PhD looking to apply to DVM

[lilbearman]

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Hi All,

I have a PhD in Biochemistry and Cell Biology from Rice University and am currently doing postdoctoral research in Cancer Biology using a mouse model of GBM. Over the past year I have realized that my future as an academic researcher looks bleak, and that I would much rather be an animal clinician. Besides extensive pet ownership of dogs, cats, bunnies and freshwater and reef aquariums, I have no veterinary experience. I have a few questions for you folks:

1) Do you think my non-trad experience (PhD) will help or hinder my application to DVM programs?

2) will my limited work with mice (genotyping, injection, tumor monitoring, dissection, etc.) and/or previous 6 years of extensive Drosophila experience count towards Veterinary or animal experience? Obviously, I need to shadow and or volunteer to get additional experience... just wondering how much my research will count towards these goals)

3) Is quitting my postdoc to go work as a vet assistant for 1/3 pay a completely idiotic idea?

Thanks in advance for your comments.

 

[BlacKAT33]

IMO

1) probably help or be neutral. The only negative thing would be if you can't clearly explain why you want to go towards DVM now

2) yes mice experience counts!!!! i put a ton of that down on my app. I separated my work duties into veterinary experience with the mice and hands on stuff i did with them. and then the non-animal lab work i put on the work experience. If the work is overseen by a PhD it counts as veterinary, so in your case you can put it under vet. instead of animal experience. Drosophila is hard lol I mean, I put down stalk eyed flies under work experience and stalk eyed flies have more of a personality than Drosophila haha. I probably wouldnt push it as vet experience even if it was overseen by a PhD because it looks kind of silly. But its your opinion, and it doesnt really matter which category it is under...if it is wrong they will know and realize it goes into ___ category themselves.

3) You don't have to become a vet tech to get experience. I'd finish as much of your postdoc as you can, its not worth quitting. especially if you are towards the end of your research. Try as hard as you can to get your project done and get your name on another paper. You can shadow/volunteer/intern to get experience or work part time on the weekends. Lots of places like people who can work on Saturdays because the full time techs usually hate waking up early on saturday to work.

 

[Fookie Kat]

1). I agree that being a non-trad student doesn't hurt your chances as long as you can convince the admins that you are serious about pursuing vet med.

2). Yes! Research experience is a very big plus. You should also gain some experience working with large and small animals.

3). I left a good paying job in investment banking for a volunteer veterinary assistant position. Do I miss the money? Yes. Am I infinitely more happy? Absolutely! 🙂

 

[No Imagination]

Ph.D (Biochemistry and Immunology) here:

1) Do you think my non-trad experience (PhD) will help or hinder my application to DVM programs?

Help, BIG Huge help (However, be prepared for a wake up call when you start vet school). PhD = 2-3 really hard classes a semester or year, with tough concepts to understand. Vet School = 6+ really easy classes a semester, with a ton of material to memorize and regurgitate. With the exception of physiology, so far there hasn't been any classes that were particularly concept/understanding intensive)

2) will my limited work with mice (genotyping, injection, tumor monitoring, dissection, etc.) and/or previous 6 years of extensive Drosophila experience count towards Veterinary or animal experience?

Yes, as long as you worked (with animals) under a PhD, it counts as Veterinary Experience. Drosophila = Research Experience IMO

Yes, you want to get Clinical Experience! With that I mean working with a small or large animal vet in the field. You want it, you need it

3) Is quitting my postdoc to go work as a vet assistant for 1/3 pay a completely idiotic idea?

Yes (its stupid)... You can do both.

P.S. Better check on the dates of your pre-reqs for vet school (how long has it been since you took Gen. Chem?) Now most schools will give a waiver for the time limit if you have taken other more advanced classes since then (if you took advanced biochem 3 years ago, but General Biochem 11 years ago, they will generally still accept the General Biochem even though it has technically expired. Again, that is most schools that I checked into

 

[nyanko]

For what it's worth, I put down my experience with Drosophila as vet experience, because it was independent research overseen by a Ph.D. and that was the criteria listed on VMCAS. I think the idea is that research is a part of veterinary medicine, and not every single researcher, even within the field of vet med, is going to be working directly with animals. I mean, my fly research was overarchingly applicable to human medicine, so I don't see how it would not be applicable to vet med as well.

