Veterinary applicant

I will be applying in 2024. I was just wondering, is it normal to still feel totally clueless and like an outsider to the veterinary world? All of the applicants I’ve spoken to talk about specialising in orthopaedics and have told me how important biosecurity is, and I had no idea what all of these terms mean. Even when they told me about the type of interview questions they were given, I was absolutely clueless on how they managed to answer them. How can I find out more? What further reading should I be doing to learn more about the veterinary field? No matter how much research I do it still feels like I don’t know enough compared to other applicants.

Reply 1

ALEreapp

It’s very easy to feel like that, things like biosecurity you are actually taught in your first weeks of vet school but general it’s a good idea to have an idea of it beforehand. For interviews I would recommend reading the RCVS code of conduct, looking into concepts like one health, animal testing (and the 3Rs) as well as common ethical dilemmas like euthanising a healthy animal!
The vet times is great for staying up to date on current affairs like the dangerous dogs act with XLs (aswell as researching ongoing ones like badger culling etc). You don’t need to have any clue what you want to go into when you graduate, many don’t know for years. It’s easy to get a very unrealistic idea of applicants from the student room as ‘normal’ people don’t like to speak up. Just like it will seem like no one is getting rejected because people are more inclined to share offers rather than rejections x

Reply 2

TheVirtualPhoton

As above has said, VetTimes is a free-to-access vet news site that you can access via their website or sign up for email newsletters. You don’t have to understand everything they write about, but it will be good to highlight to you the current goings-on of the vet world. There are also articles on diseases/conditions/treatments/etc. so even by skimming these you will start to build up some vetty knowledge.

I would also recommend the EDIVET course: https://www.coursera.org/learn/becoming-a-veterinarian . Free and flexible to do and will give you a nice overview of vet school. You might find things in there that you wish to look into further.

And of course, nothing beats work experience. You will need to do some for applying but the more you can immerse yourself in small animal practice, farm animal practice, equine practice, etc. and lambing, dairy, equestrian establishments, etc. etc. the more you will pick up from experiencing it and I also found lots of practices and farmers had good magazines/newsletters that I could read on breaks to pick up even more.

Best of luck with your application!

(edited 6 months ago)