Your opinion:the importance of work experience?

I don't have that much work experience unfortuntley and so I was really limited in the universities I could apply to. For those of you who do have lots of work experience,In your opinion, do you think it was all that beneficial. I mean, realistically, did you think you could learn much from 12 weeks of work eperience where you're really limtied to what your able to do. For me my work exp, consisted mainly of observation, it's difficult to learn very much. What were other ppl's work exp like, was it more hands on? I'm just interested

Invaluable. Veterinary science is vocational. If you can only watch- your at least seeing what you're going to be doing. If it was boring, its not for you. If it made you want to get involved- sometimes its about putting yoursalf out a bit and being halpful wherever possible- then it probably is for you. If you don't find work experience valuable, the 35+ weeks that you're going to have to do at vet shool isn't going to be much fun.

I completely agree, I really enjoyed my work exp and it really helped me decide that veterinary is for me, but do you think that it's really nessecary to have 12 weeks eperience for entry to uni when you haven't even begun your course? Is there much benefit to 12 weeks vs. 4 weeks? I suppose I'm just annoyed because I only loked into British university requirements a few months go, so I don't have as much work eperience as most other candidates. Fair enough, you could say that they deserve the place more because they've got the experience, but I only decided on vet less than 2 years ago and I only realised how much work exp is nessecary relatively recently!

The work experience I did before applying was invaluable. I did do a lot but I learnt so much from it. Esp. on the farm side of things. I had been brought up in an urban area and had rarely been close to cows, sheep and pigs. In the last yr or 2 before applying I worked on sheep, dairy and pig farms, enjoyed it so much and became so much more confident in handling and being around these animals. I learnt so much about the farming world and could talk for ages about it in my interviews.

Without work experience, you could possibly have a very 'blinkered' view of what the job entails. Sometimes it might seem like the most exciting job in the world, other times it can be as mundane was stacking shelves as Tescos (well maybe not quite so but you get the picture lol). A wide range of work experience is needed to see the diversity in the career. It makes the interviews easier if you have plenty of experience to talk about.

What experience have you done and when are you thinking of applying to vet school?

I agree, but if you take the example of the vet school in Dublin, admission is entirely based on grades, you don't need a days experience, Personally I think that's ridiculous, but all the same, the graduates at that university re at no disadvantage when they qualify to british students,

i have only done 4 months work experience in a kennels and 4 monthes work experience in a cattery. I have just signed up for millenium volunteers to do 200 hours at the rspca, tried to get into a vets last summer hols, but none seemed interrested, going to try again this year. I have aslo done 5 dyas in rspca already on my school work experience, do u need to go on a farm and do u need to go in a veterinary practice.

i could also get work experince in the unicorn cnetre with the millenium volunteers but that is helping dasiabled kids more than working wiht the horeses. i htink i will be leading the horses when the children r on them or something, i couuld 100 hours at rspca and do a 100 hours at the unicorn center. That would mean me doing 25 weeks at rspca and 25 weeks at unicorn centre as i will be doing 4 hours a week.