Internship/residency at same school where earned DVM/VMD

[runnerDC]

I know there is no universal answer to this, but I was trying to get a feel for whether or not some veterinary medical schools tend to shy away from accepting a person into their internship and/or residency programs if that person is also a graduate of that veterinary medical school. In other words, is there a preference among some schools to seek interns and residents from "outside"? Or is the opposite the case? Or does it really just depend on the individual?
Any thoughts/experiences would be appreciated!
Thank you,
Jen

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[Bill59]

In N. America, it's uncommon for schools to keep their own students for an internship. There are a number of reasons for this:

1. It's usually better for the student to get a broader training experience by doing their postgraduate training elsewhere.

2. It can be very difficult to go from being seen as a student one day to being seen as a doctor the next day at the same place.

3. Universities like to maintain a lot of diversity regarding where their folks were trained -- too much inbreeding is unhealthy.

4. Most students want to go somewhere else for the experience of seeing different styles, etc (number 1 above). The students who want to stay are often doing so for reasons related to wanting to stay in the area. And think about if you were looking at intern applicants that were all saying things like, "I want to come to State because I've heard your so and so program is great, " and then one applicant is saying, in effect, "My spouse has a really great job and so I'm going to stay in the area, so I might as well..." Everything else being equal, which would you pick?

It's much more common to keep interns as residents, but there are some places that don't like that either.

 

[PAThbrd]

I've heard a lot of schools discourage you from doing your internship with them if you are a graduate for a lot of the reasons Bill mentioned. I do know of a lot of people, however, that went and did an internship elsewhere and then came back to their school for residency programs. I think a lot of it depends on the school, too.