Vet work experience help

Hi, I’m a year 12 hoping to apply for vet med at Liverpool, Cambridge, Nottingham and Surrey. I mostly have clinical work experience and a week spent lambing. Am I at a disadvantage because I don’t have much animal handling or customer facing experience? I do have the minimum requirements for weeks and have been in consultations but haven’t been able to get any other type of experience. I have seen treatment of dogs, cats and horses. Is this enough for these universities?

Hi, I’m a year 12 hoping to apply for vet med at Liverpool, Cambridge, Nottingham and Surrey. I mostly have clinical work experience and a week spent lambing. Am I at a disadvantage because I don’t have much animal handling or customer facing experience? I do have the minimum requirements for weeks and have been in consultations but haven’t been able to get any other type of experience. I have seen treatment of dogs, cats and horses. Is this enough for these universities?

Honestly, veterinary (clinical) experience is often valued over general animal experience. However, the wider variety and the higher quality of animal or clinical experience you have, the better chance you have of getting in. I'm from the U.S., but I would look at the universities requirements and see if you can find anything on the statistics of the students who get into the schools. Here, schools place value on variety and quality, such as if you've done research or volunteered at a zoo for a long time. Honestly, if you can get research experience you will have a higher chance of getting in. Other than that you just need to come up with a good personal statement of why you want to become a veterinarian because "I want to help animals" isn't good enough, and look up questions they're likely to ask in an interview so you can practice how to answer more difficult questions such as "Do you think euthanasia is ethical?" and "How would you handle a patient who came in who's owner doesn't have the money to pay for the treatment the patient needs?"

I want to point out that the UK and US processes for entry into vet school are vastly different so I’d be a little careful giving advice to students looking to apply in the UK if you haven’t had experience of the process yet. I wouldn’t say doing research offers you any kind of better chance at getting into vet school in the UK. A common question on here is whether doing an EPQ (basically a research project you can do during your A Levels) offers you better chances at getting in, and the answer is honestly no. The grades aren’t lowered except I think at one vet school and then it’s by 1 grade in the non bio/chem subject. Because it’s quite a common thing I don’t think the unis are awfully “wowed” by it, and I advise if one is struggling with their normal A Level subjects at all to not bother with doing research. Sure, you can mention it in the application process and perhaps it can give you a few good answers if you know how to apply the experience into skills you learned which will help you as a vet student, and admittedly it might be useful practice for the research project you’ll have to do in vet school. But otherwise I don’t think it’s a massive advantage at all. And whilst clinical experience is obviously important to have, I actually generally recommend having more non-clinical is better for a pre-vet student because you’ll actually be able to understand what’s going on fully and be more hands on, which makes for better reflections generally. Personal statements are not generally looked at (or much at least) for most vet schools here.