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

[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Well of course my experience of the UK system is now (gasp!) 32 years out of date!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.