Pre-Veterinary Medicine

Pre-veterinary is the course of study you take to prepare for admission to veterinary medical school. This concentration is a guiding principle for your education designed to increase your chances for admission to veterinary schools. If you are interested in applying to veterinary school, meet with your pre-vet advisor early in your freshman year. Gaining admission to veterinary medical schools is highly competitive—more so even than medical school—and you will want to begin planning your undergraduate curriculum keeping that in mind.

Why Pre-Veterinary Medicine?

With a firm basis in the biomedical sciences, the veterinarian of today has an opportunity and obligation to help create and advance the body of medical knowledge that serves society. People have always had a profound interest in maintaining their animals’ health and welfare because of their dependence on animals for food, textiles, companionship, and sport. There are over 86,000 professional veterinarians in the United States today, about three-fourths of whom are engaged in private practice and one-fourth who work in various areas of government and corporate veterinary medicine.