Future DVMs- C/O 2021!

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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Devastating said:
I don't think the GPAs get calculated until after you've submitted the entire app AND everything gets verified (which may take a while). At least, that's how it was last year. I submitted on the day of deadline and remember waiting anxiously for my app to be verified/GPA calculations appear.
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Yes and actually you input your own primary cumulative gpa into vmcas. So you have to calculate your own and write it in. So each individual school is going to calculate your GPA when they look at your application...
 
vetmedhead said:
I saved a copy of the one that was sent to each school in case I ever wanted to reference them for a future application cycle/before interviews. It also helped me to see what the schools were given!

I'm pretty Type A though, so that's probably I saved everything.
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Luckily I wrote everything on Google docs and then just copy and pasted into vmcas. Is there a way for us to get that pdf now?
 
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Coopah said:
So I have a question regarding research experience. I had undergraduate research done for a class, not just a standard research project but a capstone where the entire class was a research project we designed and carried out. I was published by the school, but not in any publications, more just for the school. They do this with everyone's project. Does this count as experience? Thanks for your input.

On a totally different note, three of my evaporators have submitted already! I'm so excited, I just hope they were really good.
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Evaporators haha that made me laugh
 
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I work at a clinic that has 4 doctors. For my veterinary experience should I put hours separately for each doctor? I often work under two of them at a time during a single day so not sure how I should separate any hours I've worked for a specific doctor. Thoughts?
 
emlady09 said:
I work at a clinic that has 4 doctors. For my veterinary experience should I put hours separately for each doctor? I often work under two of them at a time during a single day so not sure how I should separate any hours I've worked for a specific doctor. Thoughts?
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I worked at one with 4 doctors, too. I just listed it as one experience, mainly because I was only having one of them (the practice owner) write me a letter of recommendation. If you are having more than one of them write you one, maybe you can separate your hours based on that?
 
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emlady09 said:
I work at a clinic that has 4 doctors. For my veterinary experience should I put hours separately for each doctor? I often work under two of them at a time during a single day so not sure how I should separate any hours I've worked for a specific doctor. Thoughts?
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I would put it as a single experience. I worked at a clinic with 3 doctors and did that, and listed the practice owner as the main vet for the experience.
 
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Do we not put in study abroad courses until we do the transcript review? I did a study abroad course for veterinary experience and i'm not sure I will be able to get credit for it through my school. I still get a transcript through the college it's run through though so should I put that in as a separate school or just wait until transcript review like it says? I hope that makes sense.

On VMCAS it says "Enter your courses first. After you enter all courses, you will start Transcript Review where you will be asked to identify courses that are Repeated, Advanced Placement, Other Tests, Honors, and Study Abroad."
 
scott1818 said:
Do we not put in study abroad courses until we do the transcript review? I did a study abroad course for veterinary experience and i'm not sure I will be able to get credit for it through my school. I still get a transcript through the college it's run through though so should I put that in as a separate school or just wait until transcript review like it says? I hope that makes sense.

On VMCAS it says "Enter your courses first. After you enter all courses, you will start Transcript Review where you will be asked to identify courses that are Repeated, Advanced Placement, Other Tests, Honors, and Study Abroad."
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You would put in the course before doing transcript review, then during transcript review you indicate that it is study abroad
 
What are y'all putting for achievements? Obviously academic achievements (Dean's Honor Roll, President's Honor Roll, out of state achievement scholarship, top 10% of graduating HS class, etc), but I'm not sure what else to put. :eek:
 
1doggeek said:
I'm pretty sure GRE says it takes 10-15 days to get scores back. So technically, August 31st gives you 15 days. Probably not a good idea to take it that late, but it would be possible.
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I just looked on the ETS website and yes, this is correct. If you take the computer-based test it will take 10-15 days.

Check out this link:
https://www.ets.org/gre/revised_general/faq/

Click on the third question under "scoring and reporting"
 
cdoconn said:
What are y'all putting for achievements? Obviously academic achievements (Dean's Honor Roll, President's Honor Roll, out of state achievement scholarship, top 10% of graduating HS class, etc), but I'm not sure what else to put. :eek:
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I forgot about Dean's List! Thanks! The only problem is...since I made the Dean's List multiple times...which time do I list in the achievements section? Should I list the first time and then say in the explanation that I made the Dean list multiple times?

We are allowed to talk about high school accomplishments? I never knew that. I wasn't sure how far back we were allowed to go. So I can mention that I was in NHS in high school? And I wasn't top 10% in high school, but I was top 20%. Is top 20% still worth mentioning?
 
