a school
- Joined
- Oct 29, 2018
- Messages
- 46
- Reaction score
- 53
For the lectures that are live-streamed and recorded, is there mandatory attendance? Thank you for writing all this out. Trying to pick which school to attend with Minnesota being one of them and this was super helpful
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 6,631
- Reaction score
- 12,604
Illinois does not have mandatory attendance in the syllabus at all for main courses. A lot of elective (none of which are recorded) have 50% of the grade as attendance. Second year, we have clicker questions that make up between 5 and 10% of the grade.
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2013
- Messages
- 14,558
- Reaction score
- 37,411
For the lectures that are live-streamed and recorded, is there mandatory attendance? Thank you for writing all this out. Trying to pick which school to attend with Minnesota being one of them and this was super helpful
We have very few lectures with mandatory attendance. Most active learning exercises are, labs are, and some professional development lectures are.
That said, there are some profs who give extra credit for attendance - but it’s always spelled out in the syllabus if they do that.
- Joined
- Apr 11, 2018
- Messages
- 32
- Reaction score
- 51
I'm a current first year at UMN and agree with everything supershorty said, but figured I'd answer anyways.
Social atmosphere:
It really does depend on each class. I would say our class is pretty social as a whole and you often see posts in our facebook group about getting a group together for trivia, or a snow skiing trip, or their dog's birthday celebration (and people's birthdays as well), and there's a social committee that plans events for all classes to partake in. There's definitely groups of friends within our class that are more social than others, but everyone is very friendly and welcoming. And there's lots of smaller groups who do social things together on their own too, like ice skating or looking at ice castles or going hiking. So it really depends on how social you want to be, but at least in my class there always seem to be something going on.
In an academic sense too everyone is very open to help each other. People within our class and other classes share their quizlet links, we have a team google drive where people post study guides and practice exams, and have tutors available.
Faculty
We have some newer faculty that started either last year or this year that supershorty didn't have so thought this would be a good one to touch on. As a whole, the faculty are phenomenal at helping you in any aspect they can. One of our professors on the first day of class gave us his cell phone number and said text or call me if you're studying and have any questions at all. The anatomy team is simply amazing at provided recorded videos of the dissection and applicable information before the lab that we can reference at any time while we're studying. If we go into lab to study we often run into one of them and can ask questions and they are great and answering.
Even faulty who only come in to give a lunch talk or a clinical relevance lecture during class are great about leaving their contact info if we what to reach out later and discuss it more or ask questions. I think there's maybe been one professor that wasn't great at responding to emails, but again as a whole they are quick to respond and really want us to succeed. Another thing is most classes have more than one professor, so you can always approach someone else if you feel like one isn't answering your questions in a way you understand.
Tracking
So I haven't gotten to tracking yet as pretty much the first 2 years everyone takes the same classes, then you can track into your interest. They do offer electives though that you can take each semester that you can gear towards your interests.
Hands on experience
As a lot of others have said a lot of this depends on you and how many clubs and what clubs you join. I'm in a lot of clubs and have already been able to do catheter placements (in horses and small animals), intubation of cats and dogs, lance an abscess, do some cat neuter and a dog and cat spay (all with one-on-one attention with a vet scrubbed in to help walk you through it), lots of physical exams and vaccinations, all on live animals through clubs. I've also been able to do more spay and surgery practice, equine joint injection, ultrasound guided cystocentesis, unblocking blocked animals, all on cadavers through clubs. Some clubs have volunteer stuff too, like lamb watching, or emergency team with the equine club, small ruminant castration labs, etc.
After each anatomy exam they also offer optional labs to work on procedures with fresh cadavers. I believe these labs have included things like limb amputation techniques, neurectomies on equine limbs, fetal structures, etc. Then through our clinical skills practice depending on the lab it's working with cadavers or live animals. We've worked with live animals on physical exams and blood draws, we've had exotic animal handling labs, goat blood draws and hoof trims, and for first year (though they may be changing this) you get assigned 2 clerk duty shifts each semester in the large animal hospital. These shifts are about 4 hours and give you the chance to get familiar with large animals and practice physical exams and sometimes see cool things. (I will just add that the cadavers are donated to us, often by families who euthanized their pet and decided to donate them for our education. I add that just because I know there is a debate as to whether cadavers should be used, especially if they are bred for education purposes so just thought I'd explain that that's not the case here.)
I know some of the elective classes also have their own hands on stuff that is required, such as large animal neonatology you are then on the foal team second semester to help care for ICU foals. It's also pretty easy to get jobs in the hospital too, some people work with pathology and do necropsies, some with the small animal OR where you can train to be an on-call surgery tech, or work in the large animal hospital as a student tech. Now that I've rambled on just know there's so many opportunities, but it's up to you to get involved.
