Questions About Undergrad From Someone Aspiring To Be A Vet

College Search & Selection
1

So basically I’m trying to figure out which school I should go to for undergrad that will do the following

  • Is respected enough that it will allow me to get into UC Davis’s or Cornell’s Veterinary School afterward (assuming I do well).

So let me tell you about me:

  • I’m a boy
  • I’m from N.Y.
  • I’m a senior in high school and already have 200 hours volunteering at animal hospitals
  • I do best academically when I can run and swim and being in warm weather helps me as well
  • I’m trying to decide between UC Davis and UCSB
  • In highschool I have a 3.8 and I’m top 15%
  • I want to live in California (likely Santa Barbara) when I’m older and out of school

So basically heres what I like about the two schools, tell me what you guys think.

UC Davis Pros:

  • Better classes like animal biology
  • More respected
  • Will probably help my chances of getting into the Cornell Vet school since it’s more respected
  • Might be easier to get into the vet school if I want to go there

UC Davis Cons:

  • Boring area (from what I’ve heard), I want to have a fun college experience
  • No ocean to swim in
  • Not a big fan of the campus
  • Won’t make many connections that will help me since I don’t want to work in that area
  • Won’t get to be as personal with the teachers due to its size

UCSB Pros:

  • The area is beautiful
  • Will be able to make connections in an area I want to work and live in when I’m older
  • I can swim whenever I want
  • Smaller classes, will know my professors better
  • Since It’s likely easier to do better there, my grades will probably be higher

UCSB Cons:

  • Considered a party school and is less respected
  • Will hurt my chances of getting into Cornell
  • They don’t have specific classes for animal biology like UC Davis

Which school do you guys think is better for me? Also I think my biggest concern is really whether going to UCSB will ruin my chances of getting into UC Davis’s or Cornell’s Vet school/make it noticeably harder. I would love it if you guys could give me your option on that especially.

Thanks!!!

2

Vet school admissions are very competitive. My understanding is that vet schools aren’t just looking for good grades and test scores – they also want to see hands-on animal experience. The opportunities to work with animals (both inside and outside of class) would be much greater at Davis than at Santa Barbara. If you are serious about vet school, then Davis is the better choice.

Unless you are prepared to consider a third alternative. It sounds like you want a school offers a fun college experience, near the beach, with warm weather and lots of outdoor recreation, preferably near Santa Barbara, with a good academic reputation, a great animal science program, and a strong record of vet school placement. The school that ticks all of those boxes is Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo.

Cal Poly is part of the California State University (CSU) system, rather than the University of California (UC) system. The UC system, in general, is better known and more prestigious. However, Cal Poly is the top CSU school, and it is comparable in selectivity to UCD or UCSB. It’s particularly strong for technical fields like engineering, architecture, and agriculture (including animal science), and is a big pre-vet school.

San Luis Obispo is about 90 miles north of Santa Barbara. It’s in the Coast Ranges, with lots of hiking and mountain biking opportunities. The beach is 10 miles west (Morro Bay) or 10 miles south (Pismo Beach). Ocean is colder than Santa Barbara, you will need a wetsuit. Weather is great. Town was just [url=<a href=“http://www.collegerank.net/best-college-towns/%5Dranked%5B/url”>http://www.collegerank.net/best-college-towns/]ranked[/url] as the “#1 College Town in America” (ahead of #2 Cambridge MA)

Cal Poly is a big athletic rival of both UCD and UCSB. UCD and Cal Poly compete in football for the Golden Horseshoe Trophy. UCSB doesn’t have a football team, but Cal Poly vs. UCSB is the soccer equivalent of Michigan vs. Ohio State.

The undergraduate programs that placed the most students in the UC Davis Class of 2020 are listed [url=<a href=“http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/students/admissions/ClassOf2020Statistics.cfm%5Dhere%5B/url”>http://www.vetmed.ucdavis.edu/students/admissions/ClassOf2020Statistics.cfm]here[/url]. They are:

38 UC Davis
12 Cal Poly - San Luis Obispo
10 UCLA
6 Cal Poly - Pomona
6 UC Berkeley
6 UCSD
4 Stanford
4 UCSB

One other point of possible interest: the CSU system has significantly lower tuition than the UC system (including out-of-state tuition).

3

“The undergraduate programs that placed the most students in the UC Davis Class of 2020 are listed here.”

More specifically, that’s the UC Davis veterinary school Class of 2020.

4

http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-vet-veterinary-medicine/

Ypu might get some answers here.

5

this was SO helpful. thank you so much!!!

