Honest note first: no breaking news about Shauna Rae today. This is a deep dive into one sentence she said three years ago.
“But as a child who wanted to be a vet her entire life, I always wanted to go to Cornell.” Shauna Rae gave that sentence to The List on November 1, 2022, the day Season 2 premiered. She was 22, and she did not hesitate. Not fashion school. Not a business degree. Cornell, to become a vet. Three years later, she has never taken it back — and she has never enrolled, either.
The Cornell Sentence Nobody Noticed
The college answer landed quietly near the end of an interview full of bigger headlines — and that is why it stuck with the fans who caught it. Shauna named the school attached to a job she had wanted since childhood, after childhood brain cancer treatment left her 3-foot-10 with pituitary dwarfism. Cornell was not a brand name to her. It was where the childhood plan went.
The show ran two seasons, ending October 1, 2023, and TLC has never renewed or canceled it. Shauna built a life without a timeslot instead: a million-plus TikTok followers under @shaunarae99, and a home of her own — “technically alone,” as she put it on the Unplanned podcast in January 2025. The Cornell sentence survived all of that untouched.
Vet School or Business Degree: The Split She Admitted
Shauna did not pretend the choice was simple: “When it comes to college and education, I am very split. … Growing up, I was interested in [being a] vet and anatomy and fashion. I’m definitely split between going towards vet school or going towards a business degree … [whether I want to] create businesses or help animals for the rest of my life.”
She even had a plan for each road. Fashion business meant FIT. Vet school meant Cornell — the only school she named with the words “my entire life” attached. Business interests her. Helping animals for the rest of her life is something she has wanted since she was a child.
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The show itself backs her up. In Season 1, Episode 4, “Get Off Your High Horse,” Shauna tried hands-on farm work, hit her own limitations, and argued with her sister Tara over it. It was a 22-year-old learning, on camera, what her body would and would not let her do around animals — and refusing to walk away anyway.
The same season, she interviewed for a job with animals and started at a dog daycare, where a client called her the “Little Helper” in a TLC clip titled “Can Shauna Handle The Big Dogs?” She did not quit. Stack that next to the milestones fans rank highest, and the pattern is hard to miss: given the easy room or the room with the animals, she picked the animals.
Three Years Later, the Dream Is Still Open
So where does the Cornell dream stand in November 2026? Exactly where she left it: stated and unacted on. No enrollment has been confirmed, no Cornell application reported, and Shauna has not withdrawn the wish — while the biggest question of her education sits unanswered, the same way her show sits in limbo.
Her quietest ambition has the clearest address: a vet school, a campus, a degree with her name on it. The life she built off camera proves she can finish hard things — the question is whether the childhood dream is one of them.
So pick a side: Team Cornell — Shauna should chase the vet degree she has wanted since she was a kid, scrubs and student loans and all — or Team FIT, because the fashion business she could build tomorrow beats years of vet school? If Shauna announced tomorrow that she was enrolling somewhere, which acceptance letter should she open first?
