Vet Med at Cambridge

Hello everyone

I've been hearing a lot of stuff about how Cambridge isn't necessarily as good as the other universities because the course is less practical, and I was just wondering to what extent this is true? Would studying at Cambridge be disadvantageous in terms of clinical ability and finding a job etc.?

If I could hear some answers from some Cambridge students well (if any are out there ) that would be really helpful

Thank you everybody!

All vet schools are regulated by the RCVS to ensure that their graduates meet year one competency status. Now sure some of the vet schools have slightly different approaches to achieve this (eg; modular vs. systems syllabus) and some claim to be more "practical" than others but I would say that in general they are all much of a muchness. Generally I would say that overall practical time and course content is very similar between all of the institutions it is just "packaged" and marketed slightly differently.

For example, allegedly Nottingham includes more practical time and produces more "practical" vets however from the time I have spent working with Notts students and vets over the years I have yet to see a discernible difference between myself (Bristol) and RVC, Liverpool, etc vets of the same level.

The majority of your practical skills are learned and developed on EMS. With the right placement you will have far more opportunities to practice your surgery, blood taking, catheterisation, etc than you will at university. I got more surgery experience during an average week at my foster practice than 6 weeks of surgery rotations at university.

Sure anecdotally I have hear of one or two rumours of relating to very academic Cambridge students/vets lacking practical skills but there are similar rumours circulating about all of the other vet schools. For example I visited practices that were very open about preferring RVC students, and yet others that were very reluctant to take them based on one or two past bad experiences. Most vets and vet practices are biased in favour of where they graduated from and/or have close ties.

Wherever you go you will recognise that there are some people that are more academically biased and other's more practical. The same carries over to practice, some vets are better surgeons, others better medics, some are better at cardiology, others are better at gastroenterology. Nobody is perfect.

Sure Cambridge from the outset has a academic bias (ie; academic requirements, interview style, compulsory intercalation) compared to the other vet schools (which may or may not be what you are looking for) but that is not to say that you cannot become a great vet if you go there.

A lot of it depends on how you apply yourself and what you make of your opportunities.

Thank you for explaining that, you've reassured me quite a lot I was just worried because I've heard lots of people say that vets from Cambridge aren't always the best, but what you said about all the courses being very similar but marketed differently makes sense.

I think you said you went to Bristol - how did you find it? Did you enjoy the course?

Wherever you go make sure it is the right choice for you, wherever you plan on applying to make a point of visiting the city, speaking to students there and getting a feel for it. How can you convince an interviewer that you are professional and committed to spending 5+ years of your life on their course in their city if you've never taken the time to visit there? Plus it creates a great talking point talking about how you enjoy going for a few drinks in Oran Mor after a weekend of study and Munro bagging (most applicable to Glasgow for example!). Don't just pick Cambridge for the kudos.

Sure I liked the prestige of Cambridge and I liked the city, however I am academically lazy so it's academic bias was never going to suit me. Looking back on it I am glad that they rejected me post interview (I wouldn't have said that at the time!) because if they hadn't I probably wouldn't be a vet today. I would have burnt out long ago (but I'd probably be working fewer hours and be earning significantly more!).

From the start I loved Bristol, the open spaces, the social opportunities and the fact that the preclinical years are based in the centre of the city. I had also worked with a couple of Bristol vets that I particularly admired. RVC was too close to home but Bristol was Goldilocks territory, close enough for my parents to help me move but far enough for me to carve out my own life. Nowhere is perfect, I experienced both good and bad at Bristol however it was altogether a very positive experience and I do not regret any of it.

With regards to course satisfaction and employment surveys I would take them with a pinch of salt. I heard more recently that Bristol came bottom in employment league tables, talking from personal experience sure there were one or two people who would struggle to get a job anywhere, but most people unemployed at 6 months were that way for a reason (eg; they went on holiday for a couple of months delaying job hunting, they could have got a job earlier but instead they were choosing to hold out for the "right" job, etc). Equally the student satisfaction surveys are pretty banal to the extent that some institutions offer incentives for students to respond (eg; entry into a prize draw, a fixed donation to the vet society for every student that responds, etc).

Again, thank you very much for such a good answer! I enjoy academic work so I think that maybe I would enjoy studying at Cambridge. I like the college system and the supervision system as well because it seems to make life and learning at uni more personally supported and one on one. But I'm only in Year 10 so I have plenty of time to look round the different places and decide where I want to apply - for now I need to mainly focus on work experience!

What you said about the league tables makes sense; I'll try to base my application off what I think of the university rather than what the tables say

Keep your mind and your options open! The academic environment at your school will be very different to the vet schools, which will be very different to Cambridge. Equally you have 3 years of school left, a lot can change. Talking from personal experience I went to a very academic, high achieving state school and I used to be a very academic student but I got bored of the exams culture long before I got to vet school.

All of the vet schools have tutor, tutorial and "supervision" like systems in place (remember "packaging" and "marketing"). It is not a perfect system, it depends a lot on your tutor, the focus of your tutorials and the frequency. For example, I always struggled with anatomy but tutorial provision in anatomy was sparse and with relatively large group sizes. On the other hand I had 10s of tutorials in biochemistry and physiology. Now sure some time was spent efficiently in a Q&A format or working through past paper questions however a lot of time was dedicated to issuing essays on fringe topics that the tutor found "interesting" or wanted to "broaden" our education with.

To give you another example about league tables...Relatively recently Bristol created a limited company to encompass it's clinical services arm to create more business and draw in more cases for students. In reality teaching levels were unchanged just that the clinical staff were not directly employed by the university any more, rather a company wholly owned by the university. However The Times league table cannot get its head around this so it regularly cites staffing levels and staff to student ratios substantially less than the reality.