Pre-Veterinary Medicine
Our Program
Students in the Animal Science pre-veterinary program have an unusual opportunity as undergraduates: Cal Poly employs on-campus veterinarians, as well as provides a veterinary clinic for students. Students learn from veterinarians and are exposed to a veterinary clinic even before stepping off campus and into volunteer work or internships. The on-campus veterinarians, besides mentoring students as their teachers and advisors, provide the health and vet care for Cal Poly’s animals more than 100 horses, a herd of 250 Angus cow-calf pairs, 180 lactating dairy cows in addition to heifers and calves, 100 ewes, 35 sows, a tortoise colony, and a poultry operation that includes broilers and layers. Students have access to all of these animals and the opportunity to assist and observe the veterinarians as they care for them. Additionally, the veterinary clinic on campus is veterinarian supervised and student managed. As undergraduates, students working at the vet clinic learn clinical skills as well as develop the business and managerial skills needed in the veterinary profession.
The pre-veterinary program offers additional opportunities to work with animals through the Enterprise classes, which are classes that build toward real-world experience that strengthens veterinary school applications needed to apply to veterinary school. Whatever discipline in pre-veterinary medicine students choose to work in, Cal Poly’s program marries education with application so students have insight into the realities of working in the animal health field. Because of this, over 40 students per year from Cal Poly are accepted into colleges of veterinary medicine throughout North America and Europe.
Cal Poly has so many opportunities to work with animals outside of class; even in labs, teachers take it upon themselves to make sure you are learning to draw blood or sew sutures, not just watch them perform the procedures.
Kelly London, second-year pre-vet student