Tufts vs. Minnesota vs. Illinois vs. Missouri vs. RVC

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Yorkie123

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Hi long time browser first time posting. I have been accepted to these five schools and would like to hear what peoples thoughts on my options are. I really liked Tufts and Minnesota when I visited probably my favorites, and also really liked Illinois but was not really a fan of Missouri. I know I can get instate tuition after a year at Missouri which is the only thing keeping it in my considerations. I am instate at Tufts but I know that does not really make things much cheaper. I am planning on doing lab animal medicine but have also thought about zoo/wildlife medicine. Are any of these schools head and shoulders above the others in these aspects? Also I don't think theres any reason to go abroad to the RVC if I have options in the states so thinking about taking it out of consideration. Thanks in advance for any advice.

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I can't say much about the other schools, but we have an active lab animal med club here at Tufts. I think ~5-6 of my classmates are planning to go into lab animal, and they have received good support from the school as far as I can tell.

That said, it's an interest you would likely be able to pursue at any school attached to a large research institution, which is pretty much all vet schools.

We're not great for zoo med imo (mostly because we don't have any really large zoos near by), but we're awesome for wildlife.

But... expect to compete for selectives in the wildlife clinic with around 30+ of your classmates, because lots of people come here with the intent to pursue a career in wildlife med. The opportunities are still there, and we all do a core rotation through the wildlife clinic in 4th year, but it's a field where there is a ton of competition and not many jobs (not unlike zoos).

We do have a big international program too, and some of my friends have been able to get a lot of experience with non-native wildlife through summer research abroad. That kind of speaks to all of your interests, and the faculty members most involved in that program are incredible.
 
Illinois has a very active zoo/wildlife department, including a mostly student-run wildlife clinic you can take part in as soon as first year. I don't partake in our wildlife clinic, but many people do and love the experience it gives them. I have taken some zoo med electives (Reptile Med, Avian Med); the board-certified doctors and residents we have are absolutely wonderful! The department partners with a couple of nearby zoos, so on the WEAMS rotation (I did that last year) you get to go to a zoo and help with medical care.

Wildlife clinic site:
 
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I wrote a really good answer for Minnesota on another thread so now I keep reusing it in spoiler form since it's long. Paging @SnowJ for wildlife stuff because she's a lot more involved with that than I am. We do have the Wildlife Rehabilitation Clinic about 15 minutes from campus, which always takes DVM student volunteers and I think maybe you can do an externship there, and we have a number of zoo electives that are very popular. We are close to both the Como Zoo (10 min) and the Minnesota Zoo (35-40 min), so there are opportunities there. That said, we do not see exotics on campus in the regular clinic, although if zoo animals need a procedure done, they will come in for that. In the last few years, I know there's been a tiger spay, a sea turtle shell repair, and probably some other stuff that I would have known about if I were a zoo person. I gave a tour last year where there was a sea lion in the anesthesia induction area (best tour ever). But zoo animals coming to campus is a relatively rare occasion.

As for lab animal medicine, that's pretty popular here. We have a big advantage in that the U of M is an extremely well-funded research institution and has both breadth and depth in what research goes on. As a result, we have a wide variety of lab animals that are kept here, ranging from your standard mice and rats to geckos, newts, sheep, pigs, rabbits, and non-human primates. Our research animal medicine club gets speakers in all the time who work on different species, and they've done some nifty field trips in the past, including doing physicals and putting tracking collars on bears. We also have many people in the VMED graduate program who do their research on wildlife abroad, so even if you don't necessarily go with them, you can learn a lot about doing field research at various seminars.

4th year at Minnesota here, copying and pasting an answer I recently wrote about our program:

Overall: I feel like we're a tight-knit community and very supportive of each other, not just within our class but from one class to another. Minnesota works pretty hard to foster the attitude that we're not competing with each other anymore; we had to compete to get here, but now we are all colleagues and need to support one another through the program. I'm quite introverted, so I don't tend to hang out with my classmates outside of school (aside from my close friend group), but people who want to definitely do some fun stuff. I'm one of those freaky people who genuinely loved most of my time in vet school (which isn't to say I wasn't stressed to the max sometimes - I definitely was) and I think a lot of that is due to the collegiality here.

