Vet school rankings in decision making

[eleanor713]

I want to start off by saying I know vet school rankings don’t matter and to always go with the cheapest option! 🙂 but I’ve heard rankings are based off of research and I want to go into research/lab animal work.
My instate school doesn’t offer classes or clinical rotations in lab animal medicine but more expensive schools do, which is appealing to me as I want to be able to learn about the field I’m interested in without having to travel and pay for externship expenses for 2 weeks at a time.
I also want to be heavily involved with research, especially biomedical so I’m looking for schools with a highly ranked med school/hospital.
Essentially- would vet school rankings help me determine which schools would give me better research opportunities and lab animal work, regardless of their other factors?

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[CarolCat12]

From what I’ve heard, cheapest option is the way to go if you just want a DVM. But if you want to specialize and go to a residency program (research, clinical trials, etc) vet school will matter. The well known schools tend to get students matched into the residency programs of choice over the average ones.

 

[Really??]

I want to start off by saying I know vet school rankings don’t matter and to always go with the cheapest option! 🙂 but I’ve heard rankings are based off of research and I want to go into research/lab animal work.
My instate school doesn’t offer classes or clinical rotations in lab animal medicine but more expensive schools do, which is appealing to me as I want to be able to learn about the field I’m interested in without having to travel and pay for externship expenses for 2 weeks at a time.
I also want to be heavily involved with research, especially biomedical so I’m looking for schools with a highly ranked med school/hospital.
Essentially- would vet school rankings help me determine which schools would give me better research opportunities and lab animal work, regardless of their other factors?

Why don’t you call your instate school and tell them of your interests and ask their opinion on how well of fit they are to help you meet your goals? They may offer some insight to help you feel comfortable about staying in state or recommend you to another school.

 

[supershorty]

But if you want to specialize and go to a residency program (research, clinical trials, etc) vet school will matter.

It won't.
Someone's ability to match successfully depends on the networking, grades, and letters of recommendation that a student gets. Those are all in the individual's hands to influence. What school their DVM comes from does not matter.

 

[CarolCat12]

It won't.
Someone's ability to match successfully depends on the networking, grades, and letters of recommendation that a student gets. Those are all in the individual's hands to influence. What school their DVM comes from does not matter.

So much of networking is based on your school. Just like with med school. Higher ranked schools also put out many more publications/offer more research opportunities, increasing your chance of authorship. If you want to get into research, especially with onehealth/ working with human med, the name game plays a much bigger role than it does for vet industry specific residencies

This could 100% not apply to the other specialties, but this is what I’ve heard from multiple clinical trial vets.

 

[supershorty]

If you want to get into research, having a PhD plays a much bigger role than where your DVM came from, whether they come from the same place or not.

The vast majority of networking is going to come through things you do outside of school, like attending conferences and taking the initiative to introduce yourself to people working in the area you're interested in.
The name of the school matters far less.

I'll agree that research opportunities are likely to be more limited at the newer programs, simply because they won't have the available funding that a long-established program with multiple R-level grants will, but that's about the extent of the name mattering - and that's not even a function of name recognition. That's just dollars.

 

[battie]

So much of networking is based on your school. Just like with med school. Higher ranked schools also put out many more publications/offer more research opportunities, increasing your chance of authorship. If you want to get into research, especially with onehealth/ working with human med, the name game plays a much bigger role than it does for vet industry specific residencies

This could 100% not apply to the other specialties, but this is what I’ve heard from multiple clinical trial vets.

I'd love to see VIRMP, AVMA, or AAVMC data actually supporting this. I look into vet school data pretty thoroughly and have never found anything that supports this.

To @eleanor713 , think about the vet schools as a whole in regards to accreditation. The vast majority are at land-grant universities (aka state universities such as CSU, TAMU, etc.). There are only a few "elite" schools (Penn, Cornell). They *all* do research on all sorts of things. The reason lab animal specifically does not have rotations or options at a ton of schools is because it's one of the smallest specialties in vet med and the doctors at those universities don't have the time to commit to teaching in addition to the rest of their duties. You also don't need a lab animal vet to do research. So many people who are not lab animal do research.

Please do not spend extra money you don't need to.

 

[JaynaAli]

Not sure how often they log in but tagging @KCgophervet and @that redhead for advice from an actual lab animal vets. And @WhtsThFrequency isnt lab animal but has PhD/basic science research experience so might have insight.

In my opinion as someone in another specialty, you can make lots of your own experiences even if it’s not something your school offers widely. I’d argue that there may be less competition for helping with research at smaller schools, so I think you can argue this any number of ways. I’d still recommend going to the cheapest school and making the most out of it, networking your butt off, and finding your own unique opportunities.

