I’m currently a junior in college and I’m stuck on whether I want to go to veterinary school or go for a career in research (probably neuro-physiology). I have been involved with research at my university and I LOVE the problem solving aspect of it, writing papers, analyzing data, explaining results, etc. However, even though I love the theory/science aspect of it, I’m a very outdoorsy/nature loving person and I don’t really enjoy bench work. I’m not sure if I could be happy spending my life in a lab setting…
On the other hand, my personality fits with the outdoorsy hands-on aspect of vet-med, but veterinary school is incredibly expensive, hours are unpredictable, and I’m not a fan of seeing many treatment decisions being based on money (though realistically I understand it, morally I’d have trouble with this…). Currently I have about 500 research hours and 200 vet experience hours and I’m stuck on what to do. Does anyone have advice? Thanks!!!
You can be a researcher with a DVM, if you want. Veterinarians actually have a relatively important role in public health. The U.S. Public Health Service and the Air Force both hire vets as public health officers, and the CDC and other government agencies often hire DVM holders in public health positions (like the Epidemic Intelligence Service). You could get a DVM and then do a postdoctoral fellowship to increase your research knowledge. The work in public health would be very different from bench work in a lab, but you would still do all of the other things you love about research - analyzing data, writing papers, explaining results, and solving problems. (I’d also like to point out that these days, PhD scientists don’t actually do a whole lot of bench work. It depends on where they are employed, but generally they hire grad students and research technicians to do the bench work, and they spend a lot of time masterminding and managing their research projects, writing grants, and teaching classes.)
Most veterinarians don’t do very “outdoorsy” work. If you want to work for farms doing vet med for livestock, perhaps, or if you go into conservation. But if you want to set up shop as a community vet you will probably be primarily seeing people’s pets inside of your vet clinic.
Anyway…it sounds like you like the tasks involved in research. You can get your outdoorsy fix elsewhere - many researchers enjoy being outside and satisfy that longing during their downtime. If you really need for your job to be outdoors, consider a research area that requires a lot of studying of the natural world - like ecology, botany, environmental science, etc.
You should look into some of the schools that have combined DVM-PhD programs. I can’t tell you who does but I know they are out there as a family friend applied to some a few years ago. Admission is competitive.
You can do a DVM/PhD - several good schools have them, like NCSU, Cornell, Colorado State, UGA, UPenn, Tufts, UC-Davis, Purdue, Minnesota, Wisconsin, UPittsburgh, etc. A search of “DVM/PhD” will reveal a bunch of places. (Cornell’s might especially interest you, as you can get a DVM and concentrate your PhD in Zoology & Wildlife Conservation, which is quite outdoorsy.)
However, I would caution you against getting a DVM/PhD because you can’t decide which one you want to do so you’re trying to hedge your bets - in my opinion, that’s not a good idea. A DVM/PhD is useful if you know you want to be a veterinary researcher/academic veterinarian - you want to do veterinary research and potentially teach at a vet school in the future. A PhD/DVM program ensures that you learn the research side and also the practical/clinical side, and each can inform the other as you go about your work. The idea is to integrate the areas of research in ways that make sense - so for example to study how animal models of immunology can be studied and applied to improving human health, or studying zoonotic diseases, perhaps how they cross over to humans. If you’re interested in human neurophysiology, it doesn’t make much sense to get a DVM and a PhD in that, unless you are interested in some aspect of it that needs a study of animals - and by that I mean beyond using animal models. Lots of scientists use animal models successfully without a DVM. I mean, what is the clinical study of animal medicine going to bring to the table to your PhD?’
If you simply cannot decide, then I think you should take some time post-college to work in one or the other field and figure out what you want to do first. A DVM/PhD program usually takes around 7-8 years, but you can get a DVM in four and you can do a PhD in 5. There’s no reason to spend the extra 3-4 years studying if you aren’t going to use the other degree.