What You Need to Know to Apply to Veterinary School and Career Options Available After Obtaining Your Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine

Abstract

I am a senior undergraduate student at the College at Brockport. I will be attending Cornell University of Veterinary Medicine this coming academic year. I am writing this manuscript for my thesis project which is a requirement to graduate from the Honor’s Program at the College at Brockport. For my project, I wanted to do something that would increase my knowledge on a subject that was important to me: becoming a veterinarian. Also, as an undergraduate it is hard to decide what you want to do with the rest of your life, and my hope is that this manuscript can give students interested in becoming a veterinarian a better idea of exactly what it is they want to do or if they even want to become a veterinarian at all. No one sits you down and tells you what you are getting into when you choose a course of study that interests you; it is expected that you figure out exactly what you need to do to either obtain the job you want or complete the requirements needed to go on to graduate or professional school. It is difficult figuring everything out, and sometimes mistakes are made along the way. Once someone figures everything out that is needed to complete a course of study, I believe it is in their best interest to share that information with others so they can avoid making similar mistakes. Applying for vet school and figuring out the timing of everything that I needed to have done to apply was on my shoulders: it was my future and I had to take charge. Now that I have almost completed my undergraduate degree and have been accepted to vet school, I want to share my knowledge and experience in the hopes that other undergraduate students may learn something from the path that I took to get there. The way I did things is not the only way, but I hope that my experience and mistakes can be applied to the lives of other undergraduates so that they will have a more successful future.