UPenn Class of 2021 applicants

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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NimbusC

NimbusC

Ph.D. in Bio ☑ ; Next, Penn Vet (c/o 2023)
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I realize I'm hella early for making this, but I'm curious to see who else is already thinking of the 2017 cycle.
A little bit about myself...

I've been debating about vet medicine for the past 4 years, I graduated with a BS in Biology and a BS in Animal Behavior in 2014, and since then became a Biology grad student. I realized grad school life really isn't my cup of tea and fell back in love with veterinary medicine. UPenn would be my IS and I am very interested in pursuing behavior medicine (and SAM).
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Hey NimbusC! You are not alone! I'm also thinking about the 2016 cycle :soexcited:My top university is UF but UPenn is definitely my second choice. You already took your GRE? What experience hours are you currently working on?
 
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SwanSprinkles said:
Hey NimbusC! You are not alone! I'm also thinking about the 2016 cycle :soexcited:My top university is UF but UPenn is definitely my second choice. You already took your GRE? What experience hours are you currently working on?
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Hey there!! Hooray xDD I was beginning to feel like I was a nut for planning this early lol And spiffy questions! So right now I'm a graduate student (originally PhD but planning to switch back to Masters) and going to retake the GRE come May. I have about 300 vet hours, 100 hours in a shelter, and about 2600+ hours in Animal Behavior research. I'm in Panama right now working with Smithsonian, but when I get back to the states in April I'm planning to pretty much live at the vet hospital and animal shelter I volunteer at (lol!) to bulk up to about 500+ vet hours and 150+shelter hours. I want to apply to UPenns VMD/PhD program for Neuroscience or Psychology. Anything animal behavior related. Super nervousssssss but super excitedddddd lol I'm debating about applying to more schools.....but Penn is pretty much my #1 choice.

What about you? Hooray for us being on the ball early! lol :highfive:
 
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Research in Panama?! Super awesome! Vet schools love that you do research. I'm also a MS student :highfive:.
I'm currently working on primate behavior research, I'm also volunteering at a cat shelter and manatee rehabilitation facility. This next week I have an interview for a summer internship at an aquarium :soexcited:hopefully that will get me over 400+ hours. I will also be taking the GRE this May...I keep forgetting the vocab, I learn 20 each day and forget 10 the next day. I'm hoping to pursue a track in aquatic animal health and wildlife medicine with rehabilitation and conservation. Keep in touch!
 
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SwanSprinkles said:
Research in Panama?! Super awesome! Vet schools love that you do research. I'm also a MS student :highfive:.
I'm currently working on primate behavior research, I'm also volunteering at a cat shelter and manatee rehabilitation facility. This next week I have an interview for a summer internship at an aquarium :soexcited:hopefully that will get me over 400+ hours. I will also be taking the GRE this May...I keep forgetting the vocab, I learn 20 each day and forget 10 the next day. I'm hoping to pursue a track in aquatic animal health and wildlife medicine with rehabilitation and conservation. Keep in touch!
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Awesome sauce!!! I also volunteer primarily with cats and my research is with fish!! :D I had to cut my thesis trip short due to unforeseen circumstances :/ so I'm back from Panama and postponing taking the GRE until the summer. Currently reading a few GRE books and trying to motivate myself to memorize more vocab, at least you're retaining 50% of what you're learning ;) more than probably what I can say at the moment lol But I'll be back at the vet hospital I volunteer at in two weeks. woot!! Hope all is well! :)
 
Hey Everyone!

nontraditional/postbac student applying for the first time! I just finished up a research internship at a medical research institute mostly on a project looking at renal cell carcinoma. Now I'm shadowing a large animal vet once a week and a small animal vet once a week (I can't really do more than that since I'm also working full-time as a software developer). I should have about 1000 vet hours by the time applications close and another 1000+ research hours. I took the GRE already (used magoosh.com to study). I think magoosh has a free iphone (probably android too?) app for vocab flash cards which I used and was helpful.
 
