varying experience? How much is enough?

[HelloNello]

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[LetItSnow]

My question: If I want to focus on SA, is it going to matter that much that I dont have bazillions of hours of experience in other fields? I feel that I have dabbled in LA and food animal, but I don't have more than 200 hours working with LA or food animals. In the other forums I have read that schools want to see you have a lot of experience in the area you care about, but that they also want to see variety. Is 200 hours enough to be considered a variety?

My focus is (almost certainly) SA, and I got accepted with ... I think around 50 hours LA. Can't recall, exactly. I did, however, have some other farm experience (non-vet) that I drew on. But even then, not *that* many hours.

On the one hand, more is always better. On the other, 200 is certainly enough to show you've exposed yourself to other areas of vet med than the one in which you're primarily interested.

 

[that redhead]

I think this depends on the school and on the rest of your application. If the rest of the application is strong, it probably won't matter. Similarly, if you're applying to schools like UC Davis and Penn (which I hear care more about emphasis in your intended area), it may be best to forget about more experiences. However, as someone with a pretty diverse amount of experience especially when it came down to species themselves, I think diversity is important. I suppose if you've done some equine and some 4H/production as well as the intended zoo hours, you're covering yourself pretty well. But seriously, never discount the potential for change in interest. I've gone from equine to LA to equine to lab animal in my "intended career" and I think only just now, after having wanted to be a vet for forever and having had a wide, deep variety of experiences, have I been able to settle. It still may change!

Anyway, to make a long story short, it depends. I would look for those more unique experiences if it were me, but it's up to you 🙂

 

[racccjlm]

Just my two cents - there are MANY ways that you can go about building up your app/resume for vet school. The only vet experience I had when I applied was around 25 hours shadowing. That being said, I had a ton of animal/wildlife experience, along with some acoustics research. Spend time where your passion lies, be able to demonstrate a knowledge of the veterinary field at large (not just the area you're interested in), and look for ways to make yourself a unique candidate. No one can say if 200 hours is enough to be considered a variety - but IMO, it demonstrates that you were willing to explore other branches of vet med besides the SA route you want to take. You could potentially tie that into your PS. Good luck!

 

[Minnerbelle]

Yeah, I think the point is going to be to stand out in some way. A good load of SA experience and some LA is not going to make you pop, but I don't see why it's not adequate. You just have to find other ways to separate you from everyone else with similar experiences. If you don't make it through, I highly doubt it'll be because you lacked experience, though post-mortems may tell you to set yourself apart with more unique experiences.

 

[twelvetigers]

I had 68 hours of LA shadowing.

Try to get some neat experience in the areas you're interested in, if possible. So, for SA, maybe shadow at an emergency practice or a specialist or do some work abroad, like VIDA (😉). I think you're on the right track, though.

 

[Alhazred]

I had zero hours of LA when I applied, which was stupid. Now I have about five.

I'd go with diversifying your experience as much as possible.

 

[HelloNello]

Thanks all! This helps. As applications get closer, I find myself becoming that twitchy girl. I know its a crapshoot and nobody really knows what the "right" formula is, but it always helps to hear people's opinions. SDN has been so helpful in keeping me sane.

I will try to get a few hours shadowing an emergency vet and maybe a little more shadowing a LA vet. And I will definitely add something that pops out on my application 👍

Congrats to everyone who has gotten in this cycle!

 

[Cautionary Tail]

I went in with zero hours LA experience... unless you want to count the riding lessons I took when I was 9. (And come to think of it, I spent a week bottle-feeding calves when I was 10.) 😉

There isn't much LA experience to be had in my area. I did know an equine vet based out of one of the SA practices I worked at in the past, and he probably would have been willing to let me shadow... but it didn't occur to me until after the fact.

I think I had somewhere in the neighborhood of 3000 SA-exclusive veterinary hours, spent 4 months working FT in a city shelter, and have been working with feral cats on a small scale since 2002... that's about the extent of my diversity. I picked up a little exotic experience in there, too.

It's possible (if not probable) that working in some LA experience might have bolstered my application, but not having it didn't kill me.

(Technically, I am still on the OOS waitlist, but according to SDN's decline thread, it appears that I'm in. )

 

[pooter]

I got in with zero hours of LA vet experience and less than 200 hours of equine handling experience. My SA experience was also less than yours. I think I did it partly by emphasizing the diversity of my experience within SA. In my interview I described the three different practices I've worked at and how the case load and environment varied at each one. The idea was to emphasize that I'd absorbed a different skill set from each place, in hopes of convincing them that I could also absorb and process from a variety of environments in vet school. And, yeah, strong academics, extra curriculars, ect don't hurt.

 

[AngSchmange]

I had zero large animal (well, like 30 horse, but no cattle/sheep/pig which they look for) and it came up in my interview. RVC asked why I had never done anything in the food animal business, and I said I had wanted to but since my interest was in Zoo I sort of focused on working there instead. Plus, there are more wineries in western NY than dairy farms 😀 But I definitely think had I had hours in large animal I would've looked like a better candidate.