Best Pre-Vet Majors: What Vet Schools Require (2026) - Confetto

No. According to the VMCAS 2025 Applicant Guide from the American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC), "pre-vet" is an advising track and a set of required courses, not a degree that veterinary colleges demand.

The AAVMC Health Professions Advisor Guide notes that biology and animal science majors can make the transition to veterinary school easier because their degree requirements overlap with vet school prerequisites. Choosing a non-traditional major such as psychology, biomedical or mechanical engineering, or journalism can add diversity to your application, as long as you complete the prerequisite science courses with strong grades.

You can apply after two years of undergraduate study if you meet a school's course requirements. Even so, the AAVMC recommends earning a four-year bachelor's degree for upper-level science courses, campus extracurriculars, and a degree if your plans change. Some international veterinary schools also waive prerequisite requirements for applicants who hold a bachelor's degree.

When you reach the interview stage, Confetto offers AI mock interview practice for veterinary and other healthcare applicants across MMI, traditional, and panel formats. Start your free week.

Veterinary schools do not share one single prerequisite list. Every college sets its own credit counts and course rules, which you can filter school by school in the free AAVMC Veterinary Medical School Admission Requirements (VMSAR) directory at applytovetschool.org.

You can take prerequisite courses at a community college or at a standard two-year or four-year college or university. Most veterinary schools accept Advanced Placement (AP) credits if your college accepted them and listed them on your official college transcript, though some veterinary schools do not accept AP credit to satisfy the English requirement. Each school publishes its own rules on community college credits, online courses, and how quarter or unit credits convert into semester hours.

Outside of your major and core sciences, the AAVMC suggests taking classes that help with the social side of veterinary medicine, such as public speaking, interpersonal communication, and stress and anxiety management.

When you apply through the Veterinary Medical College Application Service (VMCAS), you sort every activity into one of six experience categories. If a veterinarian (DVM) supervised your work or shadowing, it is Veterinary Experience. If no veterinarian was involved, it is Animal Experience. You cannot repeat hours between categories. If one job included both types of duties, VMCAS instructs you to enter the position in both sections and divide your duties and hours accordingly.

Most veterinary colleges do not enforce a strict minimum hour requirement, though you should check each school in VMSAR. For planning, the AAVMC states that veterinary experience should be your top priority and gives a general benchmark of more veterinary experience hours (including clinical exposure across multiple species) than animal experience hours.

You also need enough hours alongside a veterinarian to build rapport, because most veterinary schools require a letter of recommendation from at least 1 veterinarian (and occasionally 2). In VMCAS, you can click a star icon to mark entries as your "Most Important Experiences." Pick the experiences that nurtured and supported you rather than trying to guess what an admissions officer wants.

Keep your duties within legal bounds. Practicing veterinary medicine without a license is illegal in the United States and abroad, including on organized international programs, so your duties must match your skills and certifications.

VMCAS recommends keeping a tracking chart starting in high school or freshman year. VMCAS only lets you enter current or completed high school and college hours finished by the mid-September deadline, not projected hours. Below is a worked example created by our team showing how to log and split activities under VMCAS rules.

• **Activity 1:** County Humane Society kennel volunteer (120 hours total, no DVM present). Log all 120 hours under Animal Experience because you worked under a kennel manager rather than a veterinarian.
• **Activity 2:** Mixed-practice veterinary clinic assistant (300 hours total). You spent two days a week (200 hours) restraining patients and shadowing Dr. Patel in exam rooms, and one day a week (100 hours) in the boarding kennel feeding pets with no veterinarian involved. Create two entries: 200 hours under Veterinary Experience (supervised by Dr. Patel) and 100 hours under Animal Experience (supervised by the kennel manager). Do not repeat the 300 hours in both sections.
• **Activity 3:** Campus biology lab studying frog ecology under a PhD professor (90 hours total). Log all 90 hours under Research. VMCAS rules place all animal, veterinary, field, and lab research in Research, not Veterinary Experience.
• **What to record in your spreadsheet:** start and end dates, organization name and address, supervisor's name, title, phone and email, average weekly hours, total hours, release authorization to contact the organization, your duties, and what you learned.

You do not need a perfect GPA to get into veterinary school. Holistic admissions reviews value upward academic trends in recent semesters, and VMCAS calculates several standardized GPAs during verification.

Most veterinary colleges have also dropped the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). According to AAVMC and VMCAS guidelines, only 6 U.S. veterinary schools require the GRE and another is optional. Several schools have added the Casper situational judgment test: an online test with video or text scenarios and open-ended questions.

For interviews, veterinary schools use traditional or panel interviews, behavioral interviews, or Multiple Mini Interviews (MMIs) of timed stations. You can review common prompts in our guide to vet school interview questions or practice out loud on our vet school interview prep page.

• **Overall GPA:** Includes all undergraduate courses ever taken, including high school dual-enrollment classes and all attempts at repeated courses, regardless of institutional forgiveness.
• **Science GPA (BCPM):** Biology, chemistry, physics, and math courses.
• **Prerequisite GPA:** Your grades in a specific school's required prerequisite courses.
• **Last 45 hours GPA:** Your grades across your most recent 45 credit hours, which highlights upward trends in junior and senior years.
• **Upper-level courses and AP credits:** Committees check 300-level and higher science classes. AP credits are entered as "CR" and do not count in your VMCAS GPA.

Earning a DVM typically takes eight years beyond high school: four years of college and four years of veterinary school (usually three years of classroom and lab training and one year of clinical rotations, with the North American Veterinary Licensing Examination, or NAVLE, in November or December of fourth year). See our DVM vs VMD degree comparison for credential details.

• **High school:** Take biology, chemistry, physics, algebra, geometry, trigonometry, precalculus or calculus, English composition, and AP math and science classes. Join 4-H or HOSA Future Health Professionals, shadow a vet, volunteer at a shelter or zoo, and start your hours spreadsheet.
• **Freshman year:** Meet your pre-vet advisor. Take general chemistry with lab, introductory biology with lab, and English writing. Join the pre-vet club and shadow a veterinarian during breaks.
• **Sophomore year:** Take organic chemistry with lab, math or calculus, and statistics. Add veterinary hours with a second species and look for a clinic job or research lab.
• **Junior year (fall):** Take biochemistry, Physics I, and school-specific courses like physiology, microbiology, or genetics. Use VMSAR at applytovetschool.org to narrow your list to 4 or 5 schools.
• **Junior year (spring, January to May):** Create your VMCAS account when it opens in late January. Ask at least 3 recommenders (including at least 1 veterinarian) for electronic letters of recommendation (eLORs) and waive your FERPA access right. Select your programs when Program Materials open in mid-May.
• **Summer before senior year (June to August):** Apply for VMCAS fee waivers starting in June if eligible. Order official transcripts from every college attended. Submit VMCAS early before the mid-September deadline so verification finishes early.
• **Senior year:** Finish Physics II and remaining prerequisites. Prepare for interviews and reply to admission offers by the Common Reply Date.

Veterinary medicine is about 80% people and 20% animals, and interviewers often ask behavioral questions such as "Tell us about a time you made a mistake" or how your academic path prepared you. Below is a practice question and an example answer written by our team. When your invitations arrive, you can practice out loud on Confetto. Start your free week.

You majored in psychology instead of animal science or biology. Why did you choose that major, and how do you know you are ready for the science workload of veterinary school?

• 2024-2025 AAVMC Annual Data Report
• AAVMC Health Professions Advisor Guide: Advising the Pre-Veterinary Student
• VMCAS 2025 Applicant Guide
• AAVMC Veterinary Medical School Admission Requirements (VMSAR) Portal