Hello!
I am a current junior in high school, and have taken honors/AP classes my entire life successfully. I am in the top 15% of my class of 600+ students, and did all of this with hopes of pursuing a career in veterinary medicine. I plan on partaking in a pre-vet BS degree such as veterinary and nutritional sciences, equine science, or animal science.
My question is, my school has a connection with CTC (career and technology center), and they offer a full day senior year veterinary assistant program. I would come out of it with a veterinary assistant certification, which allows me to eventually work between college years as a vet assistant to gain clinical hours. This program will be full day, full year, so I can’t take classes I originally planned on (such as AP stat) but I feel I would love it.
If I choose to do this program, will it look poorly on my college application? I’m not applying to any highly competitive schools (WVU, PSU, and OSU are my current favorite schools, WVU being my overall favorite).
Honesty, that should be fine but seems a lot. If is is full day all day how many days a week? Seems it would be hard to take any classes? S17 took a veterinary assistant program at his school and it was two class periods a day plus work after school 3 days a week all year. He still managed to get in an 2 AP classes but really his college didn’t care that much. He is majoring in animal science and has an early acceptance to vet school at Kansas State University and very good OOS scholarship money. Go where it is cheapest for you to get into. OSU is very good I don’t know a lot about the other two. Go where you can get high grades (son is a sophomore and has a 4.0 so far and is in a fraternity, an officer, and has a girlfriend). He does study a lot! He had similar stats to you, top 12% in a class of 600+. He only took 4 AP classes and 3 AP tests in HS. (They didn’t offer many and only wanted students to take at most 2 a year). The more animal experience you can get with a vet the better your application will be and the better chances for getting into vet school will be. Good luck!
IMO if you are a serious contender for something as rigorous as veterinary school, these CTE pathways are a big mistake. You need optimal rigour, great test scores, and your experience can come from ECs. The cte pathway is vocational, not academic IMO.
Veterinary school does not look at your high school grades, rigor or undergrad test scores. They look at grades in college, that you have the vet school prerequisites, your GRE score (some don’t even require that anymore), hours with a vet, hours with animals, research hours and then look at your college ECs. You may have a better chance to get into the vet school that is in your state. Undergraduate college does not matter other than your ability to get the above at that college (which can make a difference).