Training in client interaction
We get some of this through our GOALE and professional development classes where we'll work through scenarios and discuss ways to approach the conversations with our clients. We also have a class second semester of first and second year called Clinical Correlations where were are in mixed teams of first and second years and work through cases, and then go home and practice how we would write up these medical records, including history, clinical finding, diagnosis, and treatment. Some of this can also come through clubs. I know there's a t least 2 clubs who do a lot of community outreach and will do day or weekend trips to provide free vet care to community members. So that's vet students doing the physical exams, noting any abnormalities, doing 4Dx snap tests and discussing all these findings and what they mean with the clients (vets are there to answer your questions and help too).
Pros
Social atmosphere:
It really does depend on each class. I would say our class is pretty social as a whole and you often see posts in our facebook group about getting a group together for trivia, or a snow skiing trip, or their dog's birthday celebration (and people's birthdays as well), and there's a social committee that plans events for all classes to partake in. There's definitely groups of friends within our class that are more social than others, but everyone is very friendly and welcoming. And there's lots of smaller groups who do social things together on their own too, like ice skating or looking at ice castles or going hiking. So it really depends on how social you want to be, but at least in my class there always seem to be something going on.
In an academic sense too everyone is very open to help each other. People within our class and other classes share their quizlet links, we have a team google drive where people post study guides and practice exams, and have tutors available.
Faculty
We have some newer faculty that started either last year or this year that supershorty didn't have so thought this would be a good one to touch on. As a whole, the faculty are phenomenal at helping you in any aspect they can. One of our professors on the first day of class gave us his cell phone number and said text or call me if you're studying and have any questions at all. The anatomy team is simply amazing at provided recorded videos of the dissection and applicable information before the lab that we can reference at any time while we're studying. If we go into lab to study we often run into one of them and can ask questions and they are great and answering.
Even faulty who only come in to give a lunch talk or a clinical relevance lecture during class are great about leaving their contact info if we what to reach out later and discuss it more or ask questions. I think there's maybe been one professor that wasn't great at responding to emails, but again as a whole they are quick to respond and really want us to succeed. Another thing is most classes have more than one professor, so you can always approach someone else if you feel like one isn't answering your questions in a way you understand.
Tracking
So I haven't gotten to tracking yet as pretty much the first 2 years everyone takes the same classes, then you can track into your interest. They do offer electives though that you can take each semester that you can gear towards your interests.
Hands on experience
As a lot of others have said a lot of this depends on you and how many clubs and what clubs you join. I'm in a lot of clubs and have already been able to do catheter placements (in horses and small animals), intubation of cats and dogs, lance an abscess, do some cat neuter and a dog and cat spay (all with one-on-one attention with a vet scrubbed in to help walk you through it), lots of physical exams and vaccinations, all on live animals through clubs. I've also been able to do more spay and surgery practice, equine joint injection, ultrasound guided cystocentesis, unblocking blocked animals, all on cadavers through clubs. Some clubs have volunteer stuff too, like lamb watching, or emergency team with the equine club, small ruminant castration labs, etc.
After each anatomy exam they also offer optional labs to work on procedures with fresh cadavers. I believe these labs have included things like limb amputation techniques, neurectomies on equine limbs, fetal structures, etc. Then through our clinical skills practice depending on the lab it's working with cadavers or live animals. We've worked with live animals on physical exams and blood draws, we've had exotic animal handling labs, goat blood draws and hoof trims, and for first year (though they may be changing this) you get assigned 2 clerk duty shifts each semester in the large animal hospital. These shifts are about 4 hours and give you the chance to get familiar with large animals and practice physical exams and sometimes see cool things. (I will just add that the cadavers are donated to us, often by families who euthanized their pet and decided to donate them for our education. I add that just because I know there is a debate as to whether cadavers should be used, especially if they are bred for education purposes so just thought I'd explain that that's not the case here.)
I know some of the elective classes also have their own hands on stuff that is required, such as large animal neonatology you are then on the foal team second semester to help care for ICU foals. It's also pretty easy to get jobs in the hospital too, some people work with pathology and do necropsies, some with the small animal OR where you can train to be an on-call surgery tech, or work in the large animal hospital as a student tech. Now that I've rambled on just know there's so many opportunities, but it's up to you to get involved.
Training in client interaction
We get some of this through our GOALE and professional development classes where we'll work through scenarios and discuss ways to approach the conversations with our clients. We also have a class second semester of first and second year called Clinical Correlations where were are in mixed teams of first and second years and work through cases, and then go home and practice how we would write up these medical records, including history, clinical finding, diagnosis, and treatment. Some of this can also come through clubs. I know there's a t least 2 clubs who do a lot of community outreach and will do day or weekend trips to provide free vet care to community members. So that's vet students doing the physical exams, noting any abnormalities, doing 4Dx snap tests and discussing all these findings and what they mean with the clients (vets are there to answer your questions and help too).
