<p>I have always wanted to be a vet and i want to do it because i love animals and want to help them but i always hear how vets make less than other doctors (that is an entirely different thread). what is the highest paying veterinary job because i know there are other jobs than a vet or vet tech?</p>
<p>Probably owning your own specialty business - surgery, etc.<br>
I was in practice for a while. Sadly, I have to say that I was not cut out to own a business. Loved the medicine, hated collecting past due bills and really became disheartened when people didn’t pay me and/or complained about fees.
I quit working to raise my family - now I’m going to nursing school so I can have a job with benefits, flexible hours, and nobody complaining about my fees. 
I LOVED veterinary school and the people there – I just wasn’t cut out to own a business.</p>
<p>i was looking into veterinary pathology. that sounds it would be great. i want to do research. what other vet jobs are research based?</p>
<p>The career possibilities are nearly endless with a DVM degree. You can work in private practice, industry, government, academia, military… In terms of research, you can do that in any area of veterinary medicine–pathology, bacteriology, virology, any subject. You will likely need to get a PhD on top of a DVM (or if you are sure you want to do research, you may be able to get by with just a PhD). Research can pay well (not always), and in many cases also offers better hours and benefits than private practice. The vets that make the most money will usually be the ones that have specialized (in surgery, internal medicine, dermatology, opthamology, pathology, etc.–pretty much any specialty that exists in human medicine exists in vet med as well), but this requires an additional 3-year residency with rigorous testing (and usually a 1-year internship before that). That is in addition to the 8 years of college just to become a vet. For non-specialists, here are the stats for what new grads made in their first year, split up by what species they worked with: [Market</a> research statistics - First year employment](<a href=“http://www.avma.org/reference/marketstats/1yremploy.asp]Market”>http://www.avma.org/reference/marketstats/1yremploy.asp) I wouldn’t suggest going into vet med for the money–in comparison to the amount of money spent on our educations, we really don’t make a lot. But it can be a very rewarding career!</p>
<p>thanks dvmsara.</p>
<p>i dont want to be a vet for the money. i have all ways have a love for animals and want to make them better. right now i am in the biotechology program at my school and i am developing a love for research. that is y i wanted to know.</p>
<p>I’m glad to hear that–just wanted to put that out there because many people are under the impression that vets are rich, which is usually not the case (you can make a decent living, yes, but most also have astronomical student loan debt). It seems like not a lot of people want to go into research (out of my vet school class of 140, I can only think of a handful of people who plan to do that), so I think there’s a demand there. Good luck!</p>
<p>@coquimom any reason why you didn’t want to become a partner within another practice? I’ve been wondering about the pros and cons of owning your own practice.</p>
<p>Last time I was here was two years ago… now sending my second round of kids off to college, so I’m around again!</p>
<p>I became an equine veterinarian and came “home” to a relatively small city to practice with a well established practice. That was great! But, sadly, the practice owner had family troubles and ended up moving out-of-state. </p>
<p>I was fairly well settled where I was and gave it a go on my own for a while with good success. Frustratingly, the other large animal vets around were very independent and “protective” of their clients and didn’t want to “merge”… (barely took call for one another despite my attempts to organize something). I was close to hiring an associate in from out-of-the-area when my own world turned upside-down with a couple of big crises (family deaths, a fire, etc.)… so turns out I dropped it all and ended up being a stay-at-home mom. I regret not keeping my finger in the door now, I really enjoyed the work, but never really made any money at it. It was a great hobby, but I HATED being on-call. Even when I wasn’t on call, people would call or show up. Had a horse trailer show up in front of my house on Christmas morning once… and no, it wasn’t a gift pony! :)</p>
<p>If you love a university environment, I certainly think aiming for an academic/research career in vet med would be wonderful. :)</p>
<p>I didn’t realize there was a pre-vet forum when i posted this on the parent forum. Anybody know if there is any truth to this? NYT is famous among psychs for over dramitizing things. </p>
<p>High Debt and Falling Demand Trap New Vets</p>
<p><a href=“High Debt and Falling Demand Trap New Veterinarians - The New York Times”>High Debt and Falling Demand Trap New Veterinarians - The New York Times;
<p>There is a tremendous amount of truth to it. My husband and I are both vets, and my son wants to be one. I’m practically begging him to go ino something else. Unless you are independently wealthy, a career in vet medicine cannot pay for itself today. Even if you go to school for free, there is getting ready to be such a huge glut of veterinarians, you’ll have trouble getting a job at all. </p>
<p>This is all the buzz in vet medicine now. Vet clinics are going out of business for the first time in …ever. And that’s before the real surplus even gets here. I actually took an informal poll of veterinarians online asking them if they had to start their careers now, with the higher school prices and demand what it is, how many would be vets again. I think about 80 responded. The number who would do it again? Zero. Also, for what it’s worth, higher suicide rate than almost every other profession.</p>