Oregon State vs Tufts vs Penn (OS for all three)

[CatCrowDogRaccoon]

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Hi guys, I have been really fortunate to get accepted by 3 great schools: Oregon State, Tufts, and Penn. My inclination is to go the one with the lowest tuition and cost of living (Oregon) but I’m having difficulty doing that because Tufts has such a good reputation for being great both academically and in terms of quality of life. Penn might be the most rigorous academically of all three but it is also the most expensive (I did receive a scholarship that makes it about the same price as Tufts). I also get the impression that the students at Penn are a bit overworked at times.

Can any of you please shed some light on this dilemma as the deadline rapidly approaches?

 

[battie]

@ziggyandjazzy for oregon @ajs513 for penn

 

[ajs513]

I love Penn personally. In my opinion, the Penn students that really hate it are the most vocal. I think our first semester is one of the most rigorous of all schools, but after that it’s mostly the same. We also have an extremely low attrition rate. Only one or two people a year typically fail out. Our NAVLE pass rate is incredibly high, I think like 98.5% averages across all available years. Some years it’s 98, some it’s 100. I can’t speak to the curriculum at all because it’s being completely overhauled as of 2021. So you’ll have 2 clinical years and much more hands on experience earlier on hopefully. I think Penn is a great school and MOST of the faculty are great. I love the clinicians too. But it’s very expensive if you have a far cheaper option.

 

[ziggyandjazzy]

Hi guys, I have been really fortunate to get accepted by 3 great schools: Oregon State, Tufts, and Penn. My inclination is to go the one with the lowest tuition and cost of living (Oregon) but I’m having difficulty doing that because Tufts has such a good reputation for being great both academically and in terms of quality of life. Penn might be the most rigorous academically of all three but it is also the most expensive (I did receive a scholarship that makes it about the same price as Tufts). I also get the impression that the students at Penn are a bit overworked at times.

Can any of you please shed some light on this dilemma as the deadline rapidly approaches?

I think your inclination is correct. You should choose OSU because it is significantly less expensive than your other options. Honestly I think the amount that Penn charges (maybe tufts also? I haven’t looked at their tuition rates recently) is highway robbery. And I’m not being bias here, if you got into a cheaper school I would say to go there over OSU.

I think it’s a bit inaccurate to say a vet school is more rigorous than another. Every vet school is challenging. Every vet school requires you to master the same topics and pass the NAVLE. OSU’s pass rate is generally 100%, or very close.

As for Oregon State specifically, there are a lot of advantages. We have the second smallest class size, meaning you will get substantially more one on one time with professors and get to know your classmates better. Some schools have more than double the amount of students we do which sounds like a nightmare to me personally. We recently had a new building built and a new wing to the SA hospital utilizing a 50 million dollar donation. You will likely get more surgeries than most if not all vet schools due to our partnership this OHS (40-60+ surgeries there 4th yr.) Additionally, Corvallis is an amazing place to live. It was voted the best college town in the pac-12 and is consistently rated one of the best college towns in the US. There’s lots of cool brew pubs and restaurants. You’re an hour from the coast, an hour or two from the mountains, a bit over an hour from Portland, and surrounded by great hiking places.
Let me know if you have any questions!

 

[schoolhopefull]

I love Penn personally. In my opinion, the Penn students that really hate it are the most vocal. I think our first semester is one of the most rigorous of all schools, but after that it’s mostly the same. We also have an extremely low attrition rate. Only one or two people a year typically fail out. Our NAVLE pass rate is incredibly high, I think like 98.5% averages across all available years. Some years it’s 98, some it’s 100. I can’t speak to the curriculum at all because it’s being completely overhauled as of 2021. So you’ll have 2 clinical years and much more hands on experience earlier on hopefully. I think Penn is a great school and MOST of the faculty are great. I love the clinicians too. But it’s very expensive if you have a far cheaper option.

I was wondering if you could expand a little more on the overhaul that's happening with the curriculum. One of the aspects about penn vet that worries me is the lack of hands on experience in the first few years. So are they changing it so you'll be doing clinical labs sooner? thank you!!

