Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Applying to Vet School: Making Decisions

A post or two ago, I mentioned that there were additional reasons for me to decline Cornell's offer of admission (and I did decline it). But rather than think of them as reasons for turning down an offer from a perfectly fine school, you could think of them as reasons in favor of staying here at Oregon State, another perfectly fine school.

You can go online and view rankings of the U.S. vet schools. Cornell and UC Davis typically come out at the top in most of these. And why is that? Are they substantially "better" than other schools? In terms of bringing in research grant dollars, yes. In terms of the DVM educational program, not necessarily. Few vet schools in the U.S. are going to deliver a completely shitty education. When getting a degree like the DVM, like nearly all things in life, you are going to get out some result equivalent to what you put in. So a person's dedication and investment in their success can play a large role no matter where they go to school.

Having said that, it is true that some schools have more resources than others: more and newer equipment in labs, more diverse specimens for study, and so forth. These can make a difference in your education, no doubt. But there are other things to consider too, such as a faculty invested in teaching.

A friend, aghast that I turned down Cornell, said, but what about networking opportunities? I told her, what do you think I used to get my spiffy new job? I used the network that I built up right here. Didn't need to be at Cornell to do that.

A few weeks ago, I attended a tour of the Oregon State vet school that had been arranged for its out-of-state applicants who had received offers of admission. I'm in that group because, despite living here for two years, I have not met the requirements for obtaining legal residency. No, a driver's license and voting registration card are not enough. I would have to drop out of school for 12 months and work before I could be considered a resident. That's the law of this state; other states handle this differently.

Anyway, back to the tour. I accepted the invitation because it was conveniently during spring break and because I figured that there were plenty of things I would learn about the program, despite spending four weeks as a student volunteer in the large animal clinic, despite attending lunchtime lectures at the vet school fairly regularly, and despite just being here and already knowing some faculty from the vet school.

There were 11 other applicants who also attended the tour day, some accompanied by significant others, some with parents in tow. All but two of them had received offers from multiple schools, all but two of them had applied to 8 or more schools. I felt like a slacker in comparison. All of them were painfully young, and I could detect no rhyme or reason in the schools they applied to, except perhaps a trend to apply to the "best" schools. Why then did they apply to Oregon State? It is unusual in having such a small class size (52) and that may have attracted their attention. It was clear throughout the day that none of them had done any meaningful research into Oregon or any other school. Even though the thought of being stuck with some of them for four years worried me a bit, all of that is their problem to sort out.

I won't give you a blow-by-blow account of the tour day, but I will tell you about three things that really stood out for me. 

First, we had not one, but two different demonstrations of specialized equipment in the vet school with live animals, well, one animal who was used for both demonstrations. She was an utterly enormous and amiable draft horse named Taffy, weighing a petite 1700 pounds. The vet school keeps her as a permanent member of their herd because she is a blood donor. An animal that large can give 8 liters of blood in one session. I asked around among the group and not one other school bothered to incorporate animals in their tours, despite the fact that they are all, you know, vet schools. 

We had a brief Q&A with some current vet students. Their strongest criticism of the program? When you do your rotation in the large animal hospital, because of the small class size, you may personally have under your care 5 to 7 critical patients at a time and that can get kind of stressful. One of their peers came in wanting to be a small animal vet, but when she did her large animal rotation, she fell in love with that instead, and switched her career path! Oregon State also has its students spend three weeks in Portland working at the humane society. In many vet school programs, because of the class sizes, you are lucky if you have removed the left ovary of a dog by the time you graduate, another student having removed the right one. (I exaggerate but only slightly.) At Oregon State, by the end of those three weeks, the students told us, you will have personally completed 40-50 spays and neuters. Ironically, I think students at Cornell and UC Davis would trade places in a heartbeat for that kind of experience.

In the afternoon, two members of the admissions committee came to answer any questions we might have. One of the young ladies somewhat snottily asked them how they can deliver a thorough education when the vet school program lacks specialists in ophthamology and neurology. The two faculty paused, looked at each other, then delivered the most brilliant answer to that question that I could have ever imagined. They said, when you leave this program, you will have extensive, hands-on experience with multiple species. You will have journeyman skills--you can walk into any vet clinic in this country and get right to work, confident that you know what to do and how to do it correctly. You will have a solid foundation so that if you want to specialize in those or others areas, you can do so.

In other words, they defended their program not by protesting, not by saying, oh, those things aren't important. Both of them, without hesitation, gave the same answer: here, you will learn how to be a vet. 

I was impressed with what I learned, and to be honest, I was surprised that I was impressed. I went home and thought about all of this, and decided that I could be very happy going to school here. 

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