 

[eleanor713]

Thank you everyone! Definitely things to consider!

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

So much of networking is based on your school. Just like with med school. Higher ranked schools also put out many more publications/offer more research opportunities, increasing your chance of authorship. If you want to get into research, especially with onehealth/ working with human med, the name game plays a much bigger role than it does for vet industry specific residencies

This could 100% not apply to the other specialties, but this is what I’ve heard from multiple clinical trial vets.

I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the level at which school matters for going into a career in clinical trials from what these vets were telling you.

It does not matter significantly at the level of veterinary school/pre residency. Or at least certainly not enough to justify taking on a load of additional debt. There are ways to make yourself competitive for any residency at any vet school.

I currently straddle the human and vet med worlds. I have a DVM, residency and board cert, a PhD, and currently work at a (human) medical school - teaching, publishing in basic science research, and doing my vet specialist stuff on the side. So I’m familiar with the gauntlet. I went to a bottom 50% “ranked” vet school (and btw, do look up how those rankings are determined, it’s laughable) and it didn’t hold me back in the slightest.

Now, where a school’s size of research programs and funding/publishing opportunities (sometimes tied to rank/name, but definitely not always) can sometimes matter more is during your actual residency, and definitely more so during any research degrees you may choose to pursue after. As supershorty said, if you really want to get into translational research/be a PI, a PhD after the DVM is essentially a necessity to be able to get high level funding (this statement is less applicable if you want to just be a collaborator, and even less if you don’t want to do translational research but focus on veterinary clinical research….which is a whole ‘nother underfunded kettle of fish but I digress.)

So to the OP - if you want to go into lab animal or research, where you do your residency and where you do your research degree (if needed depending on what type of research you want to do) is far more important than where you do vet school.

YMMV, but I sure as heck wouldn’t go an additional 50-100k in debt for an elective or two (which could easily be replaced with an away rotation or summer internship) and one more third co-author paper (because let’s face it, with the time commitments in vet school your true research committment time is almost nil) - neither of which would a) be guaranteed from a “big name school” or b) be guaranteed to get you into residency either.

 

[eleanor713]

I’m going to assume you misinterpreted the level at which school matters for going into a career in clinical trials from what these vets were telling you.

It does not significantly at the level of veterinary school/pre residency. Certainly not enough to justify taking on a load of additional debt. There are ways to make yourself competitive for any residency at any vet school.

I currently straddle the human and vet med worlds. I have a DVM, residency and board cert, a PhD, and work at a (human) medical school both teaching and publishing in basic science research, and doing my vet specialist stuff on the side. So I’m familiar with the gauntlet.

Now, where a school’s size of research programs and funding/publishing opportunities (sometimes tied to name, but not always) can matter more is during your actual residency, as well as any research degrees you may choose to pursue after. As supershorty said, if you really want to get into translational research/be a PI, a PhD after the DVM is essentially a necessity to be able to get high level funding (this statement is less applicable if you want to just be a collaborator, and even less if you don’t want to do translational research but focus on veterinary clinical research….which is a whole ‘nother underfunded kettle of fish but I digress.)

So to the OP - if you want to go into lab animal or research, where you do your residency and where you do your research degree (if needed depending on what type of research you want to do) is far more important than where you do vet school.

YMMV, but I sure as heck wouldn’t go an additional 50-100k in debt for an elective or two (which could easily be replaced with an away rotation or summer internship) and one more third co-author paper (because let’s face it, with the time commitments in vet school your true research committment time is almost nil) - neither of which would a) be guaranteed from a “big name school” or b) be guaranteed to get you into residency either.

Thank you so much! So essentially doing everything right (connections, GPA, letters of rec, involvement) during vet school to get into a good residency program matters much more than which vet school those things are done at?
I really appreciate everyone’s input and will really look at cost (and job opportunities for SO) more than anything else when making a final decision!

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Thank you so much! So essentially doing everything right (connections, GPA, letters of rec, involvement) during vet school to get into a good residency program matters much more than which vet school those things are done at?
I really appreciate everyone’s input and will really look at cost (and job opportunities for SO) more than anything else when making a final decision!

Exactly. And another thing to consider is, what if your interests change during vet school and you no longer want to do lab animal or research? Then you’ve shelled out all this extra money for a supposed “advantage” (which is an arguable designation to begin with, as several others have said here) that no longer applies to you. I changed what I wanted to do at least three times during school as I got exposed to more and more disciplines.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Cost matters a lot as well when you are thinking about specializing, because unless you have a a generous spouse or parent, you won’t really be able to chip away much at your loans on a resident salary….. all the while with the interest piling up. I graduated with 130k in debt from my in-state school. Eight years later after residency (3 yrs) and PhD (5 yrs) where I was getting paid about 30-40k, my balance is >200k. I don’t even want to know what it would be if I had started with an out-of-state balance….whew.

