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Nuffield or work experience? Help!

Hi guys, so it's around the time to any for a Nuffield research placement and I'm a bit stuck on whether to apply or not. The problem is, if I apply and get it then i spend four to six weeks of my summer at it which takes away quite a lot of work experience time. However, if I got an animal related placement that would be quite good to talk about if I got an interview next year when j apply for vet med (2017 entry) . What do you think? The other option is to do nuffield the next year i.e 2016 but by then I would have applied to uni so wouldn't be able to put that on my application? Thanks for reading! 😊


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Avatar for Ruineth
Ruineth
5
Hello! I did a Nuffield placment over the summer and is going to apply for veterinary medicine next year.
The Nuffield placement was totally worth it in my opinion, although my project had not much to do with vet med (it was about a protein in E.coli involved with iron storage and DNA protection), it was so good to expand my horizons in terms of research. I loved working in the lab and veterinary research is now something that interests me, and since it is a bit different for vet med applicants to have, hopefully it would be a topic of interest when I apply
Before doing Nuffield I had done 20weeks at a stable and 2 weeks at a vet, I didn't have the requirements to apply to most of the vet schools this year. Which didn't really matter to me since I am planning to do a gap year (I'm just not applying for deferred this year), where I am going to do lots more work experience.
A quick note- you can only do the Nuffield placement in the first year of post 16 studies, so if you want to do it, it has to be the coming summer.
Also the in my area (5 counties), over 1000 people applied, only 100 got placements. So it is not guaranteed that you will get a placement.
However the animal based experience is more necessary than the Nuffield placement, in terms of getting into the universities.
I guess it all depends on if you have enough work experience already to apply next year. (Check the min. requirements of the vet schools)
We'll be applying at the same time, which is cool!

Hope I've helped a bit. It's funny because last year I was right in your position. Please feel free to PM me any questions :smile:
(edited 8 years ago)
Reply 2
Avatar for Rachelmcl13
Rachelmcl13
OP
4
Original post by Ruineth
Hello! I did a Nuffield placment over the summer and is going to apply for veterinary medicine next year.
The Nuffield placement was totally worth it in my opinion, although my project had not much to do with vet med (it was about a protein in E.coli involved with iron storage and DNA protection), it was so good to expand my horizons in terms of research. I loved working in the lab and veterinary research is now something that interests me, and since it is a bit different for vet med applicants to have, hopefully it would be a topic of interest when I apply
Before doing Nuffield I had done 20weeks at a stable and 2 weeks at a vet, I didn't have the requirements to apply to most of the vet schools this year. Which didn't really matter to me since I am planning to do a gap year (I'm just not applying for deferred this year), where I am going to do lots more work experience.
A quick note- you can only do the Nuffield placement in the first year of post 16 studies, so if you want to do it, it has to be the coming summer.
Also the in my area (5 counties), over 1000 people applied, only 100 got placements. So it is not guaranteed that you will get a placement.
However the animal based experience is more necessary than the Nuffield placement, in terms of getting into the universities.
I guess it all depends on if you have enough work experience already to apply next year. (Check the min. requirements of the vet schools)
We'll be applying at the same time, which is cool!

Hope I've helped a bit. It's funny because last year I was right in your position. Please feel free to PM me any questions :smile:


Thanks for such an in-depth answer! It sounds like such a good thing to do and it's something different that not a lot of people have and definitely opens you up to other careers within vet med like research, so I'm definitely leaning more towards doing it now especially if I can only do it next summer!😊 thanks again!


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Original post by Rachelmcl13
Thanks for such an in-depth answer! It sounds like such a good thing to do and it's something different that not a lot of people have and definitely opens you up to other careers within vet med like research, so I'm definitely leaning more towards doing it now especially if I can only do it next summer!😊 thanks again!


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Will you have enough work experience to exceed the entry requirements of the vet school you want to apply to? You could do a lot of weekend work experience to try to make up for it, but like the above poster, doing the Nuffield placement might delay your application for another year. Depends if you are happy with that or not. I don't know what it entrails but I hope it would be useful to you :smile:

If you are seriously considering a research career, the quickest way to do that would be to do a science degree. My friend did biovet and is now 1/2 way through her phD into animal diseases whereas I have yet to qualify!!
Original post by Rachelmcl13
Hi guys, so it's around the time to any for a Nuffield research placement and I'm a bit stuck on whether to apply or not. The problem is, if I apply and get it then i spend four to six weeks of my summer at it which takes away quite a lot of work experience time. However, if I got an animal related placement that would be quite good to talk about if I got an interview next year when j apply for vet med (2017 entry) . What do you think? The other option is to do nuffield the next year i.e 2016 but by then I would have applied to uni so wouldn't be able to put that on my application? Thanks for reading! 😊


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Hi!

Just to balance it out a bit...

I thought about doing a Nuffield placement over the summer before I applied to university but I chose not to do it and instead focus more on work experience.

For me that was absolutely the best choice, i was worried about not having enough work experience at the time.

But my best friend did a placement, really enjoyed it and it helped her get into BioChemistry, and it definitely gave her more to talk about in her personal statement.

Good luck with applying 😊

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