Roo Uni may very well be one of the best things we do, and now it’s getting even better with its biggest update ever! So… what is it?

Roo Uni a completely free way for Vet Students to find great externships fast and easy! We’ve worked hard to build the largest-ever searchable database of veterinary externships with over 800 externships across 47 states (and counting!). It’s a great way for Vet Students to get important hands-on experience early in their careers while building their network with some of the top animal hospitals in the industry. You know, the usual Roo win-win.

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Roo Uni answers a common problem for Vet Students: With so many great clinics looking to mentor students, how is anyone supposed to find the right opportunity without doing an impossible amount of legwork? And if we know one thing about Vet Students, it’s that they don’t have a lot of free time on their hands. I mean, we literally wrote an article on their notorious lack of sleep.

So we did the Roo thing, and made this easy: Gone are the days of cold emailing dozens of hospitals to see what’s available without knowing what you’re gonna get. We’ve done the legwork for you, met with hospitals, and highlighted the best opportunities for you.

What is an externship anyway?

Like an internship but shorter! The whole idea is to get hands-on experience and start building resumes and relationships early in your career (because Vets are type-A, and A stands for awesome!). A typical externship lasts around 2 to 6 weeks and is super flexible to fit your school schedule, usually taking place over winter or summer break.

Here’s the neat part: wherever you are during your breaks*, Roo has externships available. Whether that’s spending time with family at home, sticking around campus, or traveling somewhere really cool, with opportunities in 47 states we’ve got you covered (*pretty much, we’re still working on Hawaii, Alaska, and North Dakota).

What’s new with Roo Uni?

Breaking news: we’ve got a major update making it’s Roo debut just in time for back to school season!

New look and feel

Yeah, we’re looking to make a fashion statement, let’s get after it! Roo Uni has gotten a major glow up since the last time you saw it. It’s been completely redesigned with a sleeker map and smoother design so you can find what you’re looking for fast with none of the visual clutter. Don’t take our word for it, check it out!

Featured externships paw-selected for students

We’ve added a whole section of featured externships, which come highly recommended by our hospital partners and past students who had great experiences. To make these easy to find, they’ve been bumped to the top of the list and given their own dedicated search filter. We want these best-of-the-best opportunities to be easy to find.

Just remember, these externships are featured for everybody, so they're gonna be some of the most requested opportunities. You may want to pounce like a cat going after a laser pointer.

Improved search experience

Early this year, we upgraded the Vet & Tech Search Experience, and we’re excited to share all these amazing search speed and performance improvements with Students too! Now, you can find your ideal externship opportunity in seconds, filtering by specialties, location, pay, and more! And this is coming just in time too, because 800+ externships is a lot to sift through.

Roo automatically organizes externships by date posted (after any featured externships) so you can see the newest and most up to date experiences at the top of the list.

A short history of Roo Uni externship matching

Roo Uni was started in 2022 by the same veterinary professionals who built Roo’s relief work platform to empower Vets and Techs with unprecedented levels of career flexibility. We lamented that there weren’t many resources out there to help Students find externships, and interestingly, there weren’t many services to help animal clinics connect with Vet Students either.

But then we realized (gasp!), we’ve been sitting on the solution the whole time! Roo already had an enormous network of animal hospitals who relied on us for relief staffing, and these very same hospitals were desperately searching for Student Externs to mentor too!

Thus, Roo Uni was born out of a marriage between need and opportunity. Knowing the benefit this would provide the veterinary community, we prioritized Roo Uni.

Today, we’ve built a massive, searchable network of over 800 high-quality externships for students to browse! That’s up from just over 100 last time we wrote this article in 2023 - that’s how fast Roo Uni is growing!

Now, finally, finding that perfect externship is only a few clicks away! But it’s not just about quantity, Vet Students deserve meaningful opportunities they can count on.

Quality and quantity: cake having and eating

Obviously, it wouldn’t be enough to just throw a bunch of externships together and call it a day. These have to be valuable learning experiences or else, why bother?

That’s why we take an active role to make sure every externship will be a great experience for both the Student and hospital. It’s crucial to us that every opportunity we offer provides three things:

1. Quality hands-on experience to put the skills you’ve worked so hard learning into actual practice.
2. Lasting mentorship relationships that extend far beyond the externship itself, providing Vet Students much-needed guidance as they venture forth into their careers.
3. Networking and community-building opportunities for both Veterinary Students and clinics, which could even result in future career opportunities!

As with all things Roo, every hospital hosting externships has its own profile, giving you a ton of information and transparency on each clinic up front. Click on any externship on our map, and you’ll see all the deets, including if any pay or stipends are included. That can be important if you’re going to be traveling for your externship.

In the end, you’ll meet directly with hospital teams and doctors to discuss expectations and timing for your externship. All of these details are flexible, and you’ll pick dates that work for your schedule. So don’t feel discouraged if something’s not perfect up front, you can always request changes and negotiate after requesting the externship. You’re not locked in until everyone feels good about the opportunity.

We encourage our hospitals to offer as much of a hands-on, active experience as they can. However, in practice, this comes down to the hospital, the Student, and what both parties feel comfortable with.

Your chance to explore veterinary clinics and specialities

Still, we knew there’s more we could do to create something truly amazing for the veterinary community. These experiences have to be as diverse as vet med itself. After all, isn’t that the whole point of an externship? To explore and try new things, including different specialties, and find your true passion?

There’s no better opportunity to experiment with different kinds of veterinary work than a short one to two week externship. There’s zero long-term commitments, so if you’re not sure what specialty you’re interested in, why not dabble in a couple externships to find what you like most?

Also, this may be the only time in your whole veterinary career when you’re not bound by state borders by your license. Travel to a new state to see what vet med looks like in different cities (potentially with a stipend for food and/or lodging), or travel to a fun destination you’ve always wanted to visit because why not?

There’s no better opportunity to learn and explore than with veterinary externships, and Roo’s got an insane variety of clinics to choose from!

And it’s completely free!

That’s right, Roo Uni is completely free for both students and hospitals! Yes, really. Roo makes no money off of Roo Uni at all because that’s not what it’s about. It’s about providing a helpful service to the veterinary community and bringing people together, which is why we do anything here at Roo.

Don’t get us wrong, plenty of these externships are paid, but Roo never takes a cut, and neither hospitals or Vet Students are charged any fees. What you get paid is negotiated entirely between the hospital and the Student.

So why do we do it? Are we crazy? Yeah! Crazy about changing the veterinary profession for the better!

Explore over 800 clinics hosting externships and find your perfect match

To all the Veterinary Students of years past, we’re sorry we couldn’t get these amazing updates to you sooner.

For the Students of today, hop on in to Roo Uni and see what you find: It’s completely free, there’s no commitment, and you’ll get to browse all the externships we offer, then apply in just one click!

What are you waiting for?

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