I am curious on the age of your Vet and where you live.
Told my wife about this thread and talked about your initial questions a bit:
She went to UW-Madison for both undergrad and vet school. She said the she didn't know one person in her class that went to community college, but a lot were from the UW satellites, ie UW-LaCrosse. That might be what your vet was talking about. The classes there would be smaller and maybe less competitive. She also mentioned that you do not need an undergrad degree to get into vet school, so that could shave costs if she knows that is what she wants. The vet school here was super competitive to get into, and i would assume that is the case across the country. Great grades, great score on entry test, great essay and recommendations, and previous work at a clinic would be musts. Her class was about 80, and had about 1000 applicants. Also, a lot harder out of state- she said only about 5 are accepted from out of state.
She said that if she had someone interested in the profession, she would have a frank discussion about:
1. Income/debt ratio. Said that tuition increased about 8% each year she was in school and that was 10 years ago. Still owes $100k+. Makes about $50k/year. Add to that most work at small clinics where the insurance/benefits are probably subpar or super expensive.
2. The main way to make decent money is to specialize.
3. It is getting harder to make a living with a lot of discount shops in pet stores offering neuters/spays, etc on the cheap. Plus it adds to myth that services for pets should always be dirt cheap.
4. Vets are statistically more likely to suffer from depression and take their own life. I believe she said suicide rate was 4x. Combination of financial reasons, owner expectations and attitudes (see Daultons post above), and the fact that euthanasia is a part of their life and they have access to the tools to do so painlessly.
Hope some or all of this helped, and feel free to ask any specific questions. Good luck.
She works full time and makes only $50k? My experience is obviously with my local vets only, but their waiting rooms are crowded, regular check-ups with shots are always > $100. Xrays are at least $150+ not to mention more demanding procedures. And their office staff is minimal, don't make a lot themselves, and rent can't be that much. I'm legit curious, besides school debt what am I missing? I always assumed Vets made similar money to Dentist.
Don't know what to tell you. She made a little more when she was working at an emergency clinic, but the other two jobs she had were similar pay, both at small locsl practices.
Where she works now is in a town of about 4000 outside of Madison. I would consider it a smaller clinic, but they have 4 drs, a tech staff of about 7, receptionists, office manager. That is similar to the other place she work, but that one had a bigger staff because they dealt with large animals too.
That is just payroll. Then you add in benefits for employees, insurance is high, cost of rent, cost of medical equipment and drugs, etc, etc.
Just like any business, there are some procedures that they do where the markup is decent for the clinic- say an annual visit with Heartguard. But like i said, some of these procedures are being undercut by "clinics" at pet stores and the like. Some of the procedures you assume they are making a killing on isnt the case since the tools they need to do it are a lot more expensive, and you have to pay 2-3 people to do it.
All this applies to trips to other drs, but there we just pay our co-pay and go about our day. I am sure we would flip our #### if we saw an itemized bill for every visit there as well.
