Tune in as we chat with Amber McElhinney, a 2nd-year veterinary student at UC Davis. We take a deep dive into her pre-veterinary strategies, from research to applications and interviews, to the detailed financial implications. She shares what she wishes she had done differently and advice to other pre-veterinary students.
In this episode we mention the following resources:
- APVMA (American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association): https://www.apvma.org/index.html
- Student Doctor Network pre-veterinary forum: https://forums.studentdoctor.net/forums/pre-veterinary.73/
- VBMA (Veterinary Business Management Association): https://vbma.biz/VIN
Foundation Vet School Bound: https://vetschoolbound.org/applysmarter/ - VIN Foundation Cost of Education Map: https://vetschoolbound.org/how-much-will-my-veterinary-education-cost/
- VIN Foundation Vet School Bound: https://vetschoolbound.org/
You may learn more about the VIN Foundation, on the website, or join the conversation on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.
If you like this podcast, we would appreciate it if you follow and share. As always, we welcome feedback. If you have an idea for a podcast episode, we’d love to hear it!
TRANSCRIPT
Intro
Jordan Benshea: Welcome to the Veterinary Pulse podcast. My name is Jordan Benshea. I’m the Executive Director of the VIN Foundation. Veterinary Pulse is the heartbeat of the profession. Join us as we talk with veterinary colleagues about critical topics, from student debt to mental health, and share stories. Stories connect us as humans, as animals, as a veterinary community. This podcast is made possible through individual donors like yourself, and our technology partnership with VIN, the Veterinary Information Network.
Meet Amber McElhinney: A Second-Year Vet Student
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for being here.This episode, we’re having a discussion with Amber McElhinney, a second-year veterinary student at UC Davis. We take a deep dive into her pre-veterinary school strategy, from research to applications and interviews, to the detailed financial implications, and what she wishes she had done differently. Thank you for listening. Hey, Amber, thanks so much for being with us today.
Amber Mcelhinney: Thank you for having me.
Jordan Benshea: Let’s start with a little introduction.
Amber’s Journey to Veterinary School
Jordan Benshea: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself to begin with?
Amber Mcelhinney: Yes, I am originally from the Philadelphia area. I did my undergrad at the University of New Hampshire, and now I am rising second year student at UC Davis. I want to go into equine medicine, and I’ve been doing some work for VIN this summer. It’s been great.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful. We’re very excited about that. A lot of us, as we mentioned in a blog post that you recently wrote that there are a lot of veterinary students plans obviously shifted this summer and so VIN and the VIN Foundation have been working with students to provide other opportunities. It’s been great to have you as part of the VIN Foundation team this summer, you and some other students, and we’re hoping that will continue.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, definitely.
Jordan Benshea: Is this summer job how you were first introduced to the VIN Foundation, or have you heard about it before?
Amber Mcelhinney: Consciously, yes, this summer job is the first real introduction I’ve had to the VIN Foundation. I did use the Cost of Education map a lot when I was applying to veterinary school. I don’t think I ever looked at the top of the website to see what organization was putting it out. I think the link was posted in a Facebook page somewhere, and I found it to be really helpful, but I didn’t realize that it was even from the VIN Foundation until I started doing work for you guys this summer.
Jordan Benshea: When did you first realize that you want to be a veterinarian?
Amber Mcelhinney: I have wanted to be a vet as long as I can remember. I don’t think I ever really had a good reason. I can remember in kindergarten always really loving animals, and in my head that equals okay, I’m going to be a vet one day. As I got older, I definitely questioned that a few times, mostly because the more I researched it, the more I found out how difficult it is to get into vet school even just to begin with. There’s a lot of challenges once you’re even in the profession as well, but I don’t know, I just always kept coming back to it. I’ve always been pretty excited and really enjoyed medicine, and I’ve always wanted to work with horses, so here I am.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful. So, there wasn’t really an immediate moment where it was your defining moment. It was more like since childhood, you thought loving horses and puppies was enough and then you had a more realistic view of that.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yes, there definitely was a phase in middle school where I thought I wanted to be a lawyer because I liked to argue with people. I quickly realized that that would involve doing a lot, a lot of reading of very, very dry material, so well, maybe that’s not for me. It was never even really a serious consideration. I guess I was always a little bit afraid that I wouldn’t be able to cut it, but the more I shadowed vets through undergrad and got a little bit more hands on experience, the more I fell in love with the profession.
