Work experience

If you are applying for any of these courses, work experience is very useful and will enhance your application, but is not compulsory.

For applicants of Land and Property Management courses a minimum of one week in a rural chartered surveyors or land agent prior to starting the course, would be particularly beneficial, but is not essential.

Work experience is essential

If you are planning to study Veterinary Nursing , you’ll need some more detailed work experience to support your application. We will send you links to all the required forms to complete and return if we are in a position to make you an offer of a place.

Please note our work experience requirements apply equally to all applicants and exceptions cannot be made. Work experience must be completed within the same application cycle and if an applicant chooses to defer their entry,  a "gap year" cannot be used to gain the required experience to meet the conditions of any offer.

For the 2025 application cycle

A minimum of 4 weeks (20 days) work experience carried out since July 2023, is required. This should comprise at least 2 weeks (10 days) in veterinary practice (preferably 5 days of this should be in a block) and the remainder in an animal related placement. You are welcome to do all of the four weeks in a veterinary practice if you wish to. Ideally some of this work experience should be completed prior to application. Work experience must be completed and evidence of this submitted by 3rd July in the cycle in which you apply.

What constitutes a 'week'?

35 hours (in a block or separate, however must cover different times of the day to experience different client types)

Acceptable types of experience

10 days must be within a small animal veterinary practice. The experience does not need to be in an RCVS approved training practice, although this would be beneficial.

Examples of alternative animal related placements may include: livestock farm, stables or livery yard, wildlife centre, zoo, dog training school, groomers, dog day care, rescue or boarding kennels/cattery, experience in a hydrotherapy unit or rehabilitation centre, time spent working alongside a veterinary physiotherapist, chiropractor or osteopath, time spent in a large animal/equine/farm veterinary practice.

For offer making purposes, we will only consider work experience that has taken place in the period 2 years immediately before the course start date. This is to ensure that you have recent experience on the most up to date practices and procedures.

Further information

It is the responsibility of the applicant to provide the evidence of the experience when requested. This evidence must include a satisfactory signed reference from each veterinary practice attended.  If an offer of a place is made, we will provide instructions on how to send us your work experience evidence. Please keep a log of your experience and then enter it into the record system to submit it all together, in one go. This is important. If you try to add information at a later date it won’t match-up and may be missed, meaning your application could then be rejected for having insufficient work experience. Do ensure you complete all sections fully and accurately, and please be aware that we audit a random sample of work experience each year so any irregularities would affect your application.

The RCVS has a website facility called Find a Vet which can be used to find practices based on a postcode search. When contacting veterinary practices to enquire about a work experience place, it is important to stress that you are applying to study Veterinary Nursing at degree level at University and that it is an entry requirement for the course. This may give you priority over those wanting general work experience while at school. It is best to write or email in the first instance, then follow up with a phone call. It is important to show enthusiasm and be persistent, but without pestering.