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*undergrad feeling immediately incompetent upon reading all of your experiences*

Haha, hey everyone! I'm also thinking about applying to UPenn. First time applicant (new to this studentdoctor thingy), Illinois is my IS but I've been hell bent on wanting to go to UPenn for a long, long while. I have a pretty solid GPA from a top 20 university, but I've got a mediocre GRE score. I'm going to retake it in June (YIKES).
 
Hey y'all! Thinking about whether or not to apply to UPenn as an OOS. It sounds like a great place for getting into lab animal. I also heard that it has a low out-of-state acceptance rate though. Can anyone confirm?
 
CrossCassowary said:
Hey y'all! Thinking about whether or not to apply to UPenn as an OOS. It sounds like a great place for getting into lab animal. I also heard that it has a low out-of-state acceptance rate though. Can anyone confirm?
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Penn accepts more out-of-state students than most veterinary schools actually. 70% of their class of 125 come from out-of-state.
 
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Hey everyone! U Penn is on my list of schools to apply to. I really don't know too much about the school though other than they care about the GRE and research... Is this true? I would love to know more information about U Penn as a vet school though, if anyone can help! Do they offer hands on experience in their curriculum? What is their case load like? Do they offer experience working with small and large animal, exotics, wildlife? What do they usually look for in an applicant? For those who currently attend or are about to, what do you believe they liked about your application that gave you an acceptance? Thank you everyone!!
 
VetMed1 said:
Hey everyone! U Penn is on my list of schools to apply to. I really don't know too much about the school though other than they care about the GRE and research... Is this true? I would love to know more information about U Penn as a vet school though, if anyone can help! Do they offer hands on experience in their curriculum? What is their case load like? Do they offer experience working with small and large animal, exotics, wildlife? What do they usually look for in an applicant? For those who currently attend or are about to, what do you believe they liked about your application that gave you an acceptance? Thank you everyone!!
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Hey, I'm about to start at Penn this year, so I can't say much about the curriculum yet. As far as what they look for in an applicant, I think they are looking for well rounded people with lots of experiences, whether in the veterinary field or not. I applied with a very high GPA, average GRE, and no research experience at all, and was accepted. I had about 2000 hours of veterinary experience, but that was ALL with small animal. I only had about 40 hours of animal experience with large animal. However, I was not a traditional biology student, and my interviewer was very interested in my experiences outside the vet field. Based on our class facebook page (not having actually met anyone else in my class yet), it seems like everyone comes from many different backgrounds and fields. If Penn is one of your top schools, I would definitely say make sure you get ALL of your experiences, everything that makes you stand out, on your VMCAS, and be prepared to talk about them in positive ways at an interview. :) Good Luck!
 
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GRE and research were my bread and butter, but my upper level science/last 45 hr gpa was thankfully pretty high. My cumulative gpa was only around a 3.4, to provide you with an idea of some of the trade offs they consider when reviewing apps.
 
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raf2769 said:
Hey, I'm about to start at Penn this year, so I can't say much about the curriculum yet. As far as what they look for in an applicant, I think they are looking for well rounded people with lots of experiences, whether in the veterinary field or not. I applied with a very high GPA, average GRE, and no research experience at all, and was accepted. I had about 2000 hours of veterinary experience, but that was ALL with small animal. I only had about 40 hours of animal experience with large animal. However, I was not a traditional biology student, and my interviewer was very interested in my experiences outside the vet field. Based on our class facebook page (not having actually met anyone else in my class yet), it seems like everyone comes from many different backgrounds and fields. If Penn is one of your top schools, I would definitely say make sure you get ALL of your experiences, everything that makes you stand out, on your VMCAS, and be prepared to talk about them in positive ways at an interview. :) Good Luck!
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This is great information and helps me out a lot, so thank you! I appreciate you writing back. I believe I do have what they are looking for then in many ways.. So this makes me more optimistic. I have all of my experiences listed since I kept track of them (and luckily have a great memory). I will make sure to review my app as well before going to any interviews at all.

Thanks again!
 
jcc3sa said:
GRE and research were my bread and butter, but my upper level science/last 45 hr gpa was thankfully pretty high. My cumulative gpa was only around a 3.4, to provide you with an idea of some of the trade offs they consider when reviewing apps.
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Thanks! This is helpful. I wish more schools were like this!
 
