The Student Room Group

Bristol or London?

I really wanted to do veterinary medicine but didn't achieve the As level grades. I have an offer from university of Bristol for bioveterinary and nursing and an offer from the royal veterinary college for just bioveterinary. Bristol will make me a registered nurse at the end of the course but i will not be able to become a vet. However, at RVC if i do well enough in the course i can apply for an accelerated vetmed course. Do i take the risk at the RVC or do i go to Bristol and become a nurse?
Original post by jlm3697
I really wanted to do veterinary medicine but didn't achieve the As level grades. I have an offer from university of Bristol for bioveterinary and nursing and an offer from the royal veterinary college for just bioveterinary. Bristol will make me a registered nurse at the end of the course but i will not be able to become a vet. However, at RVC if i do well enough in the course i can apply for an accelerated vetmed course. Do i take the risk at the RVC or do i go to Bristol and become a nurse?


Are you sure the Bristol degree doesn't qualify you for the accelerated course?
Another thing to consider is whether you will be able to afford the tuition fees (at the minute ranging from £9-£27k/year for which you can't get any student finance for so will need to fund this yourself).

If you don't get into vet med after your first degree (sadly there is no 100% guarantee you will get in) would you want to become a nurse or would you be happy to go into research (for which the biovet course is more geared towards)? If you want to get a good grade for grad entry, then you need to pick a course that will interest you most.

Is there any possibility for you to retake your exams and simply take a gap year to redo them? Some vet schools seem to accept this, but may be worth asking which ones would consider you.

Another option might be to consider studying vet med abroad, plenty of English speaking courses out there. When I looked into it years ago (specifically Poland), their entry requirements were a lot lower than UK ones but things may have changed. You wouldn't get any student finance but this might be an option for you if you are considering and able to finance a 2nd degree anyway.

Hope this helps to give you some more options.

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