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I have my interview on Friday, I'm so excited! Current students - what are your favorite things about the school? Why did you end up choosing Penn over other schools?
What I really like about the school itself: very long track record of producing great vets. Pretty diverse curriculum I think, with tons of opportunities for wetlabs, shadowing, time in the hospital, etc. Massive caseload at both the small and large animal hospitals. Very collaborative atmosphere where students don’t try to compete with each other. Admins are trying to get us more clinical experience and it seems like they’ve made progress and are continuing to do so. Cool opportunities for work and experience within the school. Tons of research opportunities. Penn is a research powerhouse.
I mainly chose it because I’m from here, my family is here, and my life is based around Philly. Most of what I know about vetmed started with things related to Penn. It’s just a great school with a long history and cool diverse location.
One of the things that really appealed to me about Penn is its Philadelphia location. I am a city girl at heart, and I really enjoy that the city is walkable, there's decent public transportation, and there's so much to do and see. For large animal peeps, our split campus might be a downside because it's about an hour drive to New Bolton Center, the large animal hospital, and there's no school-provided or public transit available. The school works with the students to set up carpools, however, and I've had no issues finding a ride to the large animal experiences at NBC. I don't have a car, and I don't feel like I miss it (maybe take it with a grain of salt, since I'm small animal/exotic focused).
Another huge deciding factor for me is that my boyfriend's family is 45 minutes away, which means I have a support system here. He lives in Boston, and he diligently makes the 6 hour drive to come see me about twice a month (God bless that man!)
As I mentioned before, I'm on scholarship, and that was probably the #1 deciding factor for me.
Penn has its upsides and downsides, just like every vet school. I don't necessarily agree with ajs that our school isn't competitive; it's vet school, and there are always going to be competitive people in this field. However, I'd say they do their best to create a class that's diverse and balanced. Overall, I'm happy with my choice.
No one is going to bring up Dev Bio or Anatomy....? I mean don't get me wrong, I've heard some stories about professors down in the South, and that makes me thankful to be up here at Penn, but still, we're paying a lot of $$ and what we're getting.... at least let these guys should get a good dose of the truth. But yes, everywhere has it's pros and cons. This school is awesome and at this point, I don't think I would change it for Tufts or Colorado which were my other options, but at the same time, I would have really really REALLY appreciated it, if the current students had said what you guys said but also what it was really like.
What all the current students are afraid to talk about is how everyone trashes the current way the curriculum is set up and in certain courses, the number of professors to student ratio. We're having a total over haul of the system because of this for Fall 2021. I think it will be good in the long run... but there will be kinks in the beginning (just ask @StayingPositive2017 abut Michigan's overhaul). Furthermore, even though the hands on element is being increased, literally the entire room laughed once when we were asked how much hands on experience we get at Penn. We have good vets because we're intelligent, and in a number of classes, we have to learn a lot on our own and work through it and come back with questions ourselves. Hard, but arguably it does help make you remember it more. Regarding people, it's what you want. Vet school is majority people between 22-25 so it's going to be cliquey AF. I can sit at any lunch table and have everyone be perfectly nice and sweet, but if you want someone to be there at 2am when your dog is throwing up and needs to go to the ER.... hopefully you make some good friends and are part of a good mini crew. But at the end of the day, everyone needs to do well and get to where they're going. Doesn't meant people won't post their study guides and what not to help others. Plus, who doesn't like showing off how much they know? You have to somewhat be type A to get past all the competitiveness just to get into vet school.
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