Veterinary medicine is the profession dedicated to protecting the health of both animals and people through the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and control of animal disease. Veterinarians are trained at the professional level in medicine and surgical procedures for multiple species over a four year curriculum at a College of Veterinary Medicine (CVM). Admission to these CVMs is competitive and requires intensive training in both basic and biomedical sciences, and typically takes 3 to 5 years of undergraduate study to complete and become eligible for application to a CVM. SDSU has an excellent pre-veterinary medicine curriculum that allows students to meet the basic science and other course requirements for application to Colleges of Veterinary Medicine (CVM) throughout the nation. The pre-veterinary medicine curriculum requires roughly two years (60 plus credit hours) of your undergraduate time. Most of the required and recommended classes are also included in related academic majors. Since the pre-veterinary program is not an academic degree, students are encouraged to work concurrently toward a specific B.S. degree during their pre-veterinary program. At SDSU, examples of B.S. degrees in related fields include: Biology, Microbiology, Wildlife & Fisheries, Animal Science, and Dairy and Food Science. Students also may major in unrelated fields such as journalism, music, etc. (A degree in an unrelated field will require more coursework.)

Career Opportunities There are over 80,000 veterinarians in the USA. What do Veterinarians do? In short, they protect the health of animals and people. Veterinarians address the health needs of every species of animal and play a critical role in environmental protection, food safety, animal welfare and public health. As a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, there are a variety of ways you can participate in this effort. Everyone is familiar with the hometown veterinarian and what they do at the community level. However, veterinarians are also significantly involved with research and development of both human and animal health products, education, and public service.