6

What is your state of residency? The vet schools in your state will give you the best chance of admission. State schools accept the majority of students from their state, the average of OOS accepted students range from less than 2% to about 7%. Many have higher GPA and GRE requirements for OOS students. There is also a considerable difference in tuition costs. Some states that do not have their own programs have agreements with other states to accept their students. In those cases, OOS acceptance rates are higher than listed above. The main areas that vet schools look at are: high GPA, high GRE scores, direct hands on experiences working for vets and with animals. They want well rounded, well spoken students. Each vet school also has specific and varying courses that are pre requisites. Some want more statistic classes, biochem, animal nutrition, anatomy and physiology, etc. Some will allow you to take courses at a CC, others will not.

I would suggest that you attend an undergraduate institution that is 1. low cost, 2. one where you can achieve a high GPA, 3. one that has great mentoring in the preprofessional fields, 4. one that will allow you to continue to work with animals while attending.

Next, investigate your own state’s vet. school and see what they require for admission.

7

Here’s some additional [url=http://animalscience.calpoly.edu/AboutUs/AreasOfStudy/prevet_medicine]info[/url] about the pre-vet program at Cal Poly:

I think that the only schools in California that make these kinds of opportunities available to pre-vets are Davis, Cal Poly SLO, and maybe Cal Poly Pomona (the “other” Cal Poly, in southern California). Obviously it is possible to get to vet school from other schools in California, including UCSB. But Davis and the Cal Polys have the best resources.

8

The OP says (in Post #1) that he is from New York, but wants to live/work in California. He is targeting Cornell and UC Davis, which are the obvious choices for those two states (although there is also a private vet school, Western University of Health Sciences, in southern California).

9

If you really want to be a vet, I would pick UC Davis. Because the biggest hurdle in front of you now is getting into vet school, not having beach fun in college or growing professional connections to the Santa Barbara area. And when I was at Davis years ago, by far the biggest feeder college to the vet school was UC Davis itself, followed by Cal Poly. UCSB was back in the pack somewhere - a perfectly respectable school but not particularly known as a hotbed of future veterinarians. You should check with the current enrollment stats to see whether this is still true.

And don’t worry about having fun in Davis. You won’t have a beach, but Davis is strategically located about halfway between the bright lights of the Bay Area and the ski slopes of Tahoe. Davis kids love their school and they have lots of fun. It’s just a little different fun than the beach kids have.

Also, in terms of getting personal attention, both are big state schools. UCSB has about 19K undergraduates and UC Davis has about 25K. Davis is bigger but the difference is not so great that you would notice a huge difference in the amount of attention you can get from professors in undergrad classes.

So if your top priority is to frolic on the beach during college, pick UCSB.
But if your top priority is to have a career as a veterinarian, pick UC Davis.

10

As long as you can get the course reqs, GPA, and ECs that a vet school would want, it doesn’t matter where you go. I think UCSB is a better school academically than you give it credit for. I’d still pick UCD because you would have more access to wide variety ag/vet ECs and a chance to make connections at the vet school.

Also, the water off SB is surprisingly cold most of time. Hope you own a wetsuit.

11

Couple things:

-It’s way too early for you to hyperfocus on one or two vet schools. Think about vet school broadly.
-You don’t have to go to a prestigious or “more respected” school to go to vet school, even a good vet school.
-If UC-Davis is “more respected” than UCSB, of which I am not convinced, it is only marginally more so. It’s unlikely to matter for vet school admission at all.
-You don’t have to take animal biology classes to get into vet school.
-Where you want to live at 17 is possibly vastly different than where you want to live at 27. I thought I wanted to settle down in New York forever at 17. I live in the suburbs of Seattle.

Let’s say that you fall in love with another field in college and change your mind. Let’s say that 10 years from now, you’re actually working as a marketing manager or a software developer or a technical writer. Where would you have rather gone to school? UCSB or UC-Davis? It sounds like UCSB to me.

No, it won’t.

@Corbett, can you comment on why you think the opportunities to work with animals would be much greater at Davis than UCSB?

Also, OP, is your family full-pay? Can they afford the entire cost of attendance for a California university? Because you are unlikely to get much if any financial aid from either of the UCs (or any public California university). But there are lots of great universities in New York. You can always move to Santa Barbara (or anywhere in California) and set up a vet practice in CA after getting an undergrad degree from a New York university.

