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Work Experience Questionnaires

Hey everyone!

It is evident from posts on here that now is the time that this years applicants get sent their work experience questionnaires...

I will be applying next year, however I would be interested to know what type of things the questionnaires ask for, and the general layout of them, to help me prepare for next year, as this is ultimately how work experience gets initially presented to universities.

Any guidance would be greatly appreciated!

Reply 1

Little Tail Chaser

Yooo I've done questionnaires for the RVC and Edinburgh so far. I saw Liverpool's form last year, but they haven't sent them out to this year's batch of applicants so I can't promise that nothing will have changed.

The RVC's form is pretty simple, they just ask you the contact details of each placement (name, phone number, town), how many days you've done at each place, and a brief outline of your duties. They allow you up to 12 veterinary placements and 12 husbandry placements, and, if you've applied for the intercalated course, some lab placements (I want to say four but that might be completely wrong!). Once you submit the form on the website, it gets sent to the university automatically and they email you a copy. They accept multiple forms (only the newest one is counted, so you can start the form, submit it, then copy and paste all of the info from the email and finish it off at a later time if need's be), as well as revisions after the deadline (October 15th) if necessary.

Edinburgh's form is quite similar to the RVC's one, the major difference being that they ask for time spent at each placement in hours rather than days. Their form also asks for more contact details (email and full address). I left some of these blank (mainly email addresses for farms) which I hope will be okay but it might be worthwhile collecting all of these details just to be on the safe side. Edinburgh accept an unlimited number of placements in each section and the deadline is later (Nov 1st), however once you submit it you need to upload it to EUCLID (they'll email you the deets when they recieve your application). They do not accept multiple forms, however when you submit the form on the website all that happens is that they email you a text file of your form, so you can always edit the file to make adjustments because you need to save it anyway.

Again, I haven't seen Liverpool's form this year, but I know a bit from last year. There are three sections, vet work, core husbandry and alternative husbandry. There are limits for each section (e.g. four in alt. husbandry), and also limits to the number of weeks each placement can count for. I can't remember these off the top of my head but I'll look them up in a second.

I haven't applied to Notts or Surrey but their forms are very different. They want more written about what you learned, how this gave you the qualities of a good vet, examples of situations that show XYZ etc etc. I don't actually know whether, strictly speaking, they want us discussing the questions (some of them have time limits I believe? Such as seven days from receipt of the form, so showing other people the questions gives them extra time to think) and either way I'm not the best person to speak about them as I haven't seen 'em. :tongue:

Bristol don't give out a form. I don't know about Glasgow and Cambridge.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 2

chuckbeansy

You have to complete a form for Bristol. It's very straightforward - type of placement and time spent there.

(edited 9 years ago)

Reply 3

SilverstarDJ

Original post by henrypotter

My general advise would be to get as much work experience as you can, and cover the basics in a variety sectors both in vet clinics (e.g. both small and large animal vets) and husbandry placements (farm especially lambing and calving, kennels/cattery, horse stables/yards). Any more exotic placements such as labs, abattoirs, wildlife rescues, zoos are useful but you needn't spend too much time at these places and are viewed very much as the 'cherry on top' rather than the foundation. One longer term placement might be useful to show commitment (e.g. I volunteered a full/half day every Saturday for a number of years at a rescue centre) as well as bumping up your count but for most placements I would stay there for 1-2 weeks on average. Ideally you want to exceed the university minimum e.g. Liverpool asks for 10weeks but in reality most successful applicants have 15+ weeks.

I would not get too hung up about what questionnaires ask for as these change from year to year and none of us can predict that.

The only thing to be aware of is that you need for focus on covering all bases and start off with some of the basics - I have heard of some Liverpool applicants being annoyed that they can only count one week of their 3 month wildlife safari vet experience abroad which really bumped their work exp. total down.

Reply 4

nox1

Original post by SilverstarDJ

Any more exotic placements such as labs, abattoirs, wildlife rescues, zoos are useful but you needn't spend too much time at these places and are viewed very much as the 'cherry on top' rather than the foundation. One longer term placement might be useful to show commitment (e.g. I volunteered a full/half day every Saturday for a number of years at a rescue centre) as well as bumping up your count but for most placements I would stay there for 1-2 weeks on average.

I'm volunteering on Saturdays at a bird rescue/rehabilitation centre. At places like Liverpool, do you think this will this count as core husbandry or alternative husbandry? :smile: