A recruiting email lands with a headline number: $140,000 starting salary for companion animal medicine, sign-on bonus included. What it does not say is what that new grad is carrying against it. AVMA's own tracking says the answer, on average, is $212,499 in DVM debt for anyone who borrowed at all. Divide one by the other and you get the number the recruiting flyer skips: the debt-to-income ratio.
We think that ratio deserves the same billing as the salary line, because AVMA treats it that way internally. It is the metric the association uses to judge whether a graduating class is walking into something workable or something that will follow them for a decade.
The Salary Line
For the class of 2025, AVMA's Senior Survey put average real starting salary at $129,000 for grads who landed full-time work, reported in 2024 dollars. That number splits by track: $140,000 in companion animal practice, where 72.6% of the class landed; $112,000 in mixed practice; $100,000 in food animal practice; $95,000 in equine, the lowest of the four.
Not everyone got an offer. AVMA's data shows roughly 60% of the class went straight into full-time practice, 28% went on to internships, residencies, or further degrees, and about 7% had no job offer at all by the time they were surveyed.
The Debt Line
Here is the number that does not make the flyer. Average DVM debt across the entire class of 2025, including the 17.9% who graduated with none, was $174,484. Among only those who borrowed, it was $212,499. Both are up from 2022, when the same figures were $153,972 and $186,788.
The spread inside that average is wide. Nearly one in five graduated debt-free. Forty percent owed $200,000 or more. Just under 6% owed $400,000 or more. A single average hides a class that split roughly into thirds: manageable, heavy, and crushing.
Tuition explains most of the gap. AVMA reported 2025 median tuition and fees at $39,097 a year in-state and $58,412 a year out-of-state. Run those through four years and a program's total sticker price can land anywhere from about $78,588 to $261,914 depending on residency status and school, per AAVMC's cost data. Where you went to school moves your number more than where you end up working.
The Wider Gap
Debt does not stop mattering once the first job ends. AVMA's 2025 report put average real income across all practicing veterinarians, not just new grads, at about $154,000 in 2024 dollars. That is roughly $25,000 above the $129,000 new-grad average, a gap that has been shrinking for two decades. In a November 2024 analysis of the 2024 Senior Survey and Census of Veterinarians, AVMA noted the difference between new-grad and overall veterinarian real income was 93% in 2001. By that same measure it had narrowed to 19%. New grads are catching up to career veterinarians faster than career veterinarians' pay is growing, which sounds like good news until you notice the $212,499 average debt load among borrowers is close to a full year and a half of even that higher $154,000 income.
The Ratio AVMA Watches
Divide debt by starting salary and the class of 2025 lands at 1.4-to-1, the same ratio as the class of 2024. Chris Doherty, DVM, MBA, CBV, AVMA's chief economist and director of the Veterinary Economics Division, told AVMA News in October 2025: "The last couple of years, we have seen the debt burden start to tick back up, and 2025 continues that pattern. So, this is something that we monitor very closely."
That 1.4 sounds abstract until you compare it to where the profession has been. In the 2010s, the ratio routinely topped 2.0. From 2015 to 2017 alone it ran from 2.04 down to 1.86. After AVMA's 2016 Fix the Debt Summit, the association worked with veterinary colleges and practice groups to push the number down, and by most measures it has worked. A DVM starting today owes less relative to salary than one who started ten years ago.
Where It Breaks
The average, though, is not the number that determines your monthly loan payment. For the class of 2024, the last year AVMA published a full distribution, 74.9% of grads carried a ratio below 2.0 and 58.8% were below 1.5. That is the majority AVMA calls manageable. But 12.3% carried a ratio at or above 2.5, a group the association flags as facing real financial strain from day one. If you graduated in the top slice of debt and the bottom slice of salary, the class average of 1.4 tells you nothing about your own contract.
The Signing Bonus Trick
The 2025 AVMA economic report also found that just over 16% of practicing veterinarians received a signing bonus in their most recent contract. Bonuses read well on an offer sheet, but they are not the same instrument as debt relief. A signing bonus is typically paid through payroll, taxed as ordinary income, and frequently comes with a repayment clause if you leave the practice before a set date, often one to two years. Structured loan repayment assistance, paid out over time as a standing benefit, functions differently and is worth asking for by name rather than accepting a bonus as a substitute.
Your Own Number
The one thing every new grad or job-hopping associate can do before signing anything: calculate your actual ratio. Take your total DVM debt and divide it by the gross salary on the offer, not the take-home pay, not the bonus, not the productivity ceiling. If the result sits meaningfully above 1.4, treat it as a negotiating fact, not a personal failing. Ask what the practice or corporate group offers beyond a bonus: structured repayment, tuition assistance, or a written commitment that survives your first performance review. AAVMC's Cost Comparison Tool publishes school-specific median debt figures if you want to check your alma mater against the national average before you compare yourself to a classmate's offer. The flyer will always lead with the salary. Bring your own ratio to the table instead.