Thinking about becoming a vet? No matter where you might be in life, achieving a doctorate in veterinary medicine is possible. I personally know a Marines-enlisted mother of two and a retired exotic dancer who came to veterinary school after a long, winding road, and who are now successful veterinarians. In fact, the retired exotic dancer was one of my undergraduate professors! It may seem like the majority of accepted vet students have undergone four years of undergraduate school amd then immediately applied to vet schools. Maybe that’s true, but during my interviews I met people from a variety of backgrounds, all applying to the same DVM programs as me.
One had a Master’s in biology; another had a Bachelor’s degree in psychology; yet another had been a veterinary technician for 7 years. One girl had even spent 4 years teaching English in Hong Kong. So please, don’t be discouraged if you’re not the “typical” DVM applicant. You can become a veterinarian even if you have taken a few years off from school or have started a family. In fact, many veterinary professionals I’ve spoken with think that the incredible diversity of DVMs is very beneficial: people who are team players and who can approach problems from different angles are a valuable asset when puzzling out a diagnosis.
So, what do you need to do to prepare for vet school? Well, that depends on the admissions requirements of the college you’re looking at. To give you an example, I’ll tell you what Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University, the college I’ll be attending in August, asks applicants to submit. Tufts Cummings asks for academic transcripts of prerequisite courses, official GRE scores, descriptions of animal and veterinary experience, descriptions of extracurricular activities, employment history, and several essays. This is pretty standard for most vet schools, and I’ll go into more detail about the components of the admissions requirements I listed above in the next blog post. So stay tuned!
