The Vet school experience:
There are many fantastic lecturers here that make learning so much more interesting. Well, just be aware that there are some lecturers that gives lectures that have like a hundred slides in a 50-minute time slot so you definitely need to do your part to learn the lecture.
Regarding facilities, there are quite a few new buildings in construction so future students would be able to use them, not us though haha.
Labs-wise, we did get to do dissections on cadavers in 2nd year, which was great hands-on experience. However, due to Covid, the junior batch did not get that experience, but the vet school did improvise and provide dissected samples for viewing. And they’ve changed the curriculum for the years below us. There were barely any in-person lectures/tutorials/pracs for the juniors the past 2 years due to Covid as things were moved online.
The vet school does emphasise on giving us practical experiences so practical sessions are always compulsory. Pracs are just dipping our feet into the water, and there’s so much more to learn. Which leads us to the topic of doing placements. There’s a certain number of weeks of placements required for every student to undertake to move on to the next year. It starts off with farm placements where you basically just experience the farm life and handling/moving animals, then in later years clinical placements, where you observe vets work.
Student support is decent. You can certainly talk to your lecturers to get more help on their courses, or even if you’re struggling with the whole degree. There’s the counselling service that is covered by your insurance which you can go to if you’re troubled. People here do regard mental health as of importance, so there’s definitely somebody to go to when you need support.
Work-life balance for me wasn’t a problem after passing Pre-Vet. Arguably, I had the most fun during Pre-Vet actually. After officially getting into the degree, time management and priorities determine your work-life balance. I have friends that study, work part-time, join club activities, and still have time for themselves, so it’s definitely doable. Personally, my priority is to enjoy my time here while also being able to graduate. So while I’m not aiming to get A+’s for all my papers or fail any paper, my goal is to just get a decent grade and not go psycho over learning all the material, hence I actually do have a lot of time on my hands. Sounds funny but there are actually A LOT of people losing their mind over trying to learn everything.
Advice for future students
You might be sure that you want to be a cat-and-dog kind of vet, or you might not know what to do after graduating, and that’s all ok. You get to see/handle/work with cats, dogs, cows, sheep, horses, birds, alpacas during pracs. Not to mention the farm and clinical placements where you’ll get a better idea of being a vet, or just finding an area of interest. Physically, it’s good to be of average fitness, although even if you have certain disabilities the vet school would try their best to accommodate your needs. Emotionally, just keep in mind that being a vet means you’ll mostly see sick and/or injured animals, and animals that need to be put down. Emotional/compassion fatigue exists so be aware of that.
One other thing is placements. The vet school expects you to look for all your placements. And accommodation and transport are also on you. Getting suggestions of places for placements either from asking on the Facebook page (MUVSA) or from seniors you befriend is recommended. Or you could google farms/clinics and contact them one-by-one to enquire if they would take students. You certainly don’t want to be worrying about transport when it comes to time for doing placements. I did all my 1st year farm placements with friends as it was more fun, and for transport. I got a car after that so I could do my placements outside of Palmerston North (plus a lot of students would want to do it in Palmy so most of the time it’s hard to get a slot in Palmy clinics).
Future plans
About job offers, I’ve heard about 5th year students getting job offers while they are on clinic placements. That usually happens when you really like the clinic and express to them that you’re interested in working there in the future if they’re hiring, and when the staff there are also happy to have you as a part of their team when you graduate. I’m still in my 4th year currently. I do plan to get working experience here in NZ. I’m still not sure where in NZ I would go to but it’s all good, I’ll figure it out after I’ve done more placements and travelling.
The NZ experience
You’ll definitely feel the cultural difference, but of course you will adapt after some time. I remember feeling quite out of place and homesick when I first came here. Making friends here and hanging out with them helped me to enjoy life here more. To be honest, the homesickness doesn’t really go away. Some days it will be fine because you’re busy with studies or activities, or having fun doing something, but some days you still think about home. It will be comforting to know that you can visit home at least once a year, but I’ve been stuck here for 2 years and counting. Looking at the current updates about travel restrictions, I think the situation will be better for future students.
About the food here, we still end up gravitating towards Asian food. But they are quite disappointing as “authentic” here isn’t actually authentic. I’ve heard that the most authentic Asian food in NZ are in Auckland, but that’s 6.5hrs drive away. So word of advice is learn how to cook the food you like to eat 😭
And NZ is all about nature. Most activities have something to do with the outdoors. Backpacking, hiking, going to beaches, that sort of thing.
The Selset application experience
I really appreciate the help with the university application submission. I basically didn’t know where to start and what to do with the application process and Selset handled it all by letting me know what documents I need to prepare, and they got the rest sorted out.
Side note about accommodation: It’s all OK. You pay more, you get more (eg bigger beds, nicer looking rooms).
– by Janell Tay, BVSc at Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Curious? Learn more about Massey University’s high ranked, globally recognised Veterinary Science programme here: Bachelor of Veterinary Science – BVSc (massey.ac.nz) Contact Selset for application enquiries – intakes: February each year.