12

Hi @SirKhazatsky , you have received some EXCELLENT advice from @Corbett. Allow me to supplement their feedback. First, UCSB, as you mentioned, is renowned for being a big party school. If a young person who is a native of California chooses to attend UCSB, they will be presumed to want to party hardy.
UCDavis does not have that reputation. It is the next rung down from CAL Berkeley and UCLA. Its graduates are highly regarded in the market place.
Secondly, if you want to become a vet, I would shoot for Cornell first. Yes, you won’t be able to swim in the ocean (but who does really in CA??? – there is no Gulf Stream), but it probably has the best respected animal sciences program in the country. If you can get into Cornell and you really want to be a vet, you will have had great preparation for Vet School.
I am a Cornell alumna, and of all the schools in the country I have ever visited, UC Davis is the closest to the CU Agriculture and Life Science School and Vet School. It is highly respected here in California. Just about all the great vets I have met were undergraduates of UC Davis. (I have never met one from UCSB.)
If you want to go into “business”, UCSB would be a much better fit.
Like, @Corbett posted, Cal Poly San Luis Obispo is also awesome. It is very competitive for in state students (because the tuition is substantially less than at Davis), and it is in an adorable college town. It is a wholesome school and town.
Vet School, as you probably already know, is uber competitive. I would also think about a back up plan in case you either don’t get into one of these three schools, or don’t get into Vet School right away. I knew classmates (back in the day), that reapplied to the Cornell Vet School three years in a row before being accepted.
I appreciate your maturity in thinking of your options and planning ahead for your future. Best of luck!

13

You’re OOS for Calif…I think it would be a bad idea to go to a Calif UC.

And…will your parents pay $55k per year for a UC???

14

Pick the school the fits you best: academically, socially and financially. Coming from NY, it makes no sense to be spending $55K/year for a UC when you should be keeping your undergrad costs at a minimum to help pay for Vet school.

Also I am not sure why you are posting and asking for which school to choose since according to your other posts, you are a Senior applying for Fall 2017. If you have not been accepted, then I would not start worrying about your school choices until you have your acceptance in hand.

15

[QUOTE=""]
Smaller classes, will know my professors better - Since It's likely easier to do better there, my grades will probably be higher

[/QUOTE]

?? How do you know that the classes are smaller???

And who says it will be easier there?


[QUOTE=""]
Is respected enough that it will allow me to get into UC Davis's or Cornell's Veterinary School afterward (assuming I do well). <<<

[/QUOTE]

never focus on any particular vet/med/dental school.

16

First of all, there’s nothing wrong with a school being known as a party school. Some of the most well-respected public schools in the country - Wisconsin, Michigan, UIUC, Penn State, Virginia, Ohio State, UF - as well as some well-respected privates, like Tulane, University of Miami, Lehigh, and Bucknell - have reputations as “party schools.” Party schools just mean that students there like to party - but liking to party isn’t mutually exclusive with excellent academics or high-quality educations.

UCSB is a very well-respected university. It’s considered a public Ivy and is ranked 37th among universities nationwide (and 8th among public universities) - about on par with Davis, UCSD, and Irvine (actually slightly higher than Davis, but not enough to make a difference - it’s 37 vs. 41).

Most health related schools - med, dental, vet - don’t actually care very much where you went to undergrad. They care that your preparation was strong.

And again I say - yes, vet school is very competitive. Try to imagine yourself 10 years from now, and say that you didn’t get into vet school at all and ended up doing something else entirely. Where would you have rather gone to college and graduated from?

17

Davis has been – since 1908 – the principal agricultural campus in the UC system. The Davis campus currently [url=http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/facilities/index.html]includes[/url] a herd of several hundred beef cattle, a working dairy with about a hundred milk cows, a horse barn, a dairy goat research facility with 220 goats, a sheep unit with about 300 sheep, a swine center with about 75 pigs, two avian facilities and a hatchery, and an aquatic center for fish culture, as well as one of the world’s top vet schools.

At UCSB, some of the profs have dogs.

The Cal Polys (particularly SLO, although Pomona has the best horses) are the principal ag campuses in the CSU system.

18

That would be sound advice for most professional schools, but not for vet school.

There are relatively few vet schools in the US. All but a handful are state schools, and typically the vast majority of slots are given to state residents, or to residents of neighboring states without vet schools that have cooperative agreements. For example, the UCD vet school class of 2020 has only 12 students (out of 145) that are not from California or a cooperating state.

Even at Cornell (a private school), the vet school is state-subsidized, and it is the only one in New York. As a New York resident, the OP has to focus on Cornell. For a realistic chance at Davis, the OP would need to establish California residency, which is apparently a long-term goal.

19

I think you have some odd ideas about how applying to vet school works. But as others have said, unless your family has resources such that spending about $60K per year to go to school in California and then paying for vet school means nothing, you are far better off at SUNY Genesco or someplace similar, or at a private school that has generous merit scholarships, if you qualify for such. You don’t give your SAT and/or ACT scores, so it is impossible to tell you anything about those kinds of chances.

@SirKhazatsky

20

Probably should have said this earlier but the money issue is not a problem for me.