My opinion is that the part of research that should really determine whether it counts is whether you actually used the scientific thinking process that goes along with it (i.e. did you work independently, plan experiments, troubleshoot when things went wrong, analyze your data, present your findings, etc..). If you were just counting flies for a grad student or pouring fly food or cleaning glassware I guess that is different, but if you actually did research then IMO it counts.

No Imagination: There is no separate section for "research experience" on VMCAS, so that doesn't really help. 😉

 

[BlacKAT33]

PhD = 2-3 really hard classes a semester or year, with tough concepts to understand. Vet School = 6+ really easy classes a semester, with a ton of material to memorize and regurgitate.

😕 How come a "good" vet GPA is 3.0 if the classes are so easy? I havent heard others say this. I get what you mean about increased quantity but if there were no hard concepts I doubt so many people would struggle with getting high grades. I know I'm not a PhD student so my opinion doesn't count, but all my friends who are doing PhD dont say their classes are really hard, they mostly complain about the hours they spend doing research

 

[No Imagination]

No Imagination: There is no separate section for "research experience" on VMCAS, so that doesn't really help. 😉

There isn't? Huh, must have done something wrong then... lol

But I agree with you nyanko, sort of. I mean, all your criteria can fit into a sociologists research making cold calls asking about/conducting a survey. Thats not Vet Experience...

 

[No Imagination]

I know I'm not a PhD student so my opinion doesn't count

ROFL, I wouldn't say that.

I havent heard others say this. I get what you mean about increased quantity but if there were no hard concepts I doubt so many people would struggle with getting high grades.

Let me rephrase that... the hardest single vet school class I've taken, was easier then the easiest Grad school class I've taken (Legitimate grad school class, not "Split level" (Graduate + Undergrad)

The HARD part of vet school is the overwealming number of these classes and the amount of material they throw at you.

I think being a really good memorizer is more useful to suceed in vet school classes then being able to quickly grasp and understand concepts.

Renal phy for me (never had it in graduate school) was super easy for me to understand, but the exam sunk a lot of others. Parasitology nearly kept me from moving on, but lots of people just memorized 80+ flashcards an exam and got an A

 

[sumstorm]

as the apparently dumb vet student in the room that doesn't find cramming a semester's worth of physio into 3 weeks easy (interesting, and I do well enough, but not easy) I thought I would mention that leaving your post-doc might be frowned on by some ad coms. Post docs may be treated like MS/PhD programs in that an ad com may believe you have committed to a program for a given duration, and departing that shows a lack of follow through. Just something to be aware of.

 

[GellaBella]

Hey there!

I'm finishing my PhD right now (Microbiology and Molecular Genetics) and starting at PennVet in the fall 🙂

I think that having a PhD significantly helps your chances of getting into vet school, but that being said it certainly does not guarantee you a spot. I applied to 7 schools, was flat out rejected at 4 of them without interviews - Cornell, CSU, UC-Davis, and UFl. Accepted to Penn and Tufts and waitlisted at NCSU.

Now my undergrad gpa was very...blah. so the fact that I got in on the first try I attribute 100% to getting my PhD and working in a field that is applicable to veterinary medicine (antibiotic resistance in bacteria).

Your research experience is great, they love to talk about it in interviews. I put any research done under a PhD as "veterinary" experience on the VMCAS. However, you should know that CSU told me that they did not count a lot of that as actual vet experience since it was done with a PhD and not a DVM. So different schools have different ways of looking at it and you will definitely want to also get experience in a clinic...I had about 500 hours of shadowing an exotics vet at the time of application

FInally, I don't think you should quit your postdoc. if it's possible to handle shadowing/volunteering and PhD research I think it's possible to volunteer on the weekends to gain some experience while doing a postdoc.

good luck!

 

[BomberCanoe]

1. Definitely be ready to explain why you're leaving, and why you want to be a vet. If you can't explain it well, or don't have good reasoning (other than, i like dogs), then its going to hurt you. If you can back it up, without making it look like you lack commitment, then it can definitely help you, as it will be shown that you can handle the work.

2. Definitely put down any relevant experience. It might not be vet experience, but its at least animal experience. You'll definitely want to shadow, as to back up your answer to number 1, you'll have to know how a clinic works, what a vet actually does, etc etc.

