WSU Veterinary Heritage Scholarship Fund

---

Scholarships are essential to attract the best and brightest veterinary students. While our community, our education, and our caring faculty are highly valued, a student’s decision is understandably affected by the cost of education. Recruitment scholarships are often the deciding factor for the most sought-after students, who can, in the long term, help the college attract and retain the best faculty, improve board passing rates, and increase our rankings and reputation. 

The Veterinary Teaching Hospital is also a classroom for your future veterinarian. Residents are veterinarians who have typically completed an internship and are pursuing a three-year residency program for training in a specialty area. Interns are veterinarians who are pursuing a one-year internship for advanced training. And our fourth-year veterinary students train alongside faculty to complete their medical training. Upon graduation in May, they will be fully qualified to practice as veterinarians! 

Since 1996, tuition has tripled for veterinary students. Then, the first year of resident tuition was just over $8,000.  Today, it is more than $27,000, with the total cost of attendance estimated at $207,000 for the four years. For non-residents, tuition has jumped for the first year from roughly $20,000 to over $62,000 with a total cost of attendance estimated at $244,000.

That means today’s veterinary students carry much more debt when they graduate than they did 25 years ago. For the WSU 2022 veterinary class, the median debt was $120,000.

It's a sobering reality that veterinarians entering the profession today will have a difficult time positioning themselves to buy into an existing practice in the next 10 years — a time when retiring veterinarians will need them most.

The Heritage Scholarship Fund is a way for alumni and friends of the college to support tomorrow’s veterinarians and put them on more stable financial footing when they graduate.