The Student Room Group

Gap year before applying to Veterinary Medicine?

Question is in the title...Thanks in advance:smile:
Reply 1
Hi there I am a second year vet student at the RVC. Lots of vet students take gap years and reapply for veterinary medicine. It often depends on individual circumstances. Often students apply and don't receive offers/ miss out on grades the first time round and therefore take a gap year and reapply. If you would take a gap year to improve your grades or resit modules that is always a good idea as you need to meet the universities criteria in terms of A-level grades or GCSE grades. However, if you want to take a gap year to travel etc, I would still recommend you apply. Lots of students do not get an offer the first time and therefore you could take a gap year and reapply. Also if you do get an offer the first time round you could always phone the university and ask them whether they would let you delay your admission for a year, therefore keeping your offer and getting to take a gap year. The university could still refuse this though, you could always ask universities about this prior to your application. If you are set on taking a gap year then that's fine :smile: just bear in mind when you do apply after your gap year you may not get an offer the first time round. Hope that helps :smile:
Original post by Vetstudent333
Hi there I am a second year vet student at the RVC. Lots of vet students take gap years and reapply for veterinary medicine. It often depends on individual circumstances. Often students apply and don't receive offers/ miss out on grades the first time round and therefore take a gap year and reapply. If you would take a gap year to improve your grades or resit modules that is always a good idea as you need to meet the universities criteria in terms of A-level grades or GCSE grades. However, if you want to take a gap year to travel etc, I would still recommend you apply. Lots of students do not get an offer the first time and therefore you could take a gap year and reapply. Also if you do get an offer the first time round you could always phone the university and ask them whether they would let you delay your admission for a year, therefore keeping your offer and getting to take a gap year. The university could still refuse this though, you could always ask universities about this prior to your application. If you are set on taking a gap year then that's fine :smile: just bear in mind when you do apply after your gap year you may not get an offer the first time round. Hope that helps :smile:
Hi. Thanks for your reply and advice. I'm a Scottish student in S5 and I'm in the middle of doing my highers just now, so I have 1 year left of school, meaning that if I wanted to go straight to university I'd have to apply this October. Hopefully everything goes to plan and I won't have to resit anything (and in Scotland, you would have to resit the whole qualification if you needed a resit, which I'm not even sure they'd accept?). My reason for considering taking a gap year is that I just don't think that I'd be ready to go to university in a little over a year, so do you think it would still be worth applying this October? Thanks for your help:smile:
Original post by Labrador99
My reason for considering taking a gap year is that I just don't think that I'd be ready to go to university in a little over a year, so do you think it would still be worth applying this October? Thanks for your help:smile:


That's absolutely fine to take a gap year. Personally, if you have the right amount of work experience I would consider applying this year for deferred entry. That means you have a place for the following year. If anything, it might give you experience of interviews if you don;t get it (although not all unis allow you to have more than one interview-check this). If you get in, then you can spend your gap year stress free and won't need to plan stuff around potential interviews (e.g. if you are considering going abroad).

Bear in mind if you take a gap year and then apply, they will have expected for you do have done more work experience than a 1st time applicant.

But, ultimately, the choice is down to you and maybe you feel you need that extra time to build up your application to make yourself a stronger applicant for the next cycle and choose not to apply this time.
Original post by SilverstarDJ
That's absolutely fine to take a gap year. Personally, if you have the right amount of work experience I would consider applying this year for deferred entry. That means you have a place for the following year. If anything, it might give you experience of interviews if you don;t get it (although not all unis allow you to have more than one interview-check this). If you get in, then you can spend your gap year stress free and won't need to plan stuff around potential interviews (e.g. if you are considering going abroad). Bear in mind if you take a gap year and then apply, they will have expected for you do have done more work experience than a 1st time applicant. But, ultimately, the choice is down to you and maybe you feel you need that extra time to build up your application to make yourself a stronger applicant for the next cycle and choose not to apply this time.
Thanks for your reply:smile: The work experience I have so far is 4 weeks mixed vets(although there wasn't much LA), 1 weeks SA vets, 1 week at Blair Drummond Safari Park, 2 weeks at the Glasgow vet school farm (1 week dairy, 1 week beef/sheep), 7 days helping at the local country park with their horses, alpaca, goats, hens and small animals. Also, I muck out the stable of a horse that belongs to someone I know once a week. I know I need to get lambing too, so I'll be doing that next year. I plan to contact one of the mixed vets and the farm this week to try and go back this year as I really enjoyed those placements...Do you think this is a good idea or should I try different places? What other placements do you think I should try and get? I'm not planning going abroad, but I would plan to do more work experience during the year out...But the reason I'm unsure whether or not to apply anyway this year is that I wouldn't want them to give me an offer, not be able to defer and have to decline and then apply next year, not get in and have used my 2 chances, if you know what I mean? Thanks for your help:smile:
Original post by Labrador99
Thanks for your reply:smile: The work experience I have so far is 4 weeks mixed vets(although there wasn't much LA), 1 weeks SA vets, 1 week at Blair Drummond Safari Park, 2 weeks at the Glasgow vet school farm (1 week dairy, 1 week beef/sheep), 7 days helping at the local country park with their horses, alpaca, goats, hens and small animals. Also, I muck out the stable of a horse that belongs to someone I know once a week. I know I need to get lambing too, so I'll be doing that next year. I plan to contact one of the mixed vets and the farm this week to try and go back this year as I really enjoyed those placements...Do you think this is a good idea or should I try different places? What other placements do you think I should try and get? I'm not planning going abroad, but I would plan to do more work experience during the year out...But the reason I'm unsure whether or not to apply anyway this year is that I wouldn't want them to give me an offer, not be able to defer and have to decline and then apply next year, not get in and have used my 2 chances, if you know what I mean? Thanks for your help:smile:


You have some good variety there which is good. Some unis (e.g. Liverpool) put a cap on the max. number of weeks that you can do at a single establishment (not sure what the cap is right now as I applied 6 years ago). On one hand, attending a single place will allow them to trust you more and may allow you to get more involved. On the other hand, sometimes it's interesting to see different types of establishments to compare and contrast different ways of managing animals e.g. if you dairy herd was a mostly indoor, high input high output type of herd, perhaps you could visit a lower yielding, outdoor milking herd.

Lambing would be very hands on and a good experience so get this if you can. Other farm ideas might include poultry, pigs etc depending on your area. A week in a cattery/kennels would be another idea for the small animal husbandry placements.
There are other 'icing on the cake' types placements that are generally more difficult to find such as: abattoirs, labs (e.g. a vet pathology lab). Not strictly essential to get in, but would make you stand out if you did.

I would suggest look at the unis websites / e-mailing the unis and asking whether they would consider a deferred entry - that way you can make an informed decision of whether you could apply this year. It's not unheard of people getting their entry deferred but each vet school may be different so best to ask them individually.

Hope this helps. Good luck!
Reply 6
hi! I was wondering how you were able to get that experience at the Safari park? and also all the other places? Did you just email them and ask to volunteer? your experiences look so amazing btw!! I'm trying to find places

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