3. Vet tech-ing isn't the only way to get experience. It is a good way, however. Obviously you know that being a vet isn't really lucrative (compared to other medical programs), so that dip in pay will come eventually. You can volunteer, or just get a weekend job teching. I had a friend who finished her masters right before vet school, had all of that research experience (tree genomics, i believe), and her only vet experience was from working 2-3 weekends a month for under a year, and volunteering at the local shelter, and she got in.

Finally, my two cents worth on the whole 'how hard is vet school' topic. I know I haven't started, so I have no experience in any schooling beyond undergraduate, but how can you base the difficulty of vet school off of one year? I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, but that is like me going into freshman year at college, and declaring that it is all easy and memorization. Were some classes? yes. Did I later get to organic, biochem, evolution, etc etc, where concepts were tested? yes.

 

[nyanko]

Finally, my two cents worth on the whole 'how hard is vet school' topic. I know I haven't started, so I have no experience in any schooling beyond undergraduate, but how can you base the difficulty of vet school off of one year? I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, but that is like me going into freshman year at college, and declaring that it is all easy and memorization. Were some classes? yes. Did I later get to organic, biochem, evolution, etc etc, where concepts were tested? yes.

I think what No Imagination is trying to say is that the way of thinking for the courses is very different. If you're in the mindset of having taken graduate level courses, which require depth and understanding of rather specific topics, and the exams are often of the type that are designed to see if you think like a scientist/researcher, rather than the type that have concrete answers, it is quite different to go into a traditional veterinary school class where it's more like the undergraduate courses and you are given a ton of information (more depth than undergrad but less than a grad level course, but more breadth than a grad level course). It's just a different way of thinking. For me, it's actually harder to think that way.

And as far as the years - I actually had a discussion about this sort of thing with a friend of mine in the VSTP program here who is going back to classes while in the final stages of submitting her dissertation. She is taking mostly 3rd year type medicine courses that DO tend to focus on putting the understanding of the concepts together. She said that a lot of her classmates are faltering because for the past two years they've been regurgitating information, whereas she's doing a bit better in the classes because she has been thinking that way for 3 years now.

I don't know if in the end I said it any better than he did, but I deifnitely understand his angle and honestly it's one of the things that still makes me a bit hesitant about vet school classes.

 

[quantized]

I'd discourage you from leaving a post-doc. It burns academic bridges pretty well, doing stuff like that, and you may need those contacts in the future, and it also looks pretty bad on your resume. No reason you can't do what you need to do in your spare time, unless you're working for a super intense PI.

 

[lilbearman]

I'd discourage you from leaving a post-doc. It burns academic bridges pretty well, doing stuff like that, and you may need those contacts in the future, and it also looks pretty bad on your resume. No reason you can't do what you need to do in your spare time, unless you're working for a super intense PI.

Yeah, the problem is that I absolutely hate my job and my boss and working 60+ hours a week already doesn't leave me much time to volunteer. 🙁

 

[nyanko]

On one hand, burning bridges in academia IS bad. On the other, nobody expects postdocs to be permanent.

OP, are you on a particular grant or anything that would give you a feasible stopping date? How many projects would you be leaving behind? Can you reasonably expect to be able to hand off projects that are mostly completed to someone else?

It sounds like we work for similar types of PIs (though I'm just a MS student, not a postdoc, but I definitely can see what our postdocs go through..) and those are the types of questions she'd ask - who is going to take over what you're doing, if it's being paid for, essentially....

 

[No Imagination]

...but how can you base the difficulty of vet school off of one year? I'm not trying to be an ass or anything, but that is like me going into freshman year at college, and declaring that it is all easy and memorization.

Pretty much what Nyanko said.

And yes, i am basing it off my first year. Second year is going to be the same, but harder (or so everyone tells me) - 3rd and 4th year (at Mississippi) are a totally different story, and at that point I really think it will be more conceptual.

However, USUALLY when people talk about the difficulties of vet school, they are refering to first 2 years in a 2+2 or first 3 years in a 3+1 program.

And, like Nyanko also said, I in NO WAY meant to imply the vet school was easy. On the contrary, I find it MUCH harder. What I was trying to say is each individual class is easier, but as a whole, its harder. thats all I meant by it all, it is MO

 

[BomberCanoe]

Thanks Nyanko and No Imagination, I get what you were trying to say now, sorry if I did come off as a bit confrontational/militant.

I'm definitely dreading 2-3 years of straight memorization though, as my last year of undergrad was just class after class of memorization (with alternating tests, so that I'd never really get a break).