The Cambridge Veterinary Medicine course offers the most diverse and rewarding veterinary education experience possible. We provide a uniquely supportive learning environment, with a strong emphasis on practical skills. Cambridge is the smallest UK vet school, training around 70 vets each year, and this would be central to your experience here.
Right from the start, you would benefit from Cambridge’s unique supervision (small group) teaching system. Later in the course, the small class sizes become even more valuable. Our clinical rotation groups are tiny, which ensures a high caseload and would help build your confidence and experience. You would have access to superb facilities and be fully immersed in our environment of cutting-edge biomedicine. Experience shows that our learning environment makes our graduates better equipped to deal with the high pace of change in Veterinary Medicine, and poised for a wide variety of flexible and challenging careers. We aim to make you not merely a competent veterinarian but a practitioner who is well-equipped to grow and develop throughout your career. It is no accident that many of our former students now lead the veterinary profession, whether as leading specialist clinicians, top researchers, or as Presidents of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and other veterinary bodies.
Full course details are provided on the Department’s Prospective Undergraduates webpage and the University’s Undergraduate Study webpage.
Veterinary Medicine at Churchill
Churchill admits a relatively small number of veterinary students each year, enabling us to focus on your development as an individual. We try to arrange for clinically-trained supervisors to deliver the supervision teaching to provide valuable vocational context to the bedrock of science that underpins the Veterinary Medicine course. As a student here, you may be able to take advantage of opportunities to undertake part of your extramural studies abroad, either working in veterinary clinics or undertaking research projects supported by the College. In addition to our other attractions, Churchill’s the closest College to the Cambridge Veterinary School, and we have a particular focus on science, as a consequence of which our Library is well stocked for Veterinary Medicine. Veterinary students are also part of the Churchill MedVet Society, which arranges regular social functions and hosts visiting speakers to give after-dinner talks.
Admissions
To find out about admissions, go to undergraduate applications.
Entry Requirements
Course-specific information, including the University’s minimum offer level, can be found by selecting your course from the University’s Course List then looking at the “Entry Requirements” tab. The University’s Entrance Requirements and International Entry Requirements webpages may contain guidance relevant to you too.
At Churchill, we want to admit undergraduates who will thrive during their time here, so – in their interests – we tend to set conditional offers in line with the typical attainment of Cambridge entrants, by course. On average, this allows us to make a relatively generous number of offers per place, but it also means that our requirements are usually a little more rigorous than the University’s minimum offer level.
You can learn more about the academic profiles of Churchill entrants and our approach to setting conditional offers on our undergraduate applications page.
Admissions Assessment
All Veterinary Medicine applicants are required to take the Engineering and Science Admissions Test (ESAT).
You must register for this in advance.
There’s more information on and linked from the University’s Admissions Assessments webpage and the University Admissions Tests UK webpage, including an overview, format, and practice materials.
Interview
The role of academic interviews in Churchill’s admissions process is explained on our interviews page. If you’re called to interview, you’ll be interviewed by at least one clinician and one non-clinician. Typical areas of conversation include your current studies, what you have read, and any experimental or project work you may have done at school or college. Your interviewers may ask about work experience or relevant wider reading in sciences, maths, or Veterinary Medicine, but we won’t expect you to know any detailed information normally taught as part of a university veterinary course.