Admission Requirements

• Bachelor’s degree completed at an institution accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation; a bachelor’s degree in science is not necessary if the prerequisite courses are fulfilled.
• Minimum GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale; exceptions may be made for applicants in the 2.5-2.99 range (there are a few strategies to bolster an application when the undergraduate GPA is between 2.5-2.99; contact the student success coordinator for details)
• Official transcripts
• Minimum of 150 hours of verifiable post-high school veterinary work or volunteer experience at the time of application submission
• Prerequisite courses
• Summary of experience (detailed resume-style document) that describes the types of experiences you have had that relate to your goal of becoming a veterinary professional associate
• Minimum two references; one reference must be from a person who has recently supervised your veterinary experience
• Lived experience statement
• Three essays, maximum of 3,000 characters each; one veterinary experience essay, one personal experience essay, and one online learning experience essay
• Application fee; the Graduate School offers application fee waivers to participants in specific, eligible programs, as well as Free Graduate Application Days throughout the year (the application fee covers processing for all applications regardless of admissions outcome; the fee cannot be waived and is non-refundable)

Official transcripts

You must arrange for an official transcript from each institution you attended after high school to be sent directly to CSU. Transcripts must be sent directly from those institutions to CSU to be official. If they are received from you, they are not official and will not be accepted.

Summary of experience

Include a detailed resume-style document describing the types of experiences you have had that relate to your goal of a veterinary professional associate. The admissions committee is looking for detail, not brevity. Your summary of experience should be uploaded to the Resume or Curriculum Vitae (CV) section within the Graduate School application.

List all experiences chronologically (starting with the most recent and working backward).

List your supervised experience in veterinary service. There is a strict requirement for a minimum of 150 veterinary experience hours completed by the date of submission.

Include the following information for each relevant entry:

• Name of agency or organization
• Type of agency (shelter, private practice, mixed animal practice, small animal practice, etc.)
• Position held
• Paid or volunteer
• Length of time in positions and average amount of time worked each week, computed in hours. Please be very specific about the total hours spent on each position. Compute your total direct human service hours for each position and include them in each position’s listing.
• Nature of activities performed (intravenous catheter placement, anesthesia monitoring, physical restraint of patients, assisting DVM in appointments, etc.)
• Population groups served (small animal only, mixed animal, exotics, etc.)

This document must include a computation of hours worked in each social service setting totaled for each relevant position.

Prerequisite courses

A single course may only count toward one prerequisite. You must identify a unique course for each prerequisite requirement.

Online courses are accepted if they are taken for credit with a grade and show as completed on an official transcript. Courses taken at vocational and proprietary schools will not be accepted. AP courses must appear on an official college transcript.

Required prerequisites are recommended to have been taken within the last five years. A recent demonstration of an ability to handle an upper-division biomedical science curriculum is strongly encouraged.

Candidates may apply before completing all required courses and can be admitted under provisional admission. If provisionally admitted, final transcripts must be received by the posted date for the entry period of the year you matriculate. Conditional admission may be granted for the following in-progress prerequisites: biochemistry, biology lab, cell biology, chemistry lab, genetics, physics, statistics, and systems physiology.

Learn more about the Graduate School’s transfer policies. Any credits transferred need to have been completed at an institution accredited by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation (CHEA).

List of prerequisite courses

This program assumes a background in life sciences. The course description, content level, prerequisites, number of credits, and a grade of C- or above must meet these requirements. Courses may be taken at any accredited college, university, or community college, or by telecourse, correspondence, independent study, College-Level Examination Program (CLEP), or online. Equivalent courses from CHEA-accredited institutions are accepted.

Letters of recommendation

Two letters of recommendation are required. We highly recommend one be written by a veterinarian and suggest selecting an academic or employment source for the second letter. One reference must be from a person who has most recently supervised you in veterinary experience (paid, volunteer, or educational). Overall, you should select recommenders with whom you are most comfortable.  Appropriate sources for references include employers, registered veterinary technicians (RVT/ CVT/ LVT/ VTS), veterinarians, and university faculty.

You will enter the references’ contact information into the application form and the Graduate School will contact the references directly with instructions.

Select references carefully and contact them early. Ensure the people you choose to write your letters of recommendation really know who you are; share your educational and career goals with them. Ask them well in advance so they have time to prepare a genuine recommendation. Recommendations that can speak to both academic and non-academic experiences will provide valuable insights – these can be from faculty, advisors, or supervisors, for example.

Essays

Three essays required, with a maximum of 3,000 characters each. All three essays should be combined into one PDF and uploaded to the Statement of Purpose section within the Graduate School application.

Veterinary experience

Share your experience working with animals and in the veterinary field. Demonstrate responsibility with animals outside of pet ownership.

Personal experience

Paint a complete picture of who you are. We value the diverse contributions of each candidate, so demonstrate what makes you unique throughout your application and in the personal essay. Think about veterinary, animal, employment, and research experiences, community or volunteer involvement, awards and honors, etc.

Online learning experience

The Master of Science in veterinary clinical care program is unique in that the first three semesters are completely online, followed by a laboratory-based semester at the CSU Fort Collins campus, with a fifth and final semester onsite at a shelter or clinic that is previously approved by the program. What is your experience with online learning and how do you plan to succeed in the online learning portion of the program?