Jordan Benshea: That’s wonderful. I’d say it’s a great profession in a lot of ways.
Choosing the Right Veterinary School
Jordan Benshea: How did you start your veterinary school research?
Amber Mcelhinney: I started probably a bit late in the game. From the beginning of undergrad, vet school was always the plan, but I know some people who grow up in a certain area and are dead set on going to their state school or really like a certain school for a certain reason and are always set on that. I never had any ideas. I’m from Pennsylvania, so Penn was always on my radar, but I’m not necessarily in a diehard, I have to go there way, which obviously, I didn’t wind up there. I started probably researching schools my junior year of college, a year right before I was going to have to start applying. The advice everyone gives you is pick a place that you want to live for four years, because it doesn’t really matter where you go, you’re going to get the same quality of education at pretty much every vet school in the US. Which is great advice if you’re somebody who has a place you really want to live for a few years, but again, that just wasn’t really me. I did wind up applying mostly to northeast schools, I think because I’m from the northeast, I was more comfortable with that area, and a bit more familiar with the reputations of some of those schools. I also tried to look at as much as you can, it’s hard to find this information, but because I want to go into equine medicine, I tried to do a bit of research into what schools had good equine programs, or good hospitals that saw a decent amount of equine caseload and stuff like that.
Jordan Benshea: When you say that people tell you to go to a place where you want to live, are those friends, are those other vets that you know? Is that general advice for grad school? Where did that advice come from?
Amber Mcelhinney: For me, it mostly came from undergrad professors. I was lucky in undergrad to have a few different professors who were great mentors to me and very helpful along the process. My academic advisor and other professors who were very helpful, but one of them was an equine surgeon, and was teaching some of our, we had a strong Animal Science program, so we had some equine specific classes at my undergrad that she would teach. She was a vet, but I didn’t meet her through a veterinary capacity. She was one and then other professors who had had students go into vet school after undergrad. I’ve heard that, I think, from peers as well and just around.
Jordan Benshea: What resources did you find helpful once you decided to go to veterinary school? What was your first step?
Financial Considerations and Decisions
Amber Mcelhinney: The first step once I knew I really wanted to go was to try to make sure my grades were where they needed to be. Once I was working towards the application itself, a lot of googling, trying to look at the websites of different schools and see if they had any statistics on who got into vet school, or what sorts of experiences those people had. The AAVMC, which runs VMCAS, the application for vet school has some good resources on their website for trying to compare different statistics about the schools and costs and stuff like that. Your Cost of Education map was helpful in me trying to plan out where I wanted to apply and how much money I was willing to potentially spend if I were to get into vet school.
Jordan Benshea: Yes, that should be a big consideration for people when they’re looking at veterinary school because it does have a really high price tag. Choosing which school you go to, which school you want to apply to can possibly save you hundreds of 1,000s of dollars, so it’s definitely a big decision to make.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yes.
Jordan Benshea: Did you join like the APVMA Facebook group or look on Student Doctor Network? Were there other websites or groups that you used to help gather information from other pre-vets?
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, I was active on the APVMA Facebook page. I never used Student Doctor Network. I had friends who were applying who really really loved it, but honestly, I was so busy in undergrad and while applying that I was able to get everything I needed out of the APVMA page. I never put in the time to explore Student Doctor Network because I didn’t feel like I needed to, but APVMA was definitely very helpful. I was not super active with APVMA as an organization throughout undergrad. I was in my pre-vet club, but I never went to the symposiums or anything, but yes, that Facebook page being able to post questions or read other people’s questions and see some answers and be like, oh, yeah, I was wondering that same thing. I found that really helpful.
Resources and Advice for Pre-Vet Students
Jordan Benshea: We should say that the APVMA is the American Pre-Veterinary Medical Association, and we will put a link to that as well as the Student Doctor Network pre-veterinary forum in the episode notes. What factors did you consider when choosing a veterinary school? You mentioned place to live and equine. Were there other factors? You mentioned cost a little bit, when you were using the Cost of Education map and looking at a AAVMC and other resources, APVMA, Facebook, etc. Did you have like a top five list? What was your thought process if you could take us through that?
