Class of 2020 Applicants

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
You both are wonderful. Thank you! :)

Members don't see this ad.
 
I'm taking the same course and haven't completed it yet, so I asked VMCAS. They said that you don't need to send in a transcript for any schools for which you haven't completed a course. But put it on there to show that you're in the process of taking it, and once completed, send the transcript directly your designated schools.

Thanks for this information! I still have to take biochem and am in the process of dealing with admissions to my state school. So I'm not even registered for it yet. Urgh. But based on the information VMCAS gave you, I should probably list it anyway, then.

Moving to a new state right before application season is super fun! Everyone should give it a try! :bang:
 
Out of curiosity, has anyone played sports in college? I played division I soccer and i'm trying to figure out how much I should talk about this since it had a significant impact on my college career.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Moving to a new state right before application season is super fun! Everyone should give it a try! :bang:

I'm right there with you. Paying out of state tuition for those last few pre-req's is even more enjoyable :sick:
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Unless I totally read the screen wrong, which would probably happen tell you the truth, I just got 159 V and 160 Q.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 7 users
Out of curiosity, has anyone played sports in college? I played division I soccer and i'm trying to figure out how much I should talk about this since it had a significant impact on my college career.
I didn't play sports, but was heavily involved in theatre (20+ hours a week normally, and even more on performance weeks), and talked about it a good amount in my application. It was a huge part of my life, a huge commitment, and shaped who I am as a person. I think playing soccer would absolutely be the same!
 
Do we send our GRE scores to the schools we are applying to? or VMCAS?? I'M SO CONFUSED
 
GRE to schools directly, transcripts to VMCAS only!
 
I didn't play sports, but was heavily involved in theatre (20+ hours a week normally, and even more on performance weeks), and talked about it a good amount in my application. It was a huge part of my life, a huge commitment, and shaped who I am as a person. I think playing soccer would absolutely be the same!

Thank you for answering! I'm finding it difficult to incorporate it, as you said it was a huge commitment and it definitely shaped who I am now from when I started. The personal statement is so short I barely got a chance to cover it in the amount I thought it should've been necessary
 
How long does it normally take for schools to receive GRE scores? Also, some of VMCAS GPA calculations are rough! Haha.
 
Also, some of VMCAS GPA calculations are rough! Haha.

Tell me about it. It sucks because extenuating circumstances entirely out of my control brought some calculations down quite a bit. Oh well, that's what the explanation statement is for, but still, it stings a little to see those calculations.

There sure are a lot of them!
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Nice work! You did better than I did, for sure. My best score on the retake was actually a 6 (99%) in Analytical Writing... which no one gives a flying crap about. Naturally. I beat the 50% mark for everything, but I am still super disappointed.

Yeah, they... uh... hurt quite a bit. All I'll say is that it's good that schools use their own GPA calculations because seeing some of the numbers VMCAS came up with literally made me wince. :unsure:

My best score was my writing too. Tufts cares though! But I don't think any other places I'm applying to did.

Also... What GPAs does VMCAS calculate? Last 45/Cumulative/Science? And how is anyone surprised by what VMCAS says?
 
Nice work! You did better than I did, for sure. My best score on the retake was actually a 6 (99%) in Analytical Writing... which no one gives a flying crap about. Naturally. I beat the 50% mark for everything, but I am still super disappointed.

Yeah, they... uh... hurt quite a bit. All I'll say is that it's good that schools use their own GPA calculations because seeing some of the numbers VMCAS came up with literally made me wince. :unsure:

Thank you! I still don't know how I feel about that GRE. At the end of the day, yes, we may all begin at a baseline score, but for all I know, I could have had a tremendous day at guessing for the questions I was unsure about. You can always eliminate answers and have a general feeling for certain questions, but then it comes down to sheer guessing; sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. So me doing "better" than you, I'm not sure. My score is higher, but maybe I just got luckier.

I think the analytical writing should be weighted more, based on what I've heard on these forums. The ability to masterfully craft a piece of writing, especially in a short space of time, takes a certain type of smarts. Those smarts are developed through years and years of practice. You can memorize vocab and learn tricks for the quantitative over the course of a month, but I hesitate to say that one can equally improve in such a short period of time on essay writing.
 
I think the analytical writing should be weighted more, based on what I've heard on these forums. The ability to masterfully craft a piece of writing, especially in a short space of time, takes a certain type of smarts. Those smarts are developed through years and years of practice. You can memorize vocab and learn tricks for the quantitative over the course of a month, but I hesitate to say that one can equally improve in such a short period of time on essay writing.

You know that the best predictor for the score for the writing section is the length of your essay and not the content right? It would be a good indicator of ability if and only if the grading actually reflected your abilities... but we're talking about ETS's standard testing graders having that ability...
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
You know that the best predictor for the score for the writing section is the length of your essay and not the content right? It would be a good indicator of ability if and only if the grading actually reflected your abilities... but we're talking about ETS's standard testing graders having that ability...

