A plain-language walkthrough of setting up your clinic, creating postings, reviewing applicants, scheduling students, onboarding checklists, reviews, and giving your team access — everything between creating an account and hosting a great externship.
Your Account & Clinic
Setting up is two steps: first your personal login (name, email, password), then your clinic's profile (practice basics, address, hours, and description). You can skip clinic setup and come back to it, but you won't be able to post an opening until it's done.
Your dashboard's Getting Started checklist tracks four things: setting up your practice profile, creating your first listing, reviewing applicants, and turning on email notifications — it disappears once all four are checked off.
We email a verification link when you sign up — you'll need to confirm it before logging in. Forgot your password? Use the "Forgot password" link on the sign-in page to get a reset link (valid for 1 hour). There's currently no separate "change password" option once logged in — you'd use the same forgot-password flow.
If you manage more than one practice, you don't need separate logins — click "+ Add clinic" from your dashboard to attach another practice to your account, then use the Switch Clinic button (only visible once you have 2+) to move between them. Everything you see — listings, applicants, calendar — always reflects whichever clinic is currently active.
Creating a Posting
Each posting describes one opening and controls exactly who can see and apply to it. Here's what goes into one:
Add up to 5 questions of your own choosing — students must answer any marked "required" before they can submit:
Turn on "References required" and pick how many (1–3) a student needs on file before they can apply. You'll see each completed reference — structured ratings or an uploaded letter — right from the applicant's card.
Optional, and separate from Specialty above — filters narrow who the posting is even shown to, rather than describing the role. Leave all blank to show it to every student. You can filter by:
- Program type — Veterinary Student, Undergraduate/Pre-vet, High School
- Year — any combination, e.g. 3rd Year + 4th Year + Intern
- Veterinary school — restrict to students from specific schools
Reviewing Applicants
Open a posting's applicant list to see everyone who's applied — their school, year, résumé, cover note, answers to your questions, and completed references, all in one card. Star a candidate to pin them to the top as a favorite.
Move a student through their application with a single status dropdown:
Choosing "Not Selected" at any point notifies the student and clears the application. Note: you'll need to have signed VetMatch's Clinic Participation Agreement (done during signup) before you can change any applicant's status.
Scheduling Students
The Externs tab on your dashboard is a calendar of everyone confirmed at your clinic — toggle between Calendar and List view. Rows come from two places:
- Added automatically the moment a student accepts your offer
- Full profile and application already on file
- Use "+ Add Student" for externs you scheduled outside VetMatch
- Name, email, dates, a calendar color, and private notes
- Optionally send them an "Invite to VetMatch" link that pre-fills a signup form with what you entered
Click any date to add someone starting that day, or click an existing entry to edit it. Past placements collapse into a "Past Externs" list so the calendar stays focused on what's ahead.
Onboarding Checklists
Build one reusable checklist for your clinic — it's not per-posting, it's per-clinic — and it's automatically assigned to every student the moment they accept an offer (as long as it's turned on and has at least one step).
The "Active Onboardings" list shows every student's progress as a bar — X of Y tasks complete. Open any student to see task-by-task detail, download what they've uploaded, and either Waive a task they don't need to do or Mark Complete it on their behalf.
Reviews & Feedback
Once you mark an externship complete, the student is invited to leave feedback in two separate forms, both viewable from your Reviews tab:
- Star rating + written review, shown on your public clinic profile
- Goes through a quick moderation check before it appears
- Read-only for you — there's currently no way to post a public reply
- Category ratings (supervision, learning opportunities, workload, facilities, culture) plus optional notes
- Sent privately, straight to you — never shown publicly
- Always anonymous — you'll see the student's school/year, never their name
Prefer not to show reviews to prospective students yet? Use the "Visible to students" toggle on the Reviews tab — you can still see everything yourself, it just won't affect your public rating until you turn it back on. (Separately, your Practice Profile tab has a "Show on public profile" toggle that controls whether your phone/email are public — your contact info is always shared with a student once you make them an offer, regardless of that setting.)
Team Access
Give coworkers their own login to the same clinic dashboard — separate from the multi-clinic switching described above, this is about multiple people sharing one clinic. From Settings → Team Access, an owner can invite a teammate by email; they'll get a link to set their own password and land directly in your clinic's dashboard, no separate verification step needed.
- Everything a member can do
- Invite new teammates
- Remove team members
- Manage listings and applicants
- Cannot invite or remove other accounts
Getting Help
If anything on this page doesn't match what you're seeing, or something's not working as expected, reach out and we'll sort it out.