Purdue Veterinary Nurse Program

College Majors
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Hi everyone My D was admitted to the on campus Veterinary Nurse program at Purdue. She is super interested in it but did not receive any merit awards despite her good profile.

She has received merit scholarships from many good schools such as UConn, UMass and UVM.

I was wondering if anyone has any information that could shed light on how good is the Vet Nurse program at Purdue. Also, if anyone has completed an Animal Science bachelor degree from another university and has become a vet nurse. How they did it???

Thanks

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One daughter completed an Animal Sciences bachelor’s degree. However, she then worked as a veterinary technician for 3 years, and then went back to university to get a DVM (which she is studying for currently).

My understanding is that being a veterinary technician has somewhat varying requirements depending upon what state you are in, and is not the same as being a veterinary assistant. I am however, quite fuzzy on the details, and I do not know how this compares with being a veterinary nurse (a quick Google search did not help me much). I do know that my daughter did some treatment such as bandaging and cleaning wounds, drawing blood, and administering medication. She also assisted on surgeries while she was a veterinary technician, but I am not clear what “assisting” means. My understanding also is that getting the opportunity to assist in surgeries was largely and perhaps entirely up to the veterinarian who was doing the surgery.

You also might want to take a look at the CREAM program that is offered at UVM. My understanding is that animal science majors need to apply to get into the program, and that the students who have successfully gone through this program have quite a high success rate in terms of getting accepted to DVM programs. UNH has a similar program.

If a DVM is a possibility in the future, then you should take the cost of the bachelor’s degree very seriously. It would be best to avoid debt, and even better to keep some college money in the bank. My daughter has said a few times that most of the DVM students (in her program) are taking on too much debt and do not want to talk about it. Apparently the few who are not taking on any debt also do not want to talk about it.

Purdue has quite a good DVM program. I do not think that my daughter applied there, but I think that she thought about it, and she definitely did apply to several very good programs that are lower ranked than Purdue (but which are still excellent).

I might also add that my understanding is that U.Conn, U.Mass, and UVM are all very good for pre-vet students. The pre-vet classes will overlap a great deal with premed classes (which are not easy).

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Thanks for your feedback!!!

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