The Student Room Group

zoology vs. vet med

wow, this is my first thread :smile: exciting! (and don't really know if i'm posting this in the right place but oh well...) anyway, i am in year 12, and doing biology, chemistry, geography and latin at AS but will probably drop latin for A2. I've had my heart set on vet med since i was little, but then discovered zoology, and now i'm really stuck. so here are some questions and anyone who can answer them, well, you'll be a life-saver! :biggrin:
ok,
1) apart from working at zoo, what other work experience does someone looking to apply for zoology need? if any?
2) is it completely CrAzY to apply for both zoology and vet medicine at different uni's?
3) is a zoology degree 'hands on' ie. do you have a chance to interact with any animals or is it purely watching and learning about their behaviour and the way they act etc etc.

hope someone can help! and sorry if these questions are stupid and totally unanswerable :s-smilie: Thanks a billion :wink:
http://www.independent.co.uk/student/into-university/az-degrees/zoology-1623449.html

that will help you i think... also look around at the course structure on uni websites etc.
Reply 2
Original post by flossie_
wow, this is my first thread :smile: exciting! (and don't really know if i'm posting this in the right place but oh well...) anyway, i am in year 12, and doing biology, chemistry, geography and latin at AS but will probably drop latin for A2. I've had my heart set on vet med since i was little, but then discovered zoology, and now i'm really stuck. so here are some questions and anyone who can answer them, well, you'll be a life-saver! :biggrin:
ok,
1) apart from working at zoo, what other work experience does someone looking to apply for zoology need? if any?
2) is it completely CrAzY to apply for both zoology and vet medicine at different uni's?
3) is a zoology degree 'hands on' ie. do you have a chance to interact with any animals or is it purely watching and learning about their behaviour and the way they act etc etc.

hope someone can help! and sorry if these questions are stupid and totally unanswerable :s-smilie: Thanks a billion :wink:


Zoology is not about working in a zoo :facepalm2:
Zoology is basically Biology except for you do not study plants or people.

It totally depends what you want to do with your life.
If you want to go round petting lots of cute animals/pulling lambs out of sheep on a very regular basis then I would suggest vetinary, zoology is the study of animals as a whole. Most of what you cover is on arthropods because they make up the majority of animals on the planet. We did one unit on behaviour and that was it, most of it has been physiology, ecology and conservation based. The sort of jobs people go into from zoology are not particularly hands on, they are more research based. We don't really cover domesticated animals at all and of course you shouldn't really be going round touching wild animals.
If you want to work in a zoo you do not need a degree.
Reply 3
Original post by flossie_
wow, this is my first thread :smile: exciting! (and don't really know if i'm posting this in the right place but oh well...) anyway, i am in year 12, and doing biology, chemistry, geography and latin at AS but will probably drop latin for A2. I've had my heart set on vet med since i was little, but then discovered zoology, and now i'm really stuck. so here are some questions and anyone who can answer them, well, you'll be a life-saver! :biggrin:
ok,
1) apart from working at zoo, what other work experience does someone looking to apply for zoology need? if any?
2) is it completely CrAzY to apply for both zoology and vet medicine at different uni's?
3) is a zoology degree 'hands on' ie. do you have a chance to interact with any animals or is it purely watching and learning about their behaviour and the way they act etc etc.

hope someone can help! and sorry if these questions are stupid and totally unanswerable :s-smilie: Thanks a billion :wink:


1) not sure

2) its not crazy, i actually know someone who did that - as long as you write your personal statement geared towards vet med, have the grades and the work experience for it there is no reason why you could not apply for both

3) if you want to do anything hands on with animals go for vet med, people who do zoology many go into research as redferry said above

if you go for vet med, anyone correct me if im wrong, at cambridge you do an intercalculated year which could be in zoology so if you got in and went there you may still have the opportunity to do zoology

good luck with your decision :smile:
Original post by redferry
Zoology is not about working in a zoo :facepalm2:
Zoology is basically Biology except for you do not study plants or people.

It totally depends what you want to do with your life.
If you want to go round petting lots of cute animals/pulling lambs out of sheep on a very regular basis then I would suggest vetinary, zoology is the study of animals as a whole. Most of what you cover is on arthropods because they make up the majority of animals on the planet. We did one unit on behaviour and that was it, most of it has been physiology, ecology and conservation based. The sort of jobs people go into from zoology are not particularly hands on, they are more research based. We don't really cover domesticated animals at all and of course you shouldn't really be going round touching wild animals.
If you want to work in a zoo you do not need a degree.


what kind of careers can you get from zoology?
Reply 5
Original post by Bellissima
what kind of careers can you get from zoology?


Anything you would go into with Biology pretty much. I wan't to be a zoologist working in conservation research. One of my friends wants to be a Field Guide in Africa, another working on beetle conservation through a zoo, another is going out to South America to study birds and another wants to go into wildlife media. It is pretty varied. Just not a particularly behavioural or hands on the animals (unless you are dissecting them) degree.
Original post by redferry
Anything you would go into with Biology pretty much. I wan't to be a zoologist working in conservation research. One of my friends wants to be a Field Guide in Africa, another working on beetle conservation through a zoo, another is going out to South America to study birds and another wants to go into wildlife media. It is pretty varied. Just not a particularly behavioural or hands on the animals (unless you are dissecting them) degree.


i guess the jobs would be pretty competitive... but does conservation research involve things like measuring the population of a certain species in a habitat etc. is that what you mean by that?
Reply 7
Original post by Bellissima
i guess the jobs would be pretty competitive... but does conservation research involve things like measuring the population of a certain species in a habitat etc. is that what you mean by that?


Yeah that is what quite a lot of it entails. Mainly through transects.
Original post by redferry
Yeah that is what quite a lot of it entails. Mainly through transects.


cool thanks
Reply 9
Hi, I know this might be a little late for you as you posted a couple of months ago, but I thought I'd reply anyway as it might help future people with a similar dilemma too :smile:

I'm doing vet med at Cambridge, and here you do a second subject in your 3rd year which you get an additional degree in. You can pick from pretty much anything so long as you think you could cope with it (might not be a good plan to pick a language you haven't done since GCSE for example) and I picked zoology - so by the end I'll have a zoology degree and a vet med degree. I think you can do a similar thing at other universities too - I think it's called intercalating. But its basically the same - you get to do something else in between your preclin and clinical years.

If you're keen on the vet med as well as zoology it might be worth considering, as it'll let you try both. If you don't like the zoology, you only have to do it for a year anyway (unless it's longer at other unis - I don't know so you'd have to check) and if you don't like the veterinary stuff you could get your zoology degree and leave. Hope this helps and good luck whatever you end up doing!

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