Veterinary thoughts

[cjsmith]

Thoughts, mostly for myself, but feel free to read 'em if you feel like it.

Difficulty

I have now heard from multiple sources that getting into a veterinary medicine program is harder than getting into (human-) med school. I don't know whether it "needs to be" harder in order to screen for the difficulty of the schooling itself, but there are certainly fewer schools available and fewer seats available. Yikes. I honestly am not sure I'm up for that level of challenge. Hell, I thought a lot of myself when I was coming out of high school and I was intimidated by it back then!

O'course, multiple sources could still be wrong. And it's possible that my utterly appalling undergraduate grades would mean a lot less now than they would have meant in 1989. I will work like crazy to kick some serious butt on the entrance exams (GRE, MCAT, whatever, I'll do what needs doing) and I will work like crazy to get good grades in the preparatory undergraduate courses I know I need.

I suspect once I'm in I'll be okay. I may not graduate top in my class; I'm not twenty, I'm not perfectly healthy, I've already pulled all the all-nighters I want to pull in this lifetime, I may have a significant commute to and from school, and I don't have somebody else footing the bill. But I won't be last in my class either. If I get in, I believe I can become a good AND competent veterinarian. I'm also ethical enough that if I can't become competent I'll stop. But that first step is a doozy.

Squeamishness

Long-time readers, remember that bit about passing out when giving blood? That bit about feeling woozy when my doctor described the laparoscopic surgery I was going to get? That bit about having to go lie down when watching my cat get subcutaneous fluids? Um. As an employee evaluation might put it, "this area needs work."

On the other hand, many people have assured me that this is the kind of thing that can be overcome. My gynecologist, who is also a surgeon, assures me he used to get woozy. My aunt Helen, a registered nurse, passed out cold at the first surgery she attended. (Hit her head hard if I remember the story right. Nobody was watching the students; they were quite rightly watching the surgeon and his patient.) These people went on to have long and fine careers in medicine. It can be done.

On the other other hand I don't exactly look forward to it.

Commitment

When people ask me about my desire to do this, the best answer I can give them is that it's obvious this is what I should have done the first time around.

Perhaps that means I owe it to myself to try. BUT.

Rob and I, as a couple, come first.

I can't guarantee I'll get into any of my top few choices of schools. ANY school I attend will mean selling the house, moving, Rob drastically changing or even dumping his flight instructor career and improvising some way he can make money in aviation or out of it, and years of me pulling eighty-hour weeks and stressing out a lot. He's said he'll be supportive of whichever decision I make, but I must also in good conscience take a look at what that will cost him. If it costs us each other, directly or indirectly, that's too high a price. If managed badly, I know that that could indeed be the price. Caution required.

I also won't be able to keep going with the high-tech career for very much longer if I head down this path. A year, sure; I'll be studying, taking a class or two, volunteering. More than two years... very unlikely. I'll be in classes AND studying for the entrance exams AND working at a clinic (if I can) AND trying to figure out in which state I'll need to establish residency, and maybe even going there while Rob sells the house. So my current career will get ditched early in the process, long before I know I'll succeed on the new path. It could get picked up again, although re-buying the house (if already sold) would be a bit of a toughie.

It all kind of feels like a leap off a cliff.

On the other hand, damn if it isn't exciting. Rob, I'm sorry, I really am.

*sigh*

So far I'm giving it somewhere around a 35% chance I'll make the leap. That's probably higher than it's been before.

Comments

[takhisis.livejournal.com]

My impression is that it's terribly hard to get in, but then I was applying at one of the premier vet schools in the country (U.C. Davis). I ended up not choosin that as a major due to squeamishness factor, so I understand that. BUT! One thing that was told to me that is kind of sneaky that I have remembered since then... depending on the school, they often have a cap on people entering as a particular major but then once you are in for any reason, you only have class caps to content with. Meanin, if you apply as Undeclared or as an alternate major (say, English or Computer Science), you can spend your first semester/trimester getting general requirements out of the way (classes you'd have to take no matter what your major was) and then you can usually transfer over into the Vet Med program without most of the hassle you'd have in applying as an undergrad, since you are already accepted as a student of the university. Then you only have to contend with fighting to get one of the limited class spots when you register.

This was also as cominin as a frosh, so I don't know if it would apply to coming in as a transfer student or a grad student, depending on what you've already done.

[lrc.livejournal.com]

Vet Med is a graduate program. You don't transfer in from an undergrad program.

I started out my college career pre-vet at UCD. I realized that I didn't want to live in Davis for 8 years, nor did I want to work as hard as getting into vet school would require.


CJ, do you know farmount? She did vet med at Davis.

Davis does have the advantages of an airport nearby, and I assume that housing is still cheap in the surrounding towns.

[takhisis.livejournal.com]

Well, I was trying to say that I didn't know if she was looking to go in as Vet Med or pre-vet, since she said "I will work like crazy to get good grades in the preparatory undergraduate courses I know I need." I didn't do grad school there so I can't offer any useful advice in that arena, just trying to put forth a caveat.

[rfrench.livejournal.com]

I don't think getting into pre-vet is going to be the problem. That can be done anywhere, and is just basic biology and chemistry stuff. It's the graduate portion that's hard, and there isn't any easy way around it as far as I know.

[platypus]

Unfortunately, yeah. UW-Madison didn't even recognize 'pre-vet' as a classification; you could take relevant coursework, but you had to be majoring in something they did recognize (most people chose "meat and animal science" for the overlap in useful courses). And attendance at the university got you absolutely no ins when it came to grad school admission.

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

I do have the good fortune of already having an undergraduate degree, so I probably don't need to apply to a degree program at all in order to spackle the holes in my undergrad bio and chem background. But getting in somewhere, anywhere, as vet med... if I fail at becoming a vet that'll be exactly where it will happen.