The veterinary work experience guide

Work experience is the part most applicants find hardest, both to arrange and to write about well. Vet schools are looking for evidence that you understand the realities of the profession, not simply that you love animals. This guide explains how much you need, the settings that count, and how to secure placements when they are difficult to come by.

As a rough guide, most UK vet schools look for somewhere between two and four weeks in total, gained across a mix of settings, with five days usually counting as one week. A common shape is one to two weeks shadowing in veterinary practice plus a couple of weeks of hands on animal husbandry on farms, in kennels, catteries or stables.

The exact requirement varies more than people expect. Nottingham sets out a detailed breakdown across animal handling, customer facing and teamwork experience, the RVC asks for 140 hours within the 18 months before the deadline, and Bristol requires no veterinary work experience at all, instead drawing on relevant experience through its written assessment. You can check each school's current requirement on our UK vet schools hub.

Aim for a genuine breadth across small animal practice, farm and equine settings, and wherever possible a research, laboratory, abattoir or rescue environment. Variety across more than one species is what shows you understand the profession beyond companion animals. What matters most is not the number of hours, but what you took from them.

Several schools, including Liverpool, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Harper and Keele, ask you to record your experience on a specific form as part of applying, so keep a clear log of dates, settings and what you observed as you go.

When placements are difficult to find, a polite, specific message to local practices, farms, stables and kennels, sent well in advance, makes a real difference. Apply widely rather than waiting on one reply, choose the contact method that suits the setting, and follow up politely if you do not hear back. Show genuine interest, be reliable, and be willing to start with whatever you can get, because a good first placement often leads to repeat visits.

For a fuller walkthrough of finding and contacting placements, read our blog on how to get veterinary work experience.

Reflection is the single quality that separates strong applications from weak ones. Keep a short diary of what you saw and what it taught you, because that material feeds directly into your personal statement and your interview, where admissions teams are testing your insight rather than your hours. Note the things that connect to the wider profession too, such as how a practice handles the cost of treatment or its approach to prescribing antibiotics and routine flea and tick treatment, because those observations turn a general answer into a memorable one. Throughout the programme we help students both secure experience and reflect on it in a way that strengthens the whole application.