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FWIW, I was top 20% and NHS/Beta in high school and I didn't mention those things. People will say different things on this, but I just didn't find high school worth mentioning unless I did something extraordinary, like a big project or went to a national competition or something. Most of us have been high acheivers always and have the same type of HS accomplishments, so I didn't really consider them as something to help me stand out.

Bottom line: you're allowed to mention high school, but how does it separate you from the 800 other students in the pile at any given school?
 
brownswissfanatic said:
I forgot about Dean's List! Thanks! The only problem is...since I made the Dean's List multiple times...which time do I list in the achievements section? Should I list the first time and then say in the explanation that I made the Dean list multiple times?

We are allowed to talk about high school accomplishments? I never knew that. I wasn't sure how far back we were allowed to go. So I can mention that I was in NHS in high school? And I wasn't top 10% in high school, but I was top 20%. Is top 20% still worth mentioning?
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About dean's list: the VMCAS website says "For honors, awards, or scholarships received in multiple years or semesters, you may either enter them as multiple entries with the same name, or, if the honor or award was received consecutively, as one entry spanning multiple years."

So you can pick whether to enter it once or multiple times.

And then for high school it says, "List and describe honors, awards, or scholarships you have received, including those in High School."

My philosophy (and it might be a narrowed philosophy, but I'm going to try it) is that I'm going to enter pretty much everything from high school to now. If I have too many awards, the schools can sift through to find the ones they're looking for. But I'd rather have too much, than not put the achievement that they were specifically looking for.


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No reason to undersell yourself, VMCAS asks for high school stuff so put it in. Same for Dean's list - if you have a high GPA it's obvious you'll be on the list, but it's an honour and should go in anyway. I just listed it once and noted the semesters it applied for.
 
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Ok thanks guys...and this may be a stupid question...but what exactly is the difference between an "award" and an "honor?" I realized I'm just blindly listing everything as awards. I figured that Honor Societies should fall under "honors." But "Dean's list" and Cum Laude," I would think honor, but part of me also wants to say award. Maybe I'm just complicating this. I tend to overthink things.
 
brownswissfanatic said:
Ok thanks guys...and this may be a stupid question...but what exactly is the difference between an "award" and an "honor?" I realized I'm just blindly listing everything as awards. I figured that Honor Societies should fall under "honors." But "Dean's list" and Cum Laude," I would think honor, but part of me also wants to say award. Maybe I'm just complicating this. I tend to overthink things.
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I tend to think "award" as money- like a scholarship, and an "honor" being just a paper thing like Dean's List. But I'm sure it'll be okay nonetheless. I overthink everything as well, it's okay.
 
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cdoconn said:
I tend to think "award" as money- like a scholarship, and an "honor" being just a paper thing like Dean's List. But I'm sure it'll be okay nonetheless. I overthink everything as well, it's okay.
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That makes sense to me.
 
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I didn't put high school stuff unless it was really important or a big honor. But it was mainly because I didn't feel like inputing every single little thing. :rolleyes: But I would say if you want to input everything from high school, go for it! School's can sift through what they want. I even put one or two things from middle school because they played a big role for me at the time and weren't offered in high school (won district spelling bee and placed 7th out of 200 kids at the regional bee). I figured if the schools don't want to look at it then they don't have to.
 
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I've forgotten so much from high school. :arghh: I know I did some cool band things but I've forgotten dates and specifics.
 
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PrincessButterCup said:
I've forgotten so much from high school. :arghh: I know I did some cool band things but I've forgotten dates and specifics.
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Same...though I probably have old lists in my google files or something from back when I was in high school and had to get that info together for applying to undergrad colleges (omg how the time has passed! :laugh:). I hadn't added any HS stuff other than vet exp because I didn't know it was "allowed", so I guess since people recommend it I will go back and put some of that stuff in. (definitely not tracking down every little volunteer event though, hrrrng)

And I agree with the honor vs. award thing. I think it was discussed in last year's thread too, but I think of "awards" as being usually one-time things (like scholarships, grants, competition awards) while an "honor" would be something less quantitative, like Dean's list, honor societies, etc.
 
PrincessButterCup said:
I've forgotten so much from high school. :arghh: I know I did some cool band things but I've forgotten dates and specifics.
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Over twenty years ago for me, although I think I still have my letter jacket somewhere. Just as well, I want to forget my high school GPA (I am really glad VMCAS doesn't require it.)
 
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ResoluteMike said:
Over twenty years ago for me, although I think I still have my letter jacket somewhere. Just as well, I want to forget my high school GPA (I am really glad VMCAS doesn't require it.)
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See, I wish we got to use our high school GPA. My school weighted AP classes x 1.15, and I took a bunch of AP classes, so my final GPA out of 100 was 107.45
 
rockatiel said:
Bottom line: you're allowed to mention high school, but how does it separate you from the 800 other students in the pile at any given school?
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You'll never know how it may or may not separate you.

