My 16 year old son is looking at vet school down the road.
I’ve heard that the schools expect the students to have 1000 hours of working with animals in various settings before they apply. Is that true? That seems like a high number. Here in NC it’s just as hard to get into vet school as med school, maybe harder. We have 1 vet school (NC State) and 4 med schools. (Duke, WF, UNC, ECU) and we are soon to have a 5th med school.
First, although 1000 hours seems like a lot, very few actually tally them to the point. Also, various animal-related things count (volunteering at a veterinary clinic, volunteering at an animal shelter, and working with animals in research all count towards the requirement).
Second, 16 is a good age to start looking into volunteering at a veterinary clinic/animal shelter/some other animal facility, and check if that is what he wants to do. I know for me it confirmed that I wanted to study veterinary medicine, but for others it varies. Also, it’ll count towards how much experience he has had.
Yes, getting to veterinary school is more difficult simply because there are so fewer of them compared to medical school.
This is what North Carolina State Vet School has to say about it:
Veterinary Experience: A minimum of 400 hours of clinical, medical, agribusiness, health science or medical related scientific research experience is required by the time of application. However, supervised experiences in three or more different areas are highly recommended for a competitive application. Experience in three (3) different areas (small animal, large animal, research, food animal production, exotic, aquatic, wildlife, zoological medicine, etc.) of the veterinary medical profession is preferred. The work can be either paid or voluntary and must be completed under the supervision of a veterinarian (or PhD scientist if scientific research). Applicants will be evaluated on duration, level of duties, and diversity of the experiences.
Animal Experience All other animal related experiences will also be evaluated, such as working with livestock, breeding/ showing dogs or similar, working at a zoo, aquarium or pet shop, equestrian activities, volunteer time at an animal shelter/rescue, etc., and these should be included in the “Animal Experience” section of the VMCAS application.
Like veterinary experience, animal experience will be evaluated on duration with at least 100 hours or more contact time highly recommended; multiple activities of long duration are preferred. This category doesn’t include pet ownership.
you should also note their very specific list of required prerequisite coursework
Yes, it’s very competitive. As you noted, most states have multiple medical schools; a lot of states don’t even have one vet school – there are only 29 or 30 vet schools for the whole country.
You might want to look into the economics of the job. I have been around vets socially and famillially for about 30 years, and my absorbed understanding is that it’s a dismal time to get into the field. The schools are either third-rate and expensive, or first-rate and both insanely expensive and competitive; the situation is apparently much worse than med school.
The job market is not good, so the result of some $200-400k in education is a job in a group clinic at $60k or so… if you’re lucky. $30-40k in a small town or rural clinic is more likely. Starting a solo practice takes a whopping chunk of capital and is a ticket to bankruptcy or long, dreary years of low net income.
I may be off in details, decimal points or a shift of eras, but I suggest you look long, hard and critically at the cost/value ratio before having your son set foot on this path. Unless it’s a calling equivalent to going into the priesthood, it may not be a wise choice.
I know about the pay issues. He doesn’t have to choose this path for a while yet but he probably will go into some field related to biology. He might go to med school too.
While some of it has a grain of truth, it is not as dismal as you portray it. According to a JAVMA article (which I have to loo up more closely at work than I can at home), the average student debt was $142,613 in 2011, and I think that may include undergraduate students loans. Also, the average starting salary for 2011 was $66,469, which while down from other years, not as dismal as $30K per year (which is less than I, as a resident, make).
Solo practice has been de-emphasized in the veterinary curriculum for years, the approach now is more in a multi-veterinary practice, with the eventual goal of becoming associate/part-ower. Some large animal (equine, mostly) clinics still exist, though, and are more common than small animals.
Schools are not “third-rate” or “first-rate”. All schools have to be accredited by the AAVMC, and that even includes some foreign schools. They all undergo regular auditing and evaluations. Lastly, the graduates of those schools must all pass the NAVLE in order to then become licensed in their respective states. Students from other schools outside of AAVMC also undergo stringent testing before being able to apply for a license in the US.
It is a calling, of that I have no doubt. I had it and I heeded it. Do I hate the student debt? Yes, with all my heart. Would I have chosen a different path (human medicine)? No, I still think human have cooties, and have no desire in learning medicine or diseases related to them (unless they are also related to the other animals).
One last thing that is not mentioned is that… Older vets are not retiring… There would be more positions open if some veterinarians (clinic owners, even) would retire, but they don’t. They want to stay there for as long as they want (in different specialties), and that makes it harder for the generations after them to step in, improve, and continue. I know because it is a problem in my specialty.
As a person who owns livestock and requires a large animal vet… I can only say thank God that the older vets don’t retire! I"m sorry, but I tried a clinic that had vets straight out of school and (because I only need a vet in extreme situations) it has never gone well. It takes time to learn how to be a good vet. Personally, I think it takes years. So we livestock owners need the seasoned vets to stay around as long as possible and those clinics will continue to shrink down to dog and cat clinics because they’re not willing to pay a young vet to shadow the experienced vets on the road.