Amber Mcelhinney: I guess as far as choosing which schools to apply to, I had a long list of about 12 schools, I think. Most of which were, again, East Coast and schools I was more familiar with, and I knew had a pretty solid equine hospital and program in place. From there, I narrowed it down a bit, so I wound up applying to eight. I narrowed it down a bit by, honestly, requirements, because by senior year, I only had so much space to fit in any extra classes. There were a few schools that have weird extra requirements. For example, Ohio State requires you take a public speaking class, and I didn’t want to try to fit that in my last year, so I didn’t wind up applying there. They’re not the only ones that require public speaking, but weird classes like that, that I hadn’t taken or couldn’t fit. I guess I tried to get a sense as much as I could, as well from students at the schools that I either knew or was able to get in contact with through some of my undergrad professors, just to try to get a feel. The equine hospital itself was a big factor for me. I really wanted one that was close to the campus. Some schools that have really solid programs, their equine hospitals are actually far away. You might get more of that in your fourth year, and have really good experience there, but I wanted something a little bit closer, so that I potentially could get more experience from first year as well. Yes, cost was a big one. Even just the cost of the application. I tried to be strategic and apply to a couple schools that I felt would be more difficult to get into, a couple schools that I felt I was fairly competitive at, and then a couple of schools that I felt very strongly I had a good chance of getting in. So, if you will, like your reach schools, your more reasonable schools, and then your safety schools. I tried to pick my top two or three in each of those categories. A lot of schools have supplemental application fees, so I tried to be strategic with not spending a ton of money. It was a plus if a school didn’t have one of those. Interviews as well. I knew that if I was going to be interviewing all over the country, that would cost a lot of money, so it was a plus for a school for me if they didn’t interview. I figured if I got in, then I would spend the money to go visit but I wouldn’t be spending all this money all over the place before I even knew if I was really considering going there. That was how I narrowed down which schools to apply to. After I went through the interview process and started getting acceptances, feel of the school was a really big factor for me and trying to look into the curriculum as much as I could and figure out what I felt would be best for me as a student at that school. Like what school’s philosophy would fit best for me.
Jordan Benshea: You’re doing a great job of breaking down a lot of the cost, and some of your mindset in applying to the veterinary schools, and the recent blog posts. We’ll link to that in the episode notes as well. You say cost was a factor, but you ended up going to Davis, which is an out of state school. What made you decide to go to Davis? How did you weigh that cost benefit analysis?
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, so I guess, another factor I forgot to talk about was that some schools allow you to establish residency for tuition purposes and Davis is one of them. I applied to a few schools that allow that, so that makes it more financially reasonable to attend. Also, for me my in state is Penn, which is not that much cheaper. If you’re in state, it’s not like true state schools, where your tuition is about half, so that was also a factor for me. If I was from another state where my state school would have been substantially cheaper for me to go to that might have swayed me in a different direction, but Davis is going to cost me less money than Penn would have. In that way, it was still a bit of a financial decision to choose Davis. I guess, North Carolina State is known for being the cheapest vet school in the US, and I was considering them, but I visited both, and I really felt everyone at Davis seemed happy when I was here. The financial difference to me seemed worth it to be at a school I thought I would be happier at because it is four years of your life and it’s a very, very stressful four years of your life, so anything you can do to mitigate that, I think is worth it.
Jordan Benshea: Absolutely. In talking to you over the last few weeks, I can tell that you are a rare veterinary student in as much as that you put a lot of thought and process into cost and a lot of other things. I know that for a lot of veterinary students, it can be, ‘I just want to go to the school, I just need to get my veterinary degree’ and they don’t want to think about the finances, or really have to think about that aspect of it because there’s so many other things that can be overwhelming that they just want to focus on getting in. What would you say to those veterinary students that feel like they don’t want to focus on the cost or that it’s just too much to think about that aspect and they really just want to go to the first school that they get into?