I graduated in May and I'm more than willing to talk about the curriculum, but there were some changes occurring while I was in clinics and changes will likely continue to happen. Send me a PM if you want to know something specific because I'm living the intern life and miss a lot of posts now.
 
orca2011 said:
I graduated in May and I'm more than willing to talk about the curriculum, but there were some changes occurring while I was in clinics and changes will likely continue to happen. Send me a PM if you want to know something specific because I'm living the intern life and miss a lot of posts now.
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Congrats on graduating!!
 
Does anyone know if a neurology rotation is included/ if there's an elective during 4th year clinical rotations? Was interested in this field so I'm just curious.
 
What did some of you write about for your supplemental question? It's my last program to submit to, and I wrote about the program and what aspects of it interest me, but I feel like it's not really an exciting essay compared to others I've written. I can't wait to be finished!!!:bang:
 
Bumping this thread... Does anyone know when U Penn starts sending out interview invites?
 
Hey everyone!! Sorry for dropping off the face of the earth, been super busy with wrapping up my Masters thesis :bang:......so far I recieved an email from Penn saying my application is officially complete, and I recieved another email for an interview invite from Western. Hope everyone is well and will respond to some of these earlier posts later today!
 
Chimikins said:
*undergrad feeling immediately incompetent upon reading all of your experiences*

Haha, hey everyone! I'm also thinking about applying to UPenn. First time applicant (new to this studentdoctor thingy), Illinois is my IS but I've been hell bent on wanting to go to UPenn for a long, long while. I have a pretty solid GPA from a top 20 university, but I've got a mediocre GRE score. I'm going to retake it in June (YIKES).
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Don't feel like that!!! I also have a super mediocre GRE score, but I didn't retake it :/ was just way too busy....
 
Anyone out there apply to the dual degree program (VMD/PhD)?
 
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Hey V'21 hopefuls :) I'm a second year currently and I LIVED on this forum during my application process. If you have any specific questions, feel free to PM me directly and I'll get an email (otherwise I won't see it because I always forget SDN exists when exams come around).
 
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hey! its officially early december, so i was wondering if anyone has received any interview invites yet? im assuming no because i'm sure someone would have posted it if they had
 
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woowolf33 said:
hey! its officially early december, so i was wondering if anyone has received any interview invites yet? im assuming no because i'm sure someone would have posted it if they had
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Haven't heard anything yet but I am anxiously awaiting!
 
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PreVetMed said:
Same.. supposed to hear in December sometime?
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I dug back through my email a bit and I believe they said that notifications go out weekly from mid-December into February and they do not do interview/accept all at once- it is a 3 month process. Not sure if they do OOS first or if they mix everyone together.
 
I anticipate it to be any day now. It came out this Thursday last year.
 
I just got an interview invite for Jan. 6th!!!!! :soexcited::soexcited:
 
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congratulations! anyone know how many spots go out for each interview group?
 
Just got mine too for Jan 6!


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Last year, there were 2 groups of 30 people (so 60 people a day) each interview day. Congrats to those getting invites!! We're all excited to meet you! For those who didn't get an invite today, more will probably go out next week!


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raf2769 said:
Last year, there were 2 groups of 30 people (so 60 people a day) each interview day. Congrats to those getting invites!! We're all excited to meet you! For those who didn't get an invite today, more will probably go out next week!


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Do you know how many interview days there are total?
 
I don't remember, I'm thinking like 5 or 6..? I would check last years thread for a better answer though!


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Nothing for me yet, neither invite nor reject. Refreshing my email like crazy :(
 
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DVMdreamcometrue said:
Nothing for me yet, neither invite nor reject. Refreshing my email like crazy :(
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I haven't heard back yet either. According to last years thread, Penn will keep sending out invites for the next month or so - we just weren't in the first wave of emails. Looks like we just need to wait a bit more!
 
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Got an invite!!!!!!! January 6th!!!
 
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Wait does anyone know it is better to get an early interview? Or do they just send invites at random?
 
london31 said:
Wait does anyone know it is better to get an early interview? Or do they just send invites at random?
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Based on what previous applicants and current students have said earlier is better


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