hello!! congrats on your acceptances! the usual advice from SDNers is to go to the cheapest school, which i agree with, however to my knowledge LMU does not have a teaching hospital for your clinical year which would be a big turn off for me personally, I’d ask a current student or alum how that works in terms of organizing your last year, expected travel and housing costs, etc. Now as for Penn, I cant speak too much about the experiences you get through the new curriculum as my class is the last year of the old curriculum, however, what is applicable is that I’ve had great hands on experiences outside the curriculum through our student chapter of the AAEP aka our equine club. they do a ton of wetlabs - ultrasound, dentistry, and farriery are some yearly highlights. I had a quarter of electives last semester that were exclusively at New Bolton, these should be dispersed throughout the new curriculum, but it seriously was my favorite time in vet school, each week we were in lecture for 2 days, and labs for 3 full days 8-5. repro, medicine, surgery, the whole shebang. we had 3 fully student ran surgeries, 2 were on a pony and 1 on sheep. we have a high case load at new bolton, and have every specialty in house. yes the drive is an hour from the city your first 2 years, however i see it this way: all the specialists we have exclusively see large animals, they arent splitting time between small and large animal hospitals. PA is a very horse dense area with a variety of disciplines, and as you might know the area around NBC is a major Eventing hub. Penn students have really great local shadowing opportunities at events (like the Maryland 5*) and networking with some wonderful vets in the area.
