"The environment itself is very supportive and encourages colleagues to work together. The education you receive as far academic knowledge really is world class. This is facilitated by remarkable clinicians who are truly experts in the veterinary field and passionate about teaching students. Compared to other veterinary schools within the US, the book knowledge you will receive is unbeatable." | Report Response

"Now for the bad, WSU has some systemic problems that greatly hinder the educational environment. First the curriculum- WSU maintains a non-tracking curriculum. This undoubtably has some benefits, such as you receive a well-rounded education and can accept most any job you would like post-graduation. However, it does have some serious consequences as well. For starters, the electives you can take while completing 2nd and 3rd year are not preferenced, limited in space, and based on a lottery system. This means that you may not get into one of the electives you would like and know you will use in your career, while another student who isn’t interested in the field may get in. Example being the large animal surgery elective which many small animal focused people take for the surgery experience due to there not being a small animal equivalent or the dentistry elective which is the opposite (large animal people take while small animal can't get in). The same concept holds true for elective rotations 4th year. Regardless of your interest, you will be required to take both large and small animal electives with minimal say in how many and which ones. This means that unless one has intentions of being a mixed practitioner, approximately 65% (% of required small animal rotations), or 35% (% of large animal rotations), of your rotations 4th year will be essentially wasted. While its always interesting to work with species one has minimal experience with, keep in mind you are paying for this and knowing you aren’t ever going to touch that species again can make those rotations rather tedious. Regarding the large animal side of WSU-VTH specifically, the large animal department is suffering both in terms of staffing (techs, barn crew) and equipment. This means that work that would normally be the responsibility of barn crew and technicians, such as feeding, cleaning stalls, keeping up the barn, stocking supplies, cleaning equipment, etc, fall to the students. While undoubtably important to learn all this at some point, this causes 4th year rotations to be consumed with rather mundane work that most anyone could do. Consequently, the time spent improving clinical skills and knowledge is also greatly diminished while in the barn. Within the classroom WSU also has some major room for improvement. At the time of my graduation, there were almost no clinicians teaching agriculture classes that had worked in private practice or had any experience outside of academia. So while brilliant in a classroom setting, some of the third year classes you take such as ag animal medicine, are outdated and often times not realistic because they are being taught by professors not clinicians. If you want to do beef or production medicine, I would not recommend going to WSU. The dairy education you will receive is alright but again somewhat unrealistic due to the professors teaching it. Rotation wise you will not do beef medicine (outside of maybe some feedlot necropsies or therio work). In terms of the small animal side- the clinicians are all exceptional and the classes are for the most part taught very well. However, within the hospital (4th year rotations), they are also incredibly short staffed. Last I heard they were down ~37 positions. Again this means students get stuck doing tech work such as administering meds, cleaning kennels, walking dogs, paperwork, making phone calls, etc. They also recently added mandatory weeks to rotations in departments they are very short staffed in to help make up for the staffing deficit with students. While I can’t speak for other schools, WSU recently removed their SIPE (student initiated professional experience) rotation. Once upon a time students got two SIPEs which were considered a chance to get out of the hospital, look at prospective job opportunities, and compare practices. I had many friends that ended up working at the practices they did their SIPEs at. Many also considered this the most valuable rotation they did. This is again to compensate for the staffing shortage within the hospital. The two mandatory weeks they added to ECC and Anesthesia rotations mean there isn’t room in the schedule for everyone to have a SIPE. A final thing regarding the staffing shortage at WSU is their ability to retain talented professors. Without saying names, all of the most charismatic, brilliant, and enthusiastic professors from my time at WSU have since left, and I do mean all/100% in all fields (small animal, large animal, radiology, clinical path, etc). Part of that comes from the new Dean/administration, Dr. Dori Borjesson, who is taking the school in a new direction, part is the location, and some simply chose to retire. This isn't an issue unique to WSU, however the ability to recruit young and talented faculty is. While I was in school, multiple clinicians who had previously retired were brought back to fill in for open positions. Additionally, Dr. Borjesson’s focus while Dean has been on improving school diversity and outreach (which are clearly much needed and great) however this seems to have come at a cost to the rest of the school and has resulted in the systemic issues mentioned above only getting worse. The new dean is also a major proponent of simulation-based learning as a replacement for hands on, and very small animal focused. While simulation models have very likely improved leaps and bounds since my graduation, what I did experience of them was absolutely no substitute for hands on tissue handling or a suitable replacement for clinical skills." | Report Response

"Old. Equipment (doppler, endoscope, CT, radiograph machine) are outdated. Doppler is from the 90s." | Report Response

"Famously lacking in clinical preparation but have very high board pass rate and academic Knowledge" | Report Response

"Mostly technician work- cleaning kennels, patient care, minimal hands on clinical experience gained. See bad listed above." | Report Response

"Very well." | Report Response

No responses