Personal statement question

[Vetaspirant]

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My primary goal in vet career is: I am interested in providing medical care to all animals, particularly small animals and exotics. My second interest is in food safety and public health aspect of vet medicine. In the personal statement should I stick with just one main interest and not present any of my second choices/interests? Is it possible for a veterinarian to practice small animal medicine and also work as a food safety inspector? If I present these two entirely different interests in my personal statement, would it look awkward? I really appreciate your opinions.

Thanks!

 

[squirrelsrule]

If you are interested in both and your experience hours line up with your interests I would write about it. I would look into if you can do both and how you would manage that first before writing about it. If it turns out you will end up doing one or the other, I'd write that you have interests in both and look forward to vet school so you can explore your options and decide which you like more. There is nothing say you have to know for sure what you want to do when you go to vet school. You just need to know you want to be a vet. I didn't exactly nail myself down to anything in my PS. I am interested in wildlife, small animal, and emergency medicine. I ended mine pretty open, but showing that I will definitely help wildlife and want to be an awesome vet. Good luck with your PS. I'd have people here look it over, they make some really good suggesstions!

 

[BlacKAT33]

Present them both as interests. I wouldn't write that you actually want to be a SA vet and work as a food safety inspector because honestly I'm not sure if that is possible. It may be. But for the PS, they just want to know your interests and they don't expect everyone to actually go into exactly what they talk about in their PS. Many people change their mind 4th year or even after they graduate and have been practicing for a couple years. It is good to show the ad coms that you know other jobs in vet med exist besides the regular SA/LA/wildlife path. I definitely think the food safety interest will set you apart from other applicants

 

[Minnerbelle]

My primary goal in vet career is: I am interested in providing medical care to all animals, particularly small animals and exotics. My second interest is in food safety and public health aspect of vet medicine. In the personal statement should I stick with just one main interest and not present any of my second choices/interests? Is it possible for a veterinarian to practice small animal medicine and also work as a food safety inspector? If I present these two entirely different interests in my personal statement, would it look awkward? I really appreciate your opinions.

Thanks!

How much experience do you have in each field? If you have mostly SA experience and have never worked with food safety and/or public health vet, it will probably sound really awkward. If you do have experience in both, then I think it's a matter of how you put it. It drives me batty when people write like a whole page on either their childhood dog or experience in one SA clinic, and then in the last sentence write that they want to become a zoo vet, public health vet, or lab animal vet as if it were an afterthought. I wrote in mine that was interested in shelter medicine and research, but the rest of my PS was all about the two fields.

 

[CurrySpice]

I would talk about whatever flows from your statement. When I was trying to write my closing paragraph about career goals, it was completely obvious how to finish it. I think that so many vet students change paths that being indecisive is not necessarily a negative. I know that I would be a great small animal vet and enjoy it, but I have zero desire to declare that as a definite field before exploring more.