Veterinarians get lots of questions from students, parents and the general public about how we got to where we are. Did I always want to be a vet? (I made the decision when I was 24.) How many years of school do you need after high school? (I have about 11.) Do you have to study hard? (Yes.) I have offered advice to lots of friends and acquaintances over the years. Here are some of my pointers for getting into our career.
The veterinary career should be a passion. It is a lot easier to get through all of the hard parts of the education when you have a goal of working hard doing something you enjoy. There are many careers that pay better that you can get into with similar amounts of hard work. People often ask if I thought about being a human physician. I did, and I took a practice MCAT. I thought deeply about it, and decided that I’m much more interested in helping animals and working with their owners.
When you are starting out pursuing this career, it is good to try some diverse experiences. Veterinarians work in many different capacities. While most of us are now small animal veterinarians in storefront offices like Winters Chapel Animal Hospital, veterinarians are found in larger central hospitals, mobile trucks that visit farms, zoos, shelters, research labs, diagnostic labs, corporate offices, and government. I know vets in all these jobs. Most of them will let you shadow or work with them for a period of time to see what the job is like. Sometimes, there is even a formal pre-veterinary program to generate interest in a particular field that is considered underserved.
The stereotypical future veterinarian is someone who announced that they wanted to be a veterinarian at 5 years old and still has that dream as they are finishing high school. It’s good to take a deep breath and get some shadowing experiences to find out if this is really what you want to do. Being a small animal veterinarian involves long hours, hard work, and lots and lots of client interaction. If you really don’t want to work with people, this isn’t the right career. There may be an aspect of veterinary medicine that will work, but it’s hard to avoid people and be a small animal vet.
Almost all veterinary careers are what I call service-oriented careers. This means that your typical day involves taking on small amounts of new work that you will be completing within a few days. I contrast that with project-oriented careers where you will take on longer term projects that you have to work on consistently until you finish before some deadline. Some careers involve both aspects, but most are predominantly one or the other.
What was my path? Nontraditional. I skipped biology in high school and followed a career in software with an eye toward business. I hated it. Software is a project-oriented career and I didn’t realize that it was anathema to how I like to work. I could enjoy it to the extent that I could work with other people to basically use my services to get the project done. After a dalliance with acting, I made the decision to go back to school, learn biology and chemistry, and apply to vet school. It turns out that my personality matches this type of work much better and I am quite content.
So, once you’ve made the decision to become a veterinarian, what is involved? Reasoning backwards, you need a license, which means you need to graduate vet school and pass the board exam. To graduate vet school, you have to get in, and to get in you need good grades in the right subjects and some experience in the field.
You can get into some vet schools after 2 years of college by taking all the required classes. This means you have finished Biology, Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Biochemistry, Physics and several other classes depending on the school you’re applying to. For most people, I don’t recommend pushing through so quickly. The college experience is very worthwhile and it’s good to become well rounded by taking all sorts of classes in history, language, writing, political science, and mathematics. It’s good to spend 4 years with people who are probably going to become your lifelong friends. It’s also good to become as mature as possible before starting vet school. Finally, taking all the science classes together can be very stressful.
What kinds of grades should you get? Grades are very important for your application. If you look at most schools, the typical GPA is above 3.5. University of Georgia’s average is 3.7. Getting straight As will make a big difference. It’s better to do well in science courses than to take a lot of courses at once, so don’t overload your schedule. Beyond the requirements, take classes that interest you because, in the end, you’ll get better grades and your college experience will be more worthwhile.
What kind of work experience should you have? Relevant experience with some breadth. If you are small-animal focused like me, working as a veterinary assistant in a clinic gives great experience. But you should also do some work or observation with large animal medicine. If you say your dream is to be a zoo veterinarian, but you don’t have experience with exotic animals, that won’t be as believable.
There are other careers in veterinary medicine and having experience with them can definitely help your application. You can work with laboratory animals, public health, and production medicine (like chickens, pigs, and cows). You can be a veterinarian advisor to Congress or work with the USDA and FDA. You may want to demonstrate experience working in the state or national capital. Your experience should be congruent with what you claim you want to do with your career.
If you’re unsure about how to find experience in a particular part of the industry, don’t be afraid to call or write to people working in it. You can find them on LinkedIn, on websites where they work, and by talking to other veterinarians. You can attend the open house events at vet schools and talk to professors and administrators who can help you get in touch with other veterinarians. Put yourself out there, and you won’t regret it.
If you find yourself at age 30 with a history of bad grades and no relevant experience, you can still make it, but understand that your path is more difficult than someone who is 21, straight As, and has been working in their parent’s clinic since age 16.
Once you are accepted to vet school, it’s hard to fail out. If you fail a class in the first semester you can usually start again next year. As students we don’t compete against each other, so we are generally very supportive of each other. Our class started with 96 members, and 93 of those graduated. We also accepted a few transfer students who graduated with us. Vet school is hard. Like a marathon, not everyone can do it. But if you’re already a good runner, you’re probably going to finish. And, remember, the person who graduates at the bottom of their class from the worst med school in the country is still called Doctor.
Pursue your goals! If you want to be a veterinarian, go and do it. It’s very possible. Don’t do it for the money. You won’t be satisfied and we don’t earn as much as other professionals. Do it because you want to make a difference in people’s lives or because the work interests you. Get that experience so you know what it’s like. And don’t be afraid to learn about all the different careers in our field.