Also remember that vets don’t do 4 years of residency/internships like doctors , they finish school and go right into practice.
I should mention that my son’s cousin is 100% planning on being a vet. She’s a year older than him at 17. Her family owns a couple of horses. Not sure if this is a national trend, but the vet school at NCSU is over 80% female.
Veterinary medicine is definitely female dominated.
Your son may end up getting another degree on his way to very school. Biology is a common one, but biochemistry could also be good. Have him supplement with something else, though…every applicant had top marks in biology but few are also top of their class in business, theatre, or communications…all things that look damn good on an entrance interview. So many vet students have phenomenal grades and no people or financial skills. Be well rounded.
One possibility to get those 1,000 hours might be volunteer work in a zoo. If you go that way, your son should tell the volunteer section that his ultimate ambition is to become a vet. One advantage of that kind of work is that zoos are busier at weekends, and a highschool or college student is more likely to have free time at weekends. Another is that there would be experience with a wide variety of animals. A third is that zoos employ vets, so that experience working as a volunteer would look good on his resume if he wanted to work at a zoo.
He went to a vet camp at the NC Zoo last summer, he may do that again. Also he will probably go to the NC State vet camp this summer.
While experience is important, there should be a trade-off between experience and newer techniques/diagostics/methodology. And in a way, those older experienced vets didn’t get there without making mistakes when they were younger (before you needed their services).
At least in some specialties, and especially in this economy, since older vets are still around, it does make some positions, even entry-level positions, harder to get for some recent graduates. Without such a job offer, how are they even going to get the experience?
I was at a talk last week (led by a large animal/livestock veterinarian) about the future of some of those specialties and his take. It was very interesting perspective, very different, and obviously a bit at odds with the Dean.
And yes, veterinary medicine is very female populated. Not just for “pretty little kitties and dogs”, but in every aspect and specialty.
My baby vet story. Several years ago I had (notice the tense) a german shepherd named Mike. One day, very suddenly, he came up really lame in the back end. I took him to the vet, but my regular vet was out for the week. I got a vet that looked about 12. I told her I thought it was possibly something neurological. She insisted it was arthritis. I told her no, I didn’t think so, because it was a sudden onset thing. She insisted and told me to load him up with Rimadyl. Soon after, he stopped eating. I was cooking chicken and rice and handfeeding him, trying to keep weight on him. He quickly became skeletal and never recovered. I took him in to be euthanized when he was obviously not going to get better. My old vet was in that day and when she put the sedative in she said he couldn’t feel his back feet. It was probably a herniated disc. She had is chart and I looked in it. There the baby vet had written "Client thinks it’s ‘neurological’ " in quotation marks. The old vet said the Rimadyl had eaten a hole in his stomach. He’d stopped eating because of the ulcer. Between us, the baby vet and I killed my dog.
StG
I’m not talking about newer techniques, I’m talking about flat out not knowing what they’re doing and not willing to listen to me about my animals. I’m talking about an idiot who thought he could take a radiograph of a horses HIP (the radiograph machine used for ankles and carried on trucks and… oh yea… the old kind with film because the “clinic” is too cheap to buy new equipment). OH, yeah and the problem was white muscle disease..
I’m talking about a foal that died from the vet’s mistake…
A mare who’s cast that was set wrong and when I complained the “vet” said “it’ll be alright” and for two days I tried to get them back out to take the cast off because the leg was literally swelling above the cast… the “vet” said I was “making it up” because when the horse stepped back onto the cast, he’d refused to replace it because he thought the only reason I wanted it replaced was that it wasn’t straight. No, it had her fetlock at an angle and dried that way. I had to pay through the a$$ for an emergency call from a vet farther away to come saw that piece of crap off the horse. When I showed the clinic photos and a statement from the emergency vet, I still had to pay for that stupid shts fckup, full price.
So, no it isn’t new techniques that I worry about. My vets keep up quite nicely. It is that the schools turn out stupid people who don’t listen to the animal owners and they think they’re gods because they neuter an animal or something.
So, as far as I’m concerned, I avoid any practice that hire these new kids. I’ve had enough animals damaged and killed by them.
I’d say then the problem is the veterinarians themselves, rather than whether they are new or not. As someone whose work puts her directly in line to catch the medical errors/misteps/overlooks, I get them from both newer and older, “respected in the industry” veterinarians.
Again, that is not to said that some of those who you now revere as respectable and good, did not at some point in their past make mistakes like the ones you mentioned, learned from them, and became the well-respected vets they are now.
Weird you should mention the “not listening to owners” when I had to take courses in client communication through vet school, and this (people skills, communications, avoiding misunderstandings, etc.) is something that is covered in various CE courses (that vets are required to take).
Send your son to Northern Virginia. Vets here charge premiere prices for every procedure. Student debt will evaporate in no time.