Hello! Thanks for taking your time to reply!
I was wondering how the opportunities were for small animal exptiocs..birds.. rabbits...and shelter medicine. I went to UC Davis for undergrad and even as an undergrad there were a lot of hands on opportunities from lab animals to large animals etc. Also how would taking electives as a first year look like? Is there a mentor-mentee program and are the opportunities to connect with your professors? And how is the course load like on a daily basis?
Is it a better idea to leave in the trailers? And how’s the food in the area
There isn't anything in the program specifically geared toward shelter medicine. There is a 4th year rotation offered at ARL, the local shelter, and you can use some of your vacation time or externship time for additional shelter experience. I have a classmate that works at ARL now that she's graduated, and I believe she also did the shelter medicine program through UF while at ISU.
The small animal exotics clinician just left last month, so I'm not sure what they're going to do about that. I know they're looking for a replacement. There was an exotics elective course taught by this clinician, and it was a prerequisite for the 4th year rotation at the Blank Park Zoo, so I'm assuming they'll have to find someone else to teach it. So they've pretty much stopped seeing small animal exotics in the hospital, except as emergencies/euthanasias. There is more opportunity for hands-on stuff if you're interested in lab animal medicine, and there's also an elective in that. There is a department called Lab Animal Resources that hires vet students to help the lab animal vets during the year, and they are absolutely fantastic to work with. They are closely involved with the vet student lab animal club, which I would recommend joining. Most of the early hands-on experiences are through clubs rather than through the curriculum, which I thought was weird before I went through the program and realized that there's so much knowledge to cram into your brain during the first 2 years, and you don't really know enough until 3rd year to be able to get anything out of the hands-on stuff.
As for electives, there are many that you can't take until 3rd year because you just don't have the knowledge base yet. I think first year, you can sign up for beef records if you're going into production med, and there's a vocab elective you can take first semester of first year (which I did not). You are paired with an academic advisor based on your area of interest, and you meet them during orientation. Some advisors are more interactive than others. You also get a 2nd year as a big sister/brother to help with navigating first year. There are a lot of opportunities to connect with the professors, and it's all dependent on how much effort you make.
Course load varies by year, and I'm pretty sure the list of required courses is on their website somewhere. They will eventually post the first year schedule, but it's been the same for years. You're in classes from about 8-5 most days, a little bit shorter on some afternoons depending on which lab sections you're in. Second year is about the same amount of time. Third year is when you take junior surgery, and most of your electives, so there's the most variation in your schedule. Afternoons are generally less scheduled, but you're probably still studying anyway. The entirety of vet school is like drinking from a fire hose, though they do try to ease you into it.
There are people who really love living close in the trailers, and then there are people who want some distance between them and the school at the end of the day. Ames is a college town, so there are tons of rental opportunities for apartments and homes. Your class will have a Facebook page to make finding roommates easier.
As for the food, I'm originally from the East coast, and everything was just a little sweeter and more bland than what I was used to. There's a big enough foreign student population that you can get pretty much any kind of food you want, and there are Asian and Indian grocers in town. And for the Chinese and Thai food, you can usually choose your level of spice since Iowans just don't seem to be able to handle it at all. Vegetarian and gluten-free options are pretty easy to find too.