I'm not entirely sure that's a true statement. Maybe on average, but I've seen high scores on short very short essays. See Magoosh and Manhatten Prep examples.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
I'm not entirely sure that's a true statement. Maybe on average, but I've seen high scores on short very short essays. See Magoosh and Manhatten Prep examples.
I dunno, that's what I was told during my prep course back in 2006 or so... probably with Princeton Review. But regardless of whether that is true or not, I absolutely do not believe in ETS's ability to subjectively grade essays in a meaningful way.

Either way, standardized testing is just an unfortunate meh way to eval people as there are very bright people who just suck at them. And this is coming from someone who generally rocks at testing.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
You know that the best predictor for the score for the writing section is the length of your essay and not the content right? It would be a good indicator of ability if and only if the grading actually reflected your abilities... but we're talking about ETS's standard testing graders having that ability...

Well dang, no wonder my writing score was so subpar. I'm a concise writer but I thought my responses were solid.
 
I dunno, that's what I was told during my prep course back in 2006 or so... probably with Princeton Review. But regardless of whether that is true or not, I absolutely do not believe in ETS's ability to subjectively grade essays in a meaningful way.

Either way, standardized testing is just an unfortunate meh way to eval people as there are very bright people who just suck at them. And this is coming from someone who generally rocks at testing.

From my reading it's not length but structure. So pretty much if you have an intro with a descriptive thesis that makes a definitive argument, plus two decent example paragraphs, and a quick summary conclusion, you can get at least a 5.
 
"Get your number two pencils out!"
That video totally reminded me. I totes lost all respect for essay type standardized testing when I got my AP scores back during high school. The prompt for my US History essay was about how FDR saved the US from the Great Depression. I remember reading the question and thinking, "huh, I thought Kennedy was the depression guy, but thanks for the heads up" and wrote something that sounded nice. I got a 5. I grew up in MA so I had stuff prior to 1776 down pretty good, but anything later than that I was like totally clueless. Like, I honestly couldn't have told you what Vietnam or the Korean wars were about, what years they took place in, or who were presidents at the time.

And for one of my AP English prompts I wasn't in the mood for writing essays on the day of the test esp because I was pissed off that I was forced to sit in a church for it. So I drew a picture of multicultural Jesus instead of the essay. I think I still passed it. The whole thing was such a joke.
 
And for one of my AP English prompts I wasn't in the mood for writing essays on the day of the test esp because I was pissed off that I was forced to sit in a church for it. So I drew a picture of multicultural Jesus instead of the essay. I think I still passed it. The whole thing was such a joke.
I completely skipped one of my AP World History essays and also still passed. :laugh: I think it was my last AP test of 4 that year, I knew nothing about the topic, and I was just so done.
 
I did both AP U.S. History and AP World... both were jokes. I'm pretty sure that I also skipped at least one of the essays and still got 4 or 5 on them.

And this is coming from the person who just barely graduated high school!

Actually, my school just started offering IB courses. I really wish that they had it while I was still around, because it seems to be held in much higher regard than AP.
Combination of AP and IB exams got me 37 credits. It was pretty great. But IB is kind of insane. Pulled more all nighters than I ever did in college.
 
AP Econ. Multiple choice questions were a breeze. But when my class got to the essay portion, none of us had a chance. I wrote my essay on how I will probably not use econ ever again. Guy sitting next to me drew boats and sharks on his.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Combination of AP and IB exams got me 37 credits. It was pretty great. But IB is kind of insane. Pulled more all nighters than I ever did in college.
That was AP Latin for me. Pretty sure one of my classmates wrote his essays in Bengali.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Ugh, WHAT DID THEY TO DO VMCAS? This morning, one of the doctors who's writing a letter for me said she tried submitting it last night. She kept getting an access denied error.

I just went in to add another evaluation request for someone else, and after I clicked "save," nothing happened. So I clicked it again, and still nothing happened. I clicked on the "evaluations" tab to see if it showed there, and I got an error message saying I had reached the maximum number of evaluations (which is not possible - this was my FOURTH), and NONE of my evaluation requests are listed. Just the error message and a "create a new evaluation" button. And of course I tried to go to the main page, and it gave me a 404. Closed the tab and opened the main portal/login page and got a 404.

They did scheduled maintenance yesterday. I should've known that "scheduled maintenance" means "let's f- everything up and give the customer service people something to actually do on Monday."

+pissed+
 
Just checked and I can't even get to the VMCAS login page. Perhaps the maintenance continues this evening? o_O
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Ugh, not again! All my letters are in now, and I was planning to recheck everything tonight and then submit. I guess not though. Even if it starts working again, I don't want to submit when they're having errors and have it not go through.

Hopefully next year they won't completely overhaul the system again, and actually have an application service that works.
 
Start the semester tomorrow; last one for me! For all the rest of you starting a new semester, kick butt. Have the rest of my CSU supp, but I'm basically applied to vet school! Pretty wild, I remember laying in a hospital bed 3.5 years ago, newly paralyzed, and making the decision to go to vet school; pretty cool feeling to see that I followed through on that. If I don't get in this cycle, I'll just try again next year.