Amber Mcelhinney: I guess I would say, I totally get that. I was always in a position where I was going to vet school, I did not want to take a gap year, I didn’t want to only apply to a couple, see if I got in there, and if I didn’t, it wasn’t a big deal to wait. Hence, why I applied to eight schools and not three. At the same time, it is such a huge financial investment that I think if you have the option to, if you have options is really what I’m saying, it really is best to try to consider every angle and the finances are one of them, because you are looking at about a quarter million give or take in student loans and some schools almost as much as $400,000. That is not a small amount of money. There are repayment programs, but it still does make a huge difference, for instance, in your quality of life for potentially the next 20 to 25 years, which is not really a small thing. At the same time, everybody maybe has that choice, and if you only get into a private veterinary school that charges much higher tuition, and that’s all you ever wanted to do, I probably would have also made that choice to take the 400,000 in loans and figure it out later. The VIN Foundation has so many great resources now too, to help you figure it out later, but it is something to consider and something that if you’re going to do it, you should basically do it knowing what you’re getting yourself into.
Jordan Benshea: Right, going in with the eyes wide open approach. I think with the VIN Foundation, our goal is we want to provide the best information we can to help veterinarians in every stage of their career and specifically for pre-veterinarians, so that whatever school they choose to go to, we’re here to help them. At least if they’re going in with eyes wide open, that’s the ideal and if they don’t do so then we’re still here to help at every stage. We feel like it’s our duty to provide the information hopefully in an effective manner to support them, at that decision time.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, absolutely.
Jordan Benshea: Are you happy with your veterinary school choice?
Amber Mcelhinney: I’m very happy with my vet school choice. I think it’s always going to be a stressful time and it definitely is stressful at times, but I think I’m able to have a fairly solid work-life balance, if you will, and still be able to do extracurriculars. I have a job while I’m in vet school as well. I don’t feel by doing those extra things, I’m then taking away from any time for myself, or being able to hang out with friends. Yeah, I’m definitely very happy that I made this choice.
Jordan Benshea: Wonderful. That’s a great feeling to have when you make a huge decision in life, and then to feel good about it. I think those are all the things that we hope for.
Amber’s Reflections and Advice
Jordan Benshea: Is there anything you wish you would have done differently now in hindsight, going into your second year of veterinary school at UC Davis? Looking back on it, is there something in the pre-veterinary process or in your first year process that you wish you had altered this or done this a little differently? Something to help others leapfrog that maybe you’re like, trust me, you don’t need to go down that path because do this or do that. What any suggestions or advice?
Amber Mcelhinney: The one thing I really do regret is applying to as many schools as I did. I think it’s really easy to succumb to the pressure of vet school is really hard to get into, you could be a great applicant, and still get denied for seemingly no reason, so just hedge your bets and apply to a bunch. I think in the long run, I wound up spending more money than I needed to, and not by a small amount, either. I probably could have narrowed down my list a bit more, but it’s so hard to. I was abroad in Scotland the summer I was applying, so I was doing research over there. The application closes in September, so I was just starting my senior year, trying to manage a full course load or full workload, and research all of these schools that it’s not always easy to find the information. It became impossible for me to narrow it down any further at the time. I guess my advice really, is just to start as early as possible, try to compile all the information you can and to make the decision, both the decision where to apply, and eventually the decision where to go with as much information as you possibly can.
Jordan Benshea: That leads into another question I was thinking, which touched on this. Were there any resources that were not available that in hindsight it would have been great to have this, or that would have been really helpful?
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah. Standardized statistics on the admitted students is something that is lacking currently. Some schools do a great job at providing detailed information about their incoming classes, and some schools give you a very vague sense of how their class did when they were an undergrad, and what their experiences were coming in. Even just having all those in one place, I spent hours and hours looking at vet school websites and only for the schools that I was considering applying to, and I tried to do that for myself in a spreadsheet to see how I felt I stacked up against at least the average student who winds up attending that school. That transparency of information for successful vet school applicants is a bit lacking, in general. How to pay for everything and a lot of what I touched on in the article really, I didn’t even know. It was actually when I was at the accepted students’ weekend in North Carolina, where they did a financial aid presentation, and they were talking about you’re going to have to move. They wanted people to especially out of state students to move about a month before school to start establishing residency. The cost of moving and putting money down for an apartment and all of that a month or so before I would even see any money in student loans, so this transparency on that whole financial process. It was that same presentation where they even mentioned that there were repayment programs that would make it more feasible to repay your student loans. It’s not like you’re automatically forced into 10 years of repayment, and, by the way, you have to live in a box to afford that. Those are both great things to know. I think that’s what turns a lot of people away from veterinary medicine is not being willing to, willing or able, to spend that much money and with not a huge financial return. Vets don’t make nearly what medical doctors make, but we have about the same debt load. Knowing that there are options for that. VIN Foundation does a great job of trying to explain that, but I find it’s still hard as an undergraduate to even find those resources or know what’s going on.
