Hi! I'm a first year at UGA and would love to chat! Sorry no one has responded to this yet, I think a number of us tend to be on the Pre-vet forum and don't look at this one as much.
Day to day: We tend to start class in the mornings at 8 or 9, and finish around 4. We get a lunch break from 12-1, and there are club meetings during that time (often with food provided!) that you can attend. The schedule varies from day to day so some days are shorter, others are longer. First semester and most of second semester, we have "wellness Wednesday," which means that we get Wednesday mornings off from scheduled classes (people use this time for appointments, extra sleep, studying, etc). In your first year, it's lectures in the morning and labs/the occasional lecture in the afternoon. We tend to have anatomy ~3 times a week (with some variation). All lectures are recorded, so if you miss something or need to review, you can easily access it online. Outside of scheduled class time, people head home or to various spots on campus to take a break and hit some studying. If you're a group studier, lots of students study at each others houses, the teaching hospital, etc. Some people work in the teaching hospital in their free time on one of the treatment crews or in other positions, so that may be added into their schedules if someone is interested.
Grading: standard grading scale, every once in a while they'll throw in something small that's pass/fail.
Dress code: we don't really have one. Scrubs and closed toed shoes for things like anatomy lab, boots for farm visits, but outside of that you can wear what you please! Wouldn't necessarily show up in PJs but they don't expect you to be in business attire every time you show up to class- things like t-shirts and leggings are pretty common on non-lab days.
Things I wish I knew: I don't necessarily know if there's anything that completely shocked me about coming here, though there were a few things that I did mildly surprise me. For one, I expected vet school exams to be exceedingly difficult in the questions and content- similar to my upper level science courses from undergrad. What I found (and maybe this is just a me thing) is that the exams themselves weren't as difficult, but what made it hard was the number of exams we were taking and having much shorter periods to prepare for them/having to study for multiple exams at once. This was a bit of an adjustment for me. Past that, I would just say that I learned how important it was to be open socially and to not judge people by their cover! People come to UGA from all over the state and US, and they've all got different backgrounds/personalities. I've bonded with people I wouldn't have thought I would, all because I learned to keep an open mind.
If you have any more questions, feel free to let me know! I kinda stayed away from talking about individual classes and such because the incoming class has the new curriculum so the amount of advice I can give on that front is a bit limited 🙂
vet.uga.edu
