Not this fall

[cjsmith]

I will not be applying to UCDavis veterinary school this fall. Biochem (of which I must take at least two quarters) requires previous completion of o-chem (a full year), which in turn requires completion of the chem I'm in during the spring. And no, I can't start o-chem in the summer. It's not offered.

All of this fussing around about fitting the courses in, and it turns out it never would have been possible to do them all in two years. Three = minimum.

This does kind of put the pressure on to get in on my first try. I simply don't have the financial wherewithal to go *four* years before entering vet school.

Good points:
- No GRE this spring!
- May be able to drop physics this spring (and get better grades in what's left).
- More time to gain a variety of animal experience - wildlife, etc. This is huge.
- More time to get to know veterinarians at all these places = potentially better letters of recommendation.
- Opportunity to take some really cool courses I don't specifically need. Micro! Human anatomy!
- Opportunity to beef up the transcript in the humanities.

Bad points:
- Money.

Comments

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

To be fair, in many US universities, it's not as bad as what I'm seeing right now. At MIT, there may be some fussing about which year or which semester you'll take a certain course, but there's no question that you can get what you need within the four years you've got. (Some students take longer, but availability of courses does not stop anyone from graduating in the "standard" amount of time.) Some of this may be a difference between private institutions and state-funded schools. Also, what I'm doing here is in many ways outside the system, changing careers like this and going back for undergraduate work when I already have a bachelor's degree.

Still, the UK system sounds very different to me. No major? Does the degree program not have a specialization in one subject or course of study? And I'm sure it would be quite helpful to focus on class work rather than on what is available next semester and the dependency chains of prerequisites.

Making education into a real job might have its benefits in terms of guiding students' attitudes about whether or not showing up is important. Do you see a difference there?

[abqdan.livejournal.com]

Well of course my experience of the UK system is now (gasp!) 32 years out of date! They did away with automatic grants for undergrads, and students have to take out loans as they do here. (I didn't pay anything for my degree - tuition, books, accommodation and food were all covered by the government.)

Yes, specialization and electives did occur, but within a narrow band; so you were able make those choices ahead of time, and then scheduling happened automatically. They just don't have the concept of something like a major in nuclear physics with a minor in quilt-making (which is the kind of choice students here seem to make!) And there is no concept of University College, where you sign up to do an indeterminate degree program at some point in the future.

The system certainly focused students on the academic side of things; and yes, if you failed to attend you got dropped, so it was very work-structured. It was probably more of a useful discipline in that it prepared students for the job market. But I've no idea if the system was really more effective in terms of education. I'm just glad I never had to worry about what course I needed to do next, or whether it would be open in a particular semester.

[steph-2012.livejournal.com]

As to the question of private vs public schools in the US, I got through all of my upper division (plus two lower division I couldn't get at De Anza) in two years. It wasn't till my last semester that I heard that most CS students take 3 years to do their upper division. (But then, I had worked out the two years with flow charts, spreadsheets, and a two-years-and-out budget.)

The real answer for public schools is to learn ALL the rules and options up front, make a plan (with alternatives for the class you can't get this term), and be prepared to do some serious ass-kissing to get into that class you HAVE to have this term. :-)

[cjsmith.livejournal.com]

Also, for public schools, at least in California right now: do whatever it takes to be able to register for classes before everyone else does. The budget situation at the schools is so severe at the moment that the wait lists for science lab courses are twice as large as the courses are. Claim you have no income, claim you're missing both arms and one leg, lie like a rug -- whatever it takes. Otherwise you have to putz around taking useless courses for several quarters before you're high enough on the priority list to get anything you really need. I was VERY FORTUNATE to get my first quarter of each of those before the budget hit. For someone like me, putzing around for a year is financially devastating.

This may not apply to people going for degrees. Me, I already have all the fluff like English Writing 1 (where there are more courses than students); I need only the science lab courses. I'd have changed religions if I'd had to to get early registration.

(By now I may count as having no income, but that bucket is already full and they're not taking any more. Too bad. I had to get early reg with the honors program instead, which means an extra useless course every quarter. That doesn't do great things to the time schedule.)