Not sure if I should apply...

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mjmutolo

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Hey everyone I need a bit of advice. Years ago I wanted to be a veterinarian (about 3 years back during my undergraduate). I worked at two animal clinics as a kennel attendant, another clinic as a veterinary assistant, a zoo as a keeper assistant and a number of other animal related jobs (this was up til probably 03-04). Well I left my undergrad with a degree in molecular biochemistry and decided to get a master's in Biology/Forensic Science. My grades are very good from both degrees, I scored relativley high on the GRE and I have over 6 years of laboratory experience in an academic/industry setting (I worked in a physiology/biochemistry lab studing blood cell ion transport and in a forensic science lab working on DNA species identification and extraction from bone). Both of these led to publications.

I am now a lab manager working in drug design/pathogens. Lately I have been thinking about/wondering if I could still get into vet school at this age (25) without having had animal experience in 3 years time. I still have some of the individuals references on file and such. Any thoughts??

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Honestly a lot of veterinary schools are looking for people like you over your typical "small animal" tract person.
 
Go for it. The only thing I would be worried about is prereqs. Most schools wont take any courses that are older than 6 years. Good luck.
 
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I've posted this a couple of times on this forum, but I haven't done anything animal related (at least not anything of real admissions value) for two years-- and (crossing my fingers) I haven't been rejected anywhere yet... I thought interviewers would want more of an excuse for my lack of recent experience but I haven't yet been asked for an explanation. They get excited about publications, research experience, etc, regardless of when you got it. I think that you might even argue that time away from animal-related work was what made you realize that that was what you really wanted to do. Of course, if you can get more experience you should do it, but definitely DEFINITELY apply.
 
The only thing I would be worried about is prereqs. Most schools wont take any courses that are older than 6 years.

Y'know, people say this a lot... But really I had trouble finding any schools that actually had hard cutoffs for prereqs. My earliest prereq classes are now 13 years old, so believe me I checked. Some schools wanted you to have taken particular classes (e.g. hard upper-level classes) within some time frame like 6 years. Most schools will be happier, I'm sure, if you've had academic activity recently (as opposed to graduating college 10 years ago and not taken a class since), from the "can you still handle it" point of view. But since you were an undergrad only 3 years ago and have been working in science since then, I don't think you'll run into too much of that.

One thing that *does* expire is your GRE score, you'll have to re-take it if your score is from before they switched to the essay-style analytical portion (or 5 years, I think, for those schools that don't look at the analytical score anyway).
 
I believe that at OSU they have a cut-off of 10 years for pre-reqs, but if you were involved in sciences/teaching etc, you can petition to get that cut-off waived. If you have only been out of undergrad for 3 years you have nothing to worry about.
 
I agree - GO FOR IT! You are younger than I am, and many of the schools seem to like the older applicants! Many schools, like Cornell, really like the research aspect of things, and yours is impressive! As for the expiration of classes, I think Penn doesn't even have one, but I could be wrong.

Over all, your application sounds like it is great! All in all, as many of us have seen, we just don't know exactly what the schools want in any given year, but it sounds like you have a great chance of getting in!
 
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