animal science any1?

Ginja Ninja

im in leaving cert and hoping to join all you UCDians next year for animal science
the reason im asking in my school the careers guidance is a joke and hes a prat to boot

so any1 doing it or know anything about it i.e

what will i be when im done carrer wise
or what is the work like, im from a farm and doing biology
oh and what are the points like it says 315 but average is 385 so what should i aim for ?

polevault

hi there,
points will be around 375-380 next august 2009. They are going back to the way they were in 1996-98. There are may reasons for this including the high retirment rate of lecturers in the belfield campus and nobody to replace them, thus limiting the number of places. Also it was predicted that the numbers interested in agriculture would increase with the economic downturn and building trade shrinking so that would also cuse points to remain high.

To answer your question about what you will be when you graduate, you will be an Agricultural science graduate "Bagrsc". the only thing that will make a difference from any other graduate, eg animal and crop production, food science, environmental etc is when you apply to do a postgrad , be it through UCD or through a company (graduate programme). It is very common to end up working in an area of agriculture that you never expected like doing environment work with an animal degree.

ideally you would prob try and work in a lab somewhere for a few years and get experience of how it works and then get involved in animal breeding studies, seems to be where the money is going to be in a couple of years in Europe.

if you are really focused on getting the best possible degree out of agriculture, students that have went to agricultural colleges and then progressed to UCD have stood out to employers in recent years as having more rounded and broader degrees.

Its all up to yourself what you want to do but just bare in mind that agri science in UCD is no push over. Biology is prob one of the easiest subjects in first year, you also have to deal with chemistry, physics, maths and bio-statistics in second year. if you are doing animal science you also have to do genetics till fourth year which isnt easy but needs work.

believe me coming from a farm to UCD will not give you an advantage, it used to make me cringe when result time came in the campus and guys with no farms and no idea of farming were coming out on top every time, i suppose what im trying to say is dont go up there expecting to be standing beside tractors and driving them and learning about good farming methods because you wont. An agri degree does not produce farmers, it produces researchers and specialists for behind the scenes.

Best of luck anyways, you should deffo go for it, even the social side of it will stay with you for a long time after you qualify.

Ginja Ninja

thank you very much

i already knew about the social life from the open day

and im not your standard culchie i am doing honours maths phys/chem(small school) biology and maths
it was the lab end of things i was aiming for i simply added in the farming background for info

this was basically a "what will i be when i grow up" sort of thing

would i be correct in saying i would be in saying genetics/breeding research/more science than animal end of things?
(sorry,for the terrible typing)

polevault

It all depends where you want to go with your degree. Generaly alot of animal science graduates end up in Fermoy in cork researching milk, or Grange researching beef breeding or lab work. Its a very good degree because it is considered very broad. If you really want to know what you will be when you grow up try getting onto the teagasc website for a look around and have a look at the employement offers, when you see what type of degrees they are looking for, for certain jobs you will get an idea of what you will be qualified as and what sort of job you will get out of it. You will also notice that alot of them find postgraduate degrees desirable so that is also an option for you. Seems to be alot of people doing postgrads now. Another interesting site to look at is the ASA website but it has alot of offers for Agri business people but these jobs are not out of your scope either, so its all up to you what direction you want to take.