WSU ranks among the top doctoral universities for research activity in the country, a designation that has earned the university a spot on the prestigious R1 list of the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. However, some WSU students on pre-graduate tracks are finding their programs insufficient for post-undergraduate programs, including WSU’s own colleges.

Among the university’s 11 colleges is WSU’s College of Veterinary Medicine, one of only 33 veterinary schools in the country and the sole one in Washington. Accordingly, admission into the College is highly sought after by students across the world.

What the university does not tell students is what undergraduates in the pre-vet track have had to learn for themselves after already committing to the university. Even WSU’s own pre-vet program does not necessarily satisfy the requirements for the university’s own veterinary program, students said.

Allie Ozmun-Wells, a second-year wildlife ecology major in WSU’s Honors College, said she chose WSU’s pre-vet program because of its location, reputation and the opportunities it provides its students. Despite the challenges with the track, she said she has enjoyed her major and the people in it.

“Wildlife ecology has been a really great experience,” Ozmun-Wells said. “I have found professors who I really enjoy, peers who I have really connected with and material that has been really fascinating and far more reflective of what I want to do post vet school.”

One challenge with the pre-vet program, however, is its emphasis toward certain majors, making others feel left behind, Ozmun-Wells said. She initially started as an animal science major but later switched to wildlife ecology, and despite being an option for pre-vet, she was not told it is less compatible with the pre-vet track.

“One thing that I could have done better was prioritizing getting to the actual pre-vet advisor sooner,” she said. “However, neither my animal science nor my wildlife ecology advisors warned me about the fact that the wildlife ecology pre-vet track was not set up well for vet school.”

Despite having required and recommended classes for her major and the pre-vet track, she said she was only told after committing to the major that she would need additional classes.

“I was told the first time I met with my pre-vet advisor that I would effectively need to do a biology minor to get into vet school, including the vet school at WSU,” Ozmun-Wells said. “WSU’s vet school is the most well set up for the classes I need to take. However, there’s still at least one gap of a class, if not a couple, that are not in my program.”

This has created a lot of extra work on her end and caused additional stress, Ozmun-Wells said. An added layer of confusion and difficulty is the different requirements demanded by different vet programs, both in the United States and internationally.

“One thing that was actually suggested to me because of the requirement issues was going to international schools because I wouldn’t have met the requirements,” she said. “The sort of suggestion that I was a better suited candidate for schools outside of the country was a little bit frustrating to hear because the main issue with that was that my class load didn’t reflect the national standards for vet schools as far as prerequisites go.”

Ozmun-Wells said she believes students should have an active role in creating their program, but the responsibility should not fall on the students themselves.

“It’s been a lot of work on my end that feels like work that I don’t think the students themselves necessarily should have to do to such a degree,” she said. “I think that we should have an active role in how we create our programs, but I also think it shouldn’t just all rely on the student.”

Part of the confusion within the major can be attributed to a lot of varying information, she said.

“What I receive on my end is a lot of mixed information that is very confusing,” Ozmun-Wells said. “When there is clear communication, it generally leads to me finding that I have been previously led astray a bit in how I have set up my program.”

Ozmun-Wells said she hopes to see change come to the pre-vet program in the form of more cohesion.

“I would like to see some more cohesion between the pre-vet requirements across the different majors that people can pursue pre-vet through,” she said. “My hope is that, no matter the major, people have similar outcomes in their prerequisite readiness for vet school.”

Ozmun-Wells also said she would like every student in the pre-vet program to have equal access to opportunities, such as hands-on animal experiences.

“Animal science specifically has the most hands-on experience of any of the majors in pre-vet. Wildlife ecology has some, but not much. As far as I can tell, neuroscience and zoology don’t have much at all,” she said. “A lot of folks do external stuff, but what would be really great is if folks had the opportunity to do some more hands-on stuff throughout the majors,” Ozmun-Wells said.

Diana Capi, who graduated with an animal science degree in December, said she got a lot of hands-on experience with animals in her major, both through classes and volunteer experience. Within the animal science major, students have both required classes and the option to choose specific classes.

“At first, you have to take all of these classes, even if it’s not something that you want to go into,” Capi said. “WSU is known for classes that are about large animals. For companion animals, you do have to select specific classes to take that are for companions. If you want to do companion, you have to choose those classes because most of the classes are based on mostly just large animals.”

Like Ozmun-Wells, Capi said she was concerned with the confusion over which classes she needed to take and the lack of cohesion within the track.

“They told me to take classes that I didn’t need to take and were telling me that I couldn’t take a certain amount of credits because it was going to be too hard and I’m not going to be able to handle it,” she said. “They kept putting me down every time I asked.”

She said she ended up taking a lot of classes she didn’t need and not taking a lot of classes that she did.

“I was basically taking classes I didn’t need that were not required for my pre-vet prerequisites,” Capi said. “[My last advisor] actually helped a lot and he was saying like, ‘Oh, these were the classes you didn’t need to take and these are the classes that you should have taken,’ and he was telling me that if I take those classes, it would help, but I would have to stay an extra semester or two if I were to take those.”

Tina Krauss, Health Professions Student Center pre-vet specialist, said she is an optional resource for pre-vet students. Students are not required to see her but are encouraged to.

Different vet schools have different requirements and are not necessarily required to notify the public when these requirements change, Krauss said.