"Day in the life of a vet student"

This program gives undergraduates an opportunity to learn from vet students and shadow them for a whole day! The undergraduate student will be able to attend all of the vet student's classes and lectures. The will also gain a student mentor who can help them navigate the path to vet school. 

This program is offered every month and undergraduates can shadow twice a month. Contact our Programs Coordinator, Kevin Chung at [email protected] for more information.

Sign-ups are closed for the Winter quarter.

Sign up!

Here is what our shadows have to say... 

​The “In the Life of a Vet Student” shadowing program is amazing! Understandably, you can only shadow vet students during their lectures, but nonetheless this is a great resource for any pre-veterinary student to take a peek at what a typical day of lectures is like for a UC Davis veterinary student under the semester-block schedule rotation system. In fact, you will be surprised at how much of the lectures you can follow along with, which is a testament to the teaching prowess of the professors. The vet student who I shadowed was very kind and gave me a tour of Valley Hall and other nearby facilities during instructional breaks as well as veterinary school admission advice and a copy of her lecture slides for that day. Highly recommend applying!"

​It was fascinating listening to the lecture with vet students and seeing what they were learning. I got nervous initially, but everybody was nice and willing to give useful advice! I could feel how much effort they were putting into this path. This unique experience made me want to become a vet student even more. I'm very grateful for this opportunity."

​I followed my designated vet student mentor through her morning lectures from 9 AM to 11AM. They were starting a new block about the GI tract as they have just finished a block on neurology. We listened to a short introduction for the block and and my mentor and I chatted, then the lecture speaker came in to present until 11. My vet student mentor helped answer a lot of my questions about specializing in zoo and wildlife, her undergraduate experiences, resources to help find research experiences with more exotic animals such as through graduate students and the wildlife department, and her current extracurriculars as a vet student. It was a great experience and it helped me get a lot of my questions answered, as well as gave me some insight into what a typical day of classes and extracurriculars could look like as a vet student."