Jordan Benshea: I think that’s a good point. Finding a way to get that information, that’s something that we definitely struggle with. We want to get more information out to pre-vets in undergrad. If there’s anyone listening that has great access to those people in the undergrads that can share that information, please reach out.
COVID-19 Impact and Mental Health
Jordan Benshea: Now that you’re a veterinary student, and you’re going into a little bit of an unparalleled type of veterinary school situation this fall, are there any resources that you feel would be helpful? We did a COVID impact survey a couple months ago, and we saw that mental health is something that a lot of people, based on those that responded to the survey, veterinary students were struggling with an increased stress, feeling overwhelmed, etc., so that’s one aspect of it. As you’re in this stage now where you are, are there things that you think it’d be helpful if this was around, or if we knew about this? Are you having a hard time finding information in one area or another?
Amber Mcelhinney: I guess the biggest thing that has been helpful is knowing how student loans are being affected right now, so the interest has been suspended through September and the interest rates for next year went down, I think about 2%.
Jordan Benshea: Interest rates are extremely low.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yes, I learned about that through Dr. Tony Bartels, who does a lot of the financial counseling and stuff for VIN Foundation. He did a talk for our VBMA in April or May. They did a talk with him about student loans, and he brought that up. Looking into it, a lot of that information is included when you start running through, if you do any of the student loan simulations or estimators on the VIN Foundation website, but that wasn’t advertised in my school that those things are happening. The VBMA is trying to put that stuff out there but knowing how COVID is affecting the finances has been huge. I don’t know that I have a suggestion for how to make that a bit more well-known because it was a coincidence. I wasn’t even intending on going to that Zoom talk, but my roommate knew Dr. Bartels’ name. It was like, every time he talks it’s really good, he really knows his stuff, and I always get something out of it, so she put it on in the living room. That was probably the best VBMA talk I went to all year.
Jordan Benshea: That’s great. You were pretty much forced to attend.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah.
Jordan Benshea: Well, the VBMA, we should say is the Veterinary Business Management Association, and they do a great job. They’re in all the veterinary schools and focus on really business focused topics. Dr. Tony Bartels does give a lot of talks on student debt and debt education. We collaborate a lot with the VBMA, and they’re a great resource as well. I will put the link to their website in our episode notes as well. Thanks for that feedback. We really appreciate it.
Amber’s Secret Talent and Outro
Jordan Benshea: One last question that I tend to ask people on the podcast which you’ve probably heard if you’ve listened to other episodes. Do you have a secret talent or something that you love to do that other people might not know about?
Amber Mcelhinney: Oh, that’s a hard one. I don’t know that I would call this a talent, but I do like to bake a lot and, like everybody else with COVID I decided to take up some breadmaking.
Jordan Benshea: Sourdough?
Amber Mcelhinney: Yes, sourdough. I made my own sourdough starter, which took me like two weeks of feeding it every day and trying to wait for it to bubble on my windowsill. I did a few sourdough loaves. I made some sourdough bagels which was my first time trying to make bagels and they came out really good.
Jordan Benshea: That’s fantastic.
Amber Mcelhinney: I’ve somehow been busy this summer since that, so I haven’t had time to keep going with it.
Jordan Benshea: Well, Amber, thank you so much for everything that you’re doing. We really love having you help the VIN Foundation, and your blog post is great. I hope others go and read it. Thank you so much for sharing your experience with us and being willing to be open and share what you went through so that others can hopefully learn from you as well.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, thank you so much for having me. I hope that my little sliver of advice can be helpful, at least to somebody.
Jordan Benshea: I’m sure that it will be. It’s been helpful to me already. I’ve already learned things. Thanks so much, Amber.
Amber Mcelhinney: Yeah, thank you.
Jordan Benshea: Thank you for joining us for this episode of the Veterinary Pulse. Please check the episode notes for additional information referenced in the podcast. If you enjoyed this podcast, please follow, subscribe, and share a review. We welcome feedback and hope you will tune in again. You can find out more about the VIN Foundation through our website, VINFoundation.org, and our social media channels. Thank you for being here. Be well.
