In the shadow of the great numbers of pre-medical students--who are aided by vast institutional networks--the few but proud pre-veterinary students at Harvard look at the resources of the pre-medical track with a mixture of envy and bemusement.

According to the Association of American Veterinary Medical College (AAVMC), the 27 veterinary schools in the United States received 6,634 applicants and enrolled 2,283 first-year students in the 1995-1996 academic year, making their admissions numbers comparable to those of medical schools.

But Harvard pre-veterinary students say the resources available to them through the University are definitely not comparable to those available to pre-medical students.

Pre-veterinary students say that while Harvard administrators have done their best to help prepare them for the competition, "initiative" is still an essential trait they must possess. For example, students must line up the necessary animal experience required by veterinary schools without any official counseling.

Elizabeth L. Gordan '98, who decided during the second semester of her junior year to become a small animal veterinarian, and who will attend the University of Pennsylvania Veterinary School next year, says she relied on a Harvard alumnae who is now a veterinary student at Tufts University for advice. However, Gordan says she wishes she had more people in the field to talk to.

"It would have been nice if the pre-vet club had still been around," Gordan says.

Back in the Day

Harvard had a pre-veterinary club briefly between 1993 and 1996, and its history reflects the hit-and-miss nature of support groups for fields which draw students from outside the pre-professional tracks of academia, law, medicine, consulting or investment banking.

Alan M. Glazer '96, a former biology concentrator, who is now at Tufts University School of Veterinary Medicine, recalls the dilemma he faced as a high school senior in 1992, when he had to choose between Harvard and Cornell University, which has an established pre-veterinary program and school.

Glazer says he ultimately chose Harvard for tworeasons: the faculty in Harvard's biologydepartment told him he could either be one of manypre-veterinary students at Cornell, or "stand out"as one of the only ones at Harvard. Secondly,Glazer says he had heard that a pre-vet club wasforming, so he would still be able to get somesupport.

The pre-vet club did not form until hissophomore year. In his junior year, Glazer becamethe student coordinator of the group.

"It was less an active club than a body ofstudents who were interested in veterinarymedicine," Glazer recalls.

Former Lyman Professor of Biology C. RichardTaylor, who was also former director of theConcord Field Station, a research laboratory inConcord, Mass., served as a mentor to the group.During Glazer's veterinary school applicationprocess in his senior year, he wrote to all theveterinary schools in the U.S. and distributed theschools' brochures to the club's members. Theclub, which had a membership of about 12, alsoorganized trips to places like the New EnglandRegional Primate Center and veterinary schoolssuch as Tufts.

However, the club did not last past Glazer'sgraduation.

"I knew the pre-vet club ended the minute Istepped out the door," Glazer says.

According to Glazer, the club suffered a seriesof blows during his senior year--the club couldnot maintain much contact with the one person whowished to become the next coordinator, because shewas taking the semester off in Australia, and theHarvard Medical School computer in which the clubmaintained veterinary school information crashed.