I listed everything from high school, even though I graduated over 10 years ago. There were things I did in high school that I didn't really continue for long after college, and it gave breadth and variety to my application. Maybe they didn't care about NHS and all that jazz, but maybe they did. I'd encourage applicants to not do the admission committees' jobs for them by trying to figure out what they want to hear and what they'll think is important. You could be very wrong about what you think they want to see and you could easily shoot yourself in the foot by playing that guessing game. List it all. If it's not on there, they won't know you did it. They're not going to sit there and assume that every one of the several hundred applicants must've been an overachiever who did XYZ but didn't bother listing it. All they have to go on is what you give them, so give them everything and let them decide what matters.
 
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This may have been asked already, so I apologize if it's a repeat! It's a question about submitting my transcripts for verification.

So, I have all of my grades entered and 2/3 (each from different schools) transcripts sent in. I'm waiting on taking & finishing my summer course to send my 3rd transcript in, which won't be until about August 10th-ish. Is it okay to wait til then to submit? Or should I submit sooner, and add that onto my application later (can I even do that?)?
 
sheltermed said:
This may have been asked already, so I apologize if it's a repeat! It's a question about submitting my transcripts for verification.

So, I have all of my grades entered and 2/3 (each from different schools) transcripts sent in. I'm waiting on taking & finishing my summer course to send my 3rd transcript in, which won't be until about August 10th-ish. Is it okay to wait til then to submit? Or should I submit sooner, and add that onto my application later (can I even do that?)?
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August 10th ish is totally fine! Especially if you're not applying to a school with rolling admissions.


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Taking it tomorrow as well!!!
 
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Thanks... I'm really nervous. I've practiced using Magoosh and Kaplan for the last month but I'm only projected to get 150+/- on each section so I'm hoping I can do better. Would really like to not have to take it again.
 
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Ok so I got a 150V and 154Q... should I retake it? The rest of my app is pretty solid with 3.78 GPA, 1000+ hours of experience in animal and vet with variety, solid LOR's.
 
cheathac said:
Ok so I got a 150V and 154Q... should I retake it? The rest of my app is pretty solid with 3.78 GPA, 1000+ hours of experience in animal and vet with variety, solid LOR's.
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Those scores are right about average for vet admissions from what I've seen... honestly, with your GPA and vet hours being as high as they are, a retake probably isn't worth it unless you feel like you can do significantly better and/or you're applying to schools that weigh GRE especially heavily (eg. UF).
 
@SandstormDVM Well my IS is Purdue and GRE+GPA is 55% of review, but my score is within the range of successful applicants. What other schools weigh the GRE heavily? I'm also applying to NC State, Wisconsin, Washington State, OK State, Missouri, and Iowa State. Thanks!
 
cheathac said:
Thanks... I'm really nervous. I've practiced using Magoosh and Kaplan for the last month but I'm only projected to get 150+/- on each section so I'm hoping I can do better. Would really like to not have to take it again.
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Totally understand. I've been using Magoosh and the ETS book and I'm projected at 150ish for quant and 155ish for verb :cool: I hate math.
 
Got 160V and 153Q... Would prefer a higher quant obviously but I don't think I'll retake it this year at least, as long as the final score isn't any lower. MN is my instate and the only other one in applying to this year is Mizzou.
Spending the weekend backpacking to celebrate being done! :D
 
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Does anyone know if there's a place to put certifications on the app (Like being first aid and CPR certified)? Or is this something that shouldn't even be mentioned?
 
scott1818 said:
Does anyone know if there's a place to put certifications on the app (Like being first aid and CPR certified)? Or is this something that shouldn't even be mentioned?
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I would say probably under awards/ achievements. Like said earlier, you never know what the schools are looking for that will set you apart from other applicants- I think it's worth it to put certifications


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About to set out on a PS editing craze... If you want yours looked over send it my way. I'm not stopping until I'm done.
 
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Does anyone know how we're supposed to include future experiences? I want to list that I will be a TA for a course in Spring 2017, but VMCAS will not let me enter in any date in the future.
 
cohen2000 said:
Does anyone know how we're supposed to include future experiences? I want to list that I will be a TA for a course in Spring 2017, but VMCAS will not let me enter in any date in the future.
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I don't know if there is a way. That might be something you look to bring up in interviews. I was asked in a couple different interviews what I had done since submitting my application.
 
cohen2000 said:
Does anyone know how we're supposed to include future experiences? I want to list that I will be a TA for a course in Spring 2017, but VMCAS will not let me enter in any date in the future.
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I think it specifically says not to enter any hours or experiences that have not occurred by the time of your submission.

Edit for weird typo
 
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