hartpury or harper adams university for veterinary nursing?

please help!i have applied for veterinary nursing at both harper adams university and hartpury, expecting to get an offer from just one if i was lucky but instead got into both! however, now i am really torn as to which one to choose as they are both quite similar. in terms of social life, if i were to attend harper i’d be accommodating which would be quite expensive and also be in the ‘middle of nowhere’ but also give me more of a uni experience. i’m also worried that i’ve left it too long to apply for this as they require you to accept their offer before being able to apply for accommodation which they do on a first come first serve basis. if i were to attend hartpury, i would be living at home as i live close which saves money but i may not get as much of a social life. in terms of the course, i feel as if harper have a bigger/more advanced veterinary building along with the opportunity to switch to more specialised areas of the course after the first year, but hartpurys animal collection has more of a variety of species to work with and their placement year is sooner including sorting the placement for you which saves a lot of stress. any suggestions, experiences and advice is hugely appreciated! thank you.

I’m in this same situation right now I’m so torn between both. Which did u pick in the end?

Hiya, I’m an RVN and was a clinical coach (I train student vet nurses), a lot of which are Harper Adam’s students. The support and teaching is good. I'm currently there myself doing the gateway year on tovet med as I didn’t do my vet nurse training the degree route. But one of my modules is with the vet nurses. I have always found the communication good with the nursing department when I was in practice as a clinical coach. Not sure how Harpury’s degree works, but Harper Adams, there’s no foundation degree options. You will have a 10 weeks placement and then the following year a placement from ~July -April. It works out good. Newport where harper is isn’t busy, it’s quite rural so I would recommend a car. But there’s plenty of pubs for socials and Telford is 20 minutes away - if you don’t have a car there’s a mini bus service. Next bigger cities from there are Birmingham or Stafford, so nights out would have to be planned. I commute but my friends en-suite accommodations are nice. Which ever uni you pick, I 10000% recommend you find a busy practice to do your placements at. Preferably a hospital so you get to see a wide range of cases and it will make your nursing progress log much easier to complete 🙂

That is another thing I’m worrying about. Do you have any idea how hard it will be to find a placement? Both universities said they would help however I found it very difficult just to find a practice that provide work experience.

What part of the country are you from? Tbh, university placement nurses find them easier than diploma student nurses, because it’s typically unpaid.

I’m guessing you have work experience to get on to your course, could that practice not offer you placement? But definitely a hospital is best. The universities will have lists of practices across the country which are TP’s (training practices). If you find a practice that isn’t a TP but would be interested in becoming one, Harper Adams will go and do a practice visit so they can become a TP, but a lot of practices are these days. I was a clinical coach to a Canadian student from a university down south because she didn’t have a fixed UK address so she air b&b’d in Birmingham, the university contacted my practice as we were a listed practice. But they’ll have lists of practices across the country so you can find one close to home.

You don’t need to worry about this at the moment until you have placement timetable and you can start contacting people, but it’s nice to have the backing of universities help

I’m from Coventry so luckily not too far away and they may have some contacts to help. I know my work experience practice provide a lot of training via apprenticeship route so I’m not sure if maybe they’ll maybe be to full/busy to have more students but definitely something I will see about.