 

[ajs513]

I was wondering if you could expand a little more on the overhaul that's happening with the curriculum. One of the aspects about penn vet that worries me is the lack of hands on experience in the first few years. So are they changing it so you'll be doing clinical labs sooner? thank you!!

I’ve fallen a bit out of the loop with the curriculum redesign because it keeps getting pushed back due to COVID and then due to hopefully going back in person after year of being online. Originally it was supposed to start with V’24. Then V’25. Now V’26. So I’ll be a fourth year before it takes effect for first years. But if you’re hoping to apply to this upcoming year to start in 2022, then you’d be the class affected.

Anyway, the goal is to have two years of didactic learning with more hands on labs and different clinical experience, then two full years of clinics. It would drastically increase the hands-on experience that students get directly as part of the curriculum. So if your concern is hands-on learning, and you would be applying to be in V’26, then I don’t think that should be a problem.

I also just want to add that while in other years hands-on experience hasn’t been emphasized as part of the curriculum, there has been lots of opportunities to get it through the school one way or another. You could sign up for shadowing pretty frequently. Depending on the week and if I had exams, I’d sometimes shadow for 10+ hours per week. Then I also got a job with a research colony and did lots of stuff with that. There are also wet labs where you can learn how to do a lot of cool things on actual animals. Again, that was in the before times and we’re not sure when that will return due to COVID. Hopefully in the fall.

 

[schoolhopefull]

I’ve fallen a bit out of the loop with the curriculum redesign because it keeps getting pushed back due to COVID and then due to hopefully going back in person after year of being online. Originally it was supposed to start with V’24. Then V’25. Now V’26. So I’ll be a fourth year before it takes effect for first years. But if you’re hoping to apply to this upcoming year to start in 2022, then you’d be the class affected.

Anyway, the goal is to have two years of didactic learning with more hands on labs and different clinical experience, then two full years of clinics. It would drastically increase the hands-on experience that students get directly as part of the curriculum. So if your concern is hands-on learning, and you would be applying to be in V’26, then I don’t think that should be a problem.

I also just want to add that while in other years hands-on experience hasn’t been emphasized as part of the curriculum, there has been lots of opportunities to get it through the school one way or another. You could sign up for shadowing pretty frequently. Depending on the week and if I had exams, I’d sometimes shadow for 10+ hours per week. Then I also got a job with a research colony and did lots of stuff with that. There are also wet labs where you can learn how to do a lot of cool things on actual animals. Again, that was in the before times and we’re not sure when that will return due to COVID. Hopefully in the fall.

Thank you! I was accepted for V'25 so this is helpful information!

 

[ajs513]

Thank you! I was accepted for V'25 so this is helpful information!

In that case, with the normal curriculum you start off with a few hands-on labs in first year. You go to new Bolton center I think twice and go to Ryan a few times for shifts in specific specialties. Then in second year you are supposed to do wards and some other shifts. Then you can do early entry your third year and start in clinics spring semester, meaning you get around a year and a half of clinics.

That being said, we get sort of a middle of the road experience right now. Definitely less hands on than many other schools, but with shadowing it ends up being more than some others. Once shadowing returns you can really make up for that low amount of curricular hands-on experience. That just depends on how much you decide you want to shadow. I’ve known people who shadowed like 15+ hours per week. Others almost never did it. So you can sort of tailor it the way you want to. Definitely still a ton of classroom learning.

 

[PippyPony]

Pro tip... shadowing is sometimes an option (or it was pre-covid times) even when it's not advertised. I got to go to 4th year rounds quite a few times when I was in first and second year because I reached out to the faculty on the services I was interested in. I also had classmates who straight up skipped full days of lecture to spend the day in a clinical setting -- especially at places like our low cost clinics where they were always looking for extra hands.

That's changed with COVID, and your mileage may vary at other schools, but like @ajs513 said, those hours add up and it never hurts to ask.