Faculty: The faculty here are, IMO, the best part of the school. I have yet to meet a faculty member who didn't genuinely want us to learn and understand what they teach us, and because everyone is teaching their particular specialty, I feel like they're as excited to teach us as we are to learn. We also do fun things with our faculty - there's an annual trivia night (you get to find out which professors are super competitive people [it's the pathologists, it's always the pathologists]) and there at least used to be an annual skit night, where the first years would do skits making fun of the faculty and the faculty would do skits making fun of them. It was a lot of fun and was very popular when my class did it, but the professor who oversaw skit night has been busy with other aspects of life, so I'm not sure if it's still a thing at this point. There are some new faculty and the structure of first year is different from when I was in the program, so I'm not sure about how some of those early classes run at this point.

Program layout: right now we do the standard 3 years of didactic curriculum, 1 year of clinics. But that being said, we have hands-on labs starting first week of first year, and between our courses and all of the amazing clubs we have, there are a lot of opportunities to do some really cool things. I know you said you're interested in exotics/wildlife, and I'm not really involved with that stuff but I know our zoo med (it's actually zoo, exotics, avian, and wildlife) club has done some crazy cool wetlabs like fish surgeries. We have a mix of traditional lecture-based and problem-based learning. One course during 3rd year is exclusively PBL and it was my favorite class of vet school even though it's an area of medicine that I'm not heading into. I genuinely loved that class and got so much out of it. I've gotten a lot of hands-on experience right out of the gate, but I'm the type of person who will awkwardly follow faculty around and ask if I can shadow them until they say yes to make me go away. We do track, but it really doesn't come into play until second semester of 3rd year (so right before clinics). We have some exotics integrated into other courses and have an exotics handling lab at the end of first year that I really enjoyed.

Clubs: holy wow there are so many clubs, if you have an interest in something, we probably have a club or 3 that would suit you!

Personal pros:
1.) We don't have a dress code.
2.) All of our lectures are livestreamed and recorded, which is super swell for study purposes.
3.) We have a lot of exams, which I like because it helps me focus my studying and also means that we have a little bit of a buffer if we have an off day. You get used to it and it really can help you prioritize what you need to study for that day/week.
4.) The research opportunities being at a huge public university with so many professional programs on one campus are insanely good.
5.) We have a raptor center right across from the small animal hospital, so if birds are your thing, there are a lot of chances to see them over there. I am afraid of birds. I have been in the raptor center 1 time. It was still pretty cool.
6.) While we don't see exotics or wildife on campus, the Wildlife Rehab Center of Minnesota is literally 10 minutes away and welcomes DVM students as volunteers or for rotations during 4th year. They see TONS of cases each year!
7.) COL is cheaper than some cities (caveat: I'm from the NYC area, every city is cheaper than that).
8.) Heavy caseload - our hospital sees 45-50,000 cases a year between the small and large animal hospitals!

Personal cons:
1.) The weather here kind of stinks sometimes
2.) Minnesota drivers are literally the worst drivers I've ever encountered.
3.) Tuition is expensive for OOS.

Why am I here: I love the Midwest. Research opportunities were incredibly important to me, as a dual degree student, and MN is one of the only programs to have a vet school and a med school on the same campus, and might be the only one to have a designated comprehensive cancer center on top of all of that. That was HUGE for me. But honestly, the decision for me was really made by talking to the student ambassadors when I was here for my interviews (DVM and PhD have separate interviews). The student ambassadors really impressed upon me that it's a big family here, that it's not a competitive environment, and that they were genuinely happy to be here and be representing their school. It made me want to be a student ambassador. You'll get a great education no matter where you go - but MN just struck me as somewhere I could see myself spending 8 years and being really happy - and so far, I have been.
 
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Thanks for the answers! I have another question that may be a little harder to get an answer for as its a little more obscure. I keep kosher and was wondering if anyone knows if there are kosher food options around any of these schools? I know about Tufts being from Mass but have not been able to find much on the internet about my other options.
 
Supershorty hit on most of the points I like to champion for UMN's zoo and wildlife stuff. I have volunteered at the wildlife rehabilitation center in multiple capacities- they also have internship and externship programs and I believe a summer class that you can get involved in! If you have any questions about WRC feel free to ask me or PM me. If you take the zoo elective second semester you can see the cool exotic procedures supershorty mentioned, and you get to go to the zoo itself to help with procedures too. If exotic pets are your speed at all there are a lot of clinics in the area that work with them, so there's opportunities no matter what you want to go into.

For kosher; this has been a discussion on campus about better cultural options through dining services and I don't remember if the new dining contract ensures those are available or not. I have a friend who knows more about it so I can get back to you on that.
 
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