Thanks for the support and help everyone.

/end sappy post
 
  • Like
Reactions: 4 users
Ugh, WHAT DID THEY TO DO VMCAS? This morning, one of the doctors who's writing a letter for me said she tried submitting it last night. She kept getting an access denied error.

I just went in to add another evaluation request for someone else, and after I clicked "save," nothing happened. So I clicked it again, and still nothing happened. I clicked on the "evaluations" tab to see if it showed there, and I got an error message saying I had reached the maximum number of evaluations (which is not possible - this was my FOURTH), and NONE of my evaluation requests are listed. Just the error message and a "create a new evaluation" button. And of course I tried to go to the main page, and it gave me a 404. Closed the tab and opened the main portal/login page and got a 404.

They did scheduled maintenance yesterday. I should've known that "scheduled maintenance" means "let's f- everything up and give the customer service people something to actually do on Monday."

+pissed+

Just checked and I can't even get to the VMCAS login page. Perhaps the maintenance continues this evening? o_O

Ugh, not again! All my letters are in now, and I was planning to recheck everything tonight and then submit. I guess not though. Even if it starts working again, I don't want to submit when they're having errors and have it not go through.

Hopefully next year they won't completely overhaul the system again, and actually have an application service that works.
:whoa:
You know, I was just thinking this morning about how I probably should have waited until a little closer to deadline to finish and submit my VMCAS... now I'm glad that I didn't. All I've heard for the past two days is how the service keeps going down and that, upon coming back, everything is remarkably somehow even more broken than it was before.

I hope the website comes back online soon and that everything resolves on your ends! That must be beyond frustrating. I also imagine that VMCAS's customer service line is going to be flooded tomorrow if this keeps up.
 
So I just logged into VMCAS to see for myself exactly what is going on. It seems to be back online for the time being in case anyone really needs to work on it now, but with everything that has been going on (at least from what I've heard secondhand from others), I don't know if I would expect to be terribly stable for the rest of the night...

Now. Back to rewriting my biochemistry notes. :lock:
 
I am also able to login now and everything seems to be in order, from what I can tell. Oy vey.
 
Remember everyone, we're pretty much beta-testing the new VMCAS. Yey for us.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Maybe you guys can answer a question for me

So I sent in my application with 3/4 eLors in. My fourth recommendation can still send in his letter right?
 
Maybe you guys can answer a question for me

So I sent in my application with 3/4 eLors in. My fourth recommendation can still send in his letter right?


Yes, your fourth can still be submitted!
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Well I've been wrestling with my school for weeks now and I'm going to try and finally order my transcript today because they claim that they've sorted everything out (gee, thanks guys). If I'm successful, with express mail, VMCAS should get it by the end of the week. Not ideal since I wanted to submit a week ago, but as long as I'm in before the deadline and there are no major issues then all will be well. So here's hoping my school didn't screw me over again and I can get this last piece of the puzzle out. *sigh*
 
Well I've been wrestling with my school for weeks now and I'm going to try and finally order my transcript today because they claim that they've sorted everything out (gee, thanks guys). If I'm successful, with express mail, VMCAS should get it by the end of the week. Not ideal since I wanted to submit a week ago, but as long as I'm in before the deadline and there are no major issues then all will be well. So here's hoping my school didn't screw me over again and I can get this last piece of the puzzle out. *sigh*

I hope everything is sorted and you have no more delays! That is so frustrating.



Just submitted VCMAS! Now to wait for it to verify.
 
is anyone else doing the professional transcript entry?
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
is anyone else doing the professional transcript entry?

Yes, I did it. It took about 2 weeks for them to enter mine, but I got my transcripts in very early. Not sure if they have more people staffed now to shorten the turnaround.
 
I hope everything is sorted and you have no more delays! That is so frustrating.



Just submitted VCMAS! Now to wait for it to verify.

Yes, it's been oh so frustrating.

But they did let me order the transcripts today so hopefully everything processes and gets mailed like it should. I can pick up my copy on Wednesday--at least that's what they tell me.

I'm trying to be positive about this setback and look at it from the perspective of "well here's some extra time to work on my PS and such that I wouldn't have given myself otherwise".
 
I'm a 4th time applicant, got accepted to western university last application cycle, but distance was too far and tuition too high. I wasn't sure if I was even going to apply this year but decided last minute that I was. I just submitted my application yesterday and sent in transcripts last week. Hoping they receive them in time to get everything entered by the 15th. At least all my ELORS are in. This is my very last time applying. Only applying to UGA. Last ditch effort kinda thing.

Good luck to everyone.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Hey all... since I'm returning to school next week, I was wondering whether it is more appropriate to get gifts/cards for my advisor and recommenders when I return to school or if most people do this after they have already heard back from schools (whether good or bad) in spring. I am guessing either is fine, but wasn't sure if one makes more sense and was interested in other opinions. I'm kind of leaning towards waiting at this point!
 
Top