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Over the last few decades students’ expectations towards higher education, including the veterinary students have changed significantly. Understanding students’ motivations is a prerequisite for adapting to these changes. The aim of our research was to understand the motivational factors of veterinary students' career choice.

The questionnaire on which the present study is based was completed by students enrolled in the Hungarian veterinary medicine course of the University of Veterinary Medicine Budapest (UVMB) between 2016-2020. The results show that all of the students selected the veterinary doctorate as their first choice, and only 0.9% of them chose the self-financing form of financing. Of the 548 respondents, 73.9% (405) were women and 26.1% (143) were men. The gender ratios did not change significantly over the years studied, and the results confirmed that women are also predominant in the veterinary profession in Hungary. Most students start university within 1-2 years after high school graduation, with an average age of 19.8 years.

The majority of the enrolled students at the UVMB came from smaller towns (33.82%) and Budapest (24.50%), while 20.84-20.84% of students from county towns and municipalities during the period under review. Most students came from Budapest and Pest counties (24.6% and 17.2% respectively), with the rest of the country lagging significantly behind, led by Győr-Moson-Sopron county (6.5%), Csongrád county (5.5%) and Hajdú-Bihar county (5.0%).

For the enrolled students the most important factors in their choice of the major of course and the university were job prospects, the prestige of the profession and practice-oriented courses, but student life and the reputation of the institution were also important. As the only institution in the country offering veterinary training, scholarships (although 65% of students are interested in scholarships abroad), dormitory accommodation and distance from home were unsurprisingly the least important factors. As expected, motivational factors differed slightly between men and women.

In terms of forms of information and contact, most students prefer electronic means, with almost all students visiting Felvi.hu and Univet.hu, and were mostly satisfied with the information content. The institutional publications, the Open Day and the Educatio exhibition were also successful, but less than half of the students visited the latter two. Information on the admissions process was least preferred via landline telephone and secondary school information fairs.