Vet school

[apbgv]

I can tell you now last I read by the time you graduate student loans will be around $150000. There is a shortage of vet techs though

 

[Poison Ivy]

I say go for it! It's never to late to go back to school. I'm doing it next year to be a RN. I'm 43 so I have plenty of time! lol

 

[silkiechicken]

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Yep, that's about right for out of state TUITION alone! The big push for me to go a different route.

 

[mrsengeseth]

Ive been looking into the vet tech route myself. If you can do it, i'd say go for it. Good luck.

 

[patandchickens]

What kind of science background do you have. You will need quite a lot of undergraduate biology, plus at least 2 full years of college chemistry and 1 of college physics, to have much of any hope at all of getting into vet school. Also calculus.

As long as you have the coursework on your transcript or don't mind the time/work/MONEY required to put it there, I'd say go for it, but as I used to tell my undergraduate advisees, you gotta realize it is HARD. Vet schools are quite difficult to get into (you need near-perfect grades from a good school) and the workload is insane, at least as bad as med school and subsequent interning. You need to be the kind of person who only requires 4 hrs of sleep a night and enjoys doing six difficult things at once

Vet tech is a much easier career to get into, and at least in the areas of the country I'm familiar with there is a reasonable job market.

Have fun whatever you decide,

Pat

 

[lfoose]

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Alot of good points. I don't see being able to donate THAT much time to school. The Vet tech sounds more like a possiblity for a mom w/chickens.

 

[Robin'sBrood]

If you're interested in veterinary medicine and if there is a school near you where you can enroll in veterinary medical technology, that is where I would begin. It's a two year associates degree (vet tech) but at least it would give you an idea about if you want to continue in veterinary medicine (and perhaps transfer to a university for vet med) or not, without spending a fortune figuring it out. My 2 cents without reading the whole thread.

This is where I went, way back in the stone age.

http://www.cccc.edu/curriculum/majors/veterinarymedical/

 

[Rosalind]

What patandchickens said +1.

You need a perfect 4.0 in heavy-duty science classes. You need lots of volunteer experience, with cats & dogs AND with exotics AND with large farm animals such as cattle. Some students now do a 5 year undergrad Master's program to improve their chances. The pre-vet students I used to get argued over, literally, every single exam question they ever got wrong. The numbers game is insane. It's easier to get into human medical school, for sure.

The owners are insane, so you have to think of it like you'd think of being a pediatrician--crazed, frantic, not-as-helpful-as-you'd-like owners, who neglect to tell you that dear old Spot ate ten pounds of chocolate before going into shock and nearly dying. On the plus side, there's not really much they can do in case of malpractice, so I guess it has that over pediatrics.

I'm sure it's lots of fun for those who love it. I know my vet nearly poops his pants with glee whenever I bring the puppies in for their checkups, he calls the whole staff in to admire the housewolves. But a lot of down sides, too. A big part of the job is putting critters to sleep, sometimes for no better reason than the owner is too cheap to treat the animal's illness.