 

[CarolCat12]

Cost matters a lot as well when you are thinking about specializing, because unless you have a a generous spouse or parent, you won’t really be able to chip away much at your loans on a resident salary….. all the while with the interest piling up. I graduated with 130k in debt from my in-state school. Eight years later after residency (3 yrs) and PhD (5 yrs) where I was getting paid about 30-40k, my balance is >200k. I don’t even want to know what it would be if I had started with an out-of-state balance….whew.

Great point! All the clinical trial vets I know didn’t pay for school themselves, so they may have given me a biased viewpoint because cost wasn’t a factor for them.
Thank you for your input!

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Great point! All the clinical trial vets I know didn’t pay for school themselves, so they may have given me a biased viewpoint because cost wasn’t a factor for them.
Thank you for your input!

Oops yeah, that'll do it, haha. Until you start seeing that $1,000-2,000 bill every month, it's hard to conceptualize what debt really means. My payment is $1,200 a month and I'm on income based repayment - it only barely covers the interest...if I did the standard 10 year, it would be well over 2 grand. Per month. That would be over 25% of my take-home pay for 10 years. And that's with a 200k balance - I know many out of staters with more. I'm gunning for PSLF and have 5 more years of that, so hopefully that will still be around.

Don't get me wrong, I don't regret specializing at all, nor do I regret doing the PhD on top of it (despite it being the hardest thing I've ever done....vet school was almost easy compared to that), but the years of lost earning potential definitely hit hard in face of the loans. Especially since I chose to go the academic route because I love to teach - academia typically pays less than industry (although the benefits are great...I get amazing health insurance and an 8.5% 401k match).

But if I had graduated with twice of what I did.....that definitely would have made me pause and ask myself if I really wanted to specialize and watch it continue to balloon at a 6.8% interest rate for multiple years when I couldn't spare much money, if any, to keep it in check. I could have been in the same situation I am now, but with 300k or more in total debt.

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

Also @eleanor713 - forgive me, but I did a little snooping in your post history and found out your in-state is VMCVM. That's also where I went. If that's still on your radar, I'm happy to chat over PM about research opportunities there, especially animal model ones. I know a lot of the groups over there, and I still collaborate with some.

 

[eleanor713]

Also @eleanor713 - forgive me, but I did a little snooping in your post history and found out your in-state is VMCVM. That's also where I went. If that's still on your radar, I'm happy to chat over PM about research opportunities there, especially animal model ones. I know a lot of the groups over there, and I still collaborate with some.

Yes, still on my radar! The only thing is I interviewed there last year and got waitlisted and I’m not too confident on how my interview went this year. They do the Kira talent interview so it’s much different than a normal face to face interview, but we’ll wait and see when final decisions come out! So far I’ve only been accepted to UF and Cornell so I’ll definitely be declining my spot at Cornell after reading everyone’s input!

 

[WhtsThFrequency]

As a peripheral rant, I really hate the concept of in state vs out of state tuition, and how in professional schools they make it almost impossible to change your state of residence even though you are there for four years and contributing to the local economy for four years. It really makes higher education cost prohibitive to so many people. I know there are reasons it is done (e.g. attempting to keep people in the area etc) but man, it bugs me. An OOS student does not "cost" the university more to educate, and therefore the tuition should be the same.

I really do believe that a big potential benefit of pursuing additional education is getting out into the world and being able to expose yourself to different locations, people, and educational methods. By making it so expensive, we're potentially denying students opportunities to become more well-rounded and experienced human beings 🙁

 

[KCgophervet]

I want to start off by saying I know vet school rankings don’t matter and to always go with the cheapest option! 🙂 but I’ve heard rankings are based off of research and I want to go into research/lab animal work.
My instate school doesn’t offer classes or clinical rotations in lab animal medicine but more expensive schools do, which is appealing to me as I want to be able to learn about the field I’m interested in without having to travel and pay for externship expenses for 2 weeks at a time.
I also want to be heavily involved with research, especially biomedical so I’m looking for schools with a highly ranked med school/hospital.
Essentially- would vet school rankings help me determine which schools would give me better research opportunities and lab animal work, regardless of their other factors?

Hi hello, boarded lab animal vet here. You've gotten tons of good advice already so I'll just chime in and say there were zero lab animal electives at my vet school and I still managed to match my #1 choice residency program and pass boards. I think you can be successful going into any vet specialty graduating from any (AVMA-accredited) vet school, you just have to put in the work/time/effort/etc. Reduce the debt as much as possible.

My inbox is open if you ever want to chat more about lab animal stuff. It may take me awhile to respond but I will 🙂