Pros
- no dress code
- most classes do not have mandatory attendance (some classes do or some sections within a class do, but most don't)
- most lectures are lecture captured, so you can watch them in real time as they are happening, or access them later for studying (there is one professor who does a section of our basic pathology class that requires attendance and won't record lectures, but he is the only one that has done that so far)
- lots of tests, more cushion if you don't do well on an exam and forces you to keep up with the material
- Some tests are online and open for a certain period of time and we can take whenever we want (within the window its open)
- the close-knit community within the VMC
- if you're interested in zoo med or exotics, we don't actually have an exotics department. BUT we do have quite a few elective classes on those topics and the professor is the vet for the Como zoo, there's a club that's pretty active, and we still have other ways to get experience, like the Wildlife rehab center 10 minutes from campus and the Raptor center right across the street
- lots of test lol, sometimes it can be a lot to keep up with and you finish one exam and automatically have to start studying for the other one (but again I'd rather have 3-4, or even 6 like we have in one class this semester, than only 1 or 2)
- tuition and cost of living (depending on where you're coming from) are expensive
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2016
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 23
Unfortunately do NOT RECOMMEND Illinois if you have another choice. I used to recommend it but at this point, being about to graduate, I no longer recommend. Students are the lowest priority at the school and this fact is recognized by everyone including faculty and administration. I do feel that we get good experience in some areas that other schools lack more on (we get a lot of dentistry experience if you want it, and have good exotics people), but overall we just consistently get screwed over with everything. They do not care about student welfare despite preaching mental wellness. Within the next year, they are now losing about half a dozen of the best clinicians because the hospital has too many issues and they're leaving. We didn't have a radiologist forever, then paid for the schooling of one with a contract that he'd come here when graduated. He got here a couple months ago and is literally spending a massive amount of money to buy out his contract and just leave because they lied about his position and he hates it here.
Every school has their issues, but Illinois has more. It's not that we graduate incompetent, I do feel very competent, but there are many areas of knowledge still lacking because they decided to have researchers lecture on random things for hours and hours instead of relevant material. Example, they DIDN"T TEACH US THE LIVER, THEY LITERALLY SKIPPED IT. Employers have noted that Illinois grads come out ticked off lol.
Every school has their issues, but Illinois has more. It's not that we graduate incompetent, I do feel very competent, but there are many areas of knowledge still lacking because they decided to have researchers lecture on random things for hours and hours instead of relevant material. Example, they DIDN"T TEACH US THE LIVER, THEY LITERALLY SKIPPED IT. Employers have noted that Illinois grads come out ticked off lol.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 6,631
- Reaction score
- 12,604
I will continue to recommend Illinois (after recommending the cheapest option) because the faculty and staff are one of the only reason I am still in school. I strongly disagree with BDunn and truly do think faculty and staff and the administration do care about us. I'm willing to discuss with anyone who wants that perspective.
- Joined
- Mar 7, 2016
- Messages
- 18
- Reaction score
- 23
I used to recommend it in 3rd year too. Not anymore.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 6,631
- Reaction score
- 12,604
I still recommended it after failing and having to repeat first year. They gave me a lot of help then. That doesnt even touch on the help and leniency they gave me when my sister died and I went back home for 2.5 weeks. I took my midterm late, I got counseling from Kate, who also helped me find an off campus therapist. Faculty and staff helped me a ton during and after, even recently with all of that. I would not be here without them and my class. I am still in class because of the compassion shown to me by the powers that be.
I'm not saying fourth year doesnt suck; I still talk to and hang out with plenty of people in your class. But they arent telling me things that are any more extreme from what friends in other programs have told me, or what previous Illinois 4th years have said. Illinois honestly doesnt sound any worse or better than other programs to me from the subjective stand point of different people I know.
And, not for nothing, your class is getting a ton of things changed right now for fourth years. How well that manifests remains to be seen. But the push and initiative is there. It's an adjustment to change with society.
Maybe I'll feel differently in a year. Who can say? But it would certainly take a lot to change my mind after what I went through last year with the school.
This is really nice to know; thank you. I have struggled on and off for years with mental health issues and one of the things i ask about at every school is how the students feel they have been taken care of when it comes to mental well being as well as how accessible counseling, etc is.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 6,631
- Reaction score
- 12,604
I am a firm believer that the majority of our faculty and staff do care about us. They, however, are not going to be lovey-dovey about it (if that makes sense). You have to actively seek help. I specifically asked for help finding a therapist to deal with my depression. I put forth the effort to keep checking in with the powers that be.
Theres definitely problems with our program. But I don't think they are specific to Illinois and happen at other schools.
