Hej hej!
With the start of autumn, the end of my first course at the Animal Science master program is coming closer. After this two-month experience, I decided that now I have enough information to talk about how is it like to be an Animal Science student at SLU, and what can you expect from your introductory course “Animal Science – a scientific approach.”
Since I ended up writing quite a bit (again), I decided that instead of a long post, I would divide it into two smaller ones!
Studying Animal Science at SLU
As you might expect, the Animal Science program is suited for anyone who is interested in animals and wishes to further their knowledge in the area of animal research. This doesn’t mean that all students are veterinarians or work with livestock husbandry, however; actually the background of the people that is currently taking the course is extremely vast – which is kind of refreshing since you are able to hear different perspectives when discussing a topic.
The Animal Science program is constructed in a way that allows you to freely pick the courses you want to study. The only courses that all students belonging to the same generation take together are the first introductory course, and the last course, which is like an introductory course for writing your degree project or thesis.
All courses within the program belong to one of three disciplines: nutrition, animal welfare and behavior, and genetics and breeding. You can either focus on the courses that belong to one discipline, or combine them—it’s really up to you! Although I would like to recommend making the course selection carefully and thinking about which courses would be most useful for your future goals.
As a final note I would like to add that, unlike other countries, you don’t have to decide on master thesis topic before starting your studies. Actually, you have about a year of studies before you need to choose a thesis director and a topic. This gives you a lot of freedom and the opportunity to make a more informed choice about what and with whom you want to work with.
I hope this information was of some use for you! I’ll be leaving a link for the second part here, where I talk about the first course in the Animal Science program.
Don’t forget to leave a comment and I hope you have a nice day,
Anna