About

SciVet at Colorado State University is a one-week summer program for high school students interested in science and veterinary medicine, hosted by CSU's Natural Sciences Education and Outreach Center in Fort Collins. The program runs June 22–26, 2026, from 8:30am to 4:30pm daily, with a cap of 21 students. Residential tuition is $1,800; commuter tuition is $1,200. Scholarships are available. The application required a 500-word essay explaining why the student wants to attend.

What makes SciVet unusual within the pre-vet program landscape is its breadth of scientific framing. Rather than focusing narrowly on clinical veterinary skills, the week spans topics that wouldn't be out of place in a field ecology or conservation science program: wolf ecology, native bee research, dendrochronology, water quality assessment, wildlife research, equine-assisted therapy, integrative veterinary medicine, and scientific illustration. Students carry out hands-on investigations both in the lab and outdoors — moderate hiking is part of the program — and receive individual mentoring from CSU faculty, staff, and guest presenters. The program sits at the intersection of veterinary medicine and natural sciences more broadly, which makes it a better fit for students drawn to environmental science or wildlife alongside clinical animal care than for students focused exclusively on companion animal medicine.

Colorado State's College of Veterinary Medicine and Biomedical Sciences is one of the country's leading veterinary colleges, consistently ranked among the top programs nationally, and that institutional depth gives SciVet access to faculty and facilities well beyond what most one-week programs can offer. Students are permitted to attend only once due to capacity constraints.

For a high schooler in or near Colorado who is curious about where veterinary medicine meets ecological science, SciVet is one of the more distinctive short programs available — broader in scope than most vet camps and grounded in a university that takes both sides of that equation seriously.