VMCAS 2014 Questions

Veterinary Science Graduate Certificate from UofI
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Going through the application process, I had one vet every year (always the same vet) that would take up until the deadline to complete her recommendation. I actually had a really good friendship with her, so my ways of reminding her about it probably aren't exactly erm.. "professional" but we were close. Anyway, she always got it in, just would take her until the last minute.

Now I keep thinking to myself, I might at some point be asked to write a LOR for someone and while I was going through the app process I was thinking.. I would get that done right away so they aren't worrying about it. But who am I kidding, I am a procrastinator... I will probably be the vet that is making them wait until a few minutes before the deadline before I submit... It would get done, but yeah.. I procrastinate a lot..
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DVMDream said:
Going through the application process, I had one vet every year (always the same vet) that would take up until the deadline to complete her recommendation. I actually had a really good friendship with her, so my ways of reminding her about it probably aren't exactly erm.. "professional" but we were close. Anyway, she always got it in, just would take her until the last minute.

Now I keep thinking to myself, I might at some point be asked to write a LOR for someone and while I was going through the app process I was thinking.. I would get that done right away so they aren't worrying about it. But who am I kidding, I am a procrastinator... I will probably be the vet that is making them wait until a few minutes before the deadline before I submit... It would get done, but yeah.. I procrastinate a lot..
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I had someone submit their letter at 12:30 on October 2nd last year. I died.

This year, I'm waiting on my adviser (who had it done within a month last year). I remind him weekly and will call on Monday. However, if he ends up not doing it, I'm out a lot of money since one of my schools requires a letter from an adviser/instructor. :inpain:

One of my writers did her letter the day she got the email this year. I think I'd get it done ASAP if I'm ever asked because I KNOW I'd forget if I put it off.
 
pinkpuppy9 said:
I had someone submit their letter at 12:30 on October 2nd last year. I died.

This year, I'm waiting on my adviser (who had it done within a month last year). I remind him weekly and will call on Monday. However, if he ends up not doing it, I'm out a lot of money since one of my schools requires a letter from an adviser/instructor. :inpain:

One of my writers did her letter the day she got the email this year. I think I'd get it done ASAP if I'm ever asked because I KNOW I'd forget if I put it off.
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VMCAS sends out reminders, if I remember quickly, to LORs if they haven't been completed. So you won't forget, unless the emails go to SPAM or something.
 
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DVMDream said:
VMCAS sends out reminders, if I remember quickly, to LORs if they haven't been completed. So you won't forget, unless the emails go to SPAM or something.
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You have to have them sent manually, which I've been doing weekly. I'm calling his office on Monday. Fingers crossed!
 
The VMCAS system also send reminders to evaluators that are out standing.
 
Doing a last minute check before submitting and have a quick question-
If I have an animal experience that only lasted one day, should I put an end date? So start date September 2014, end date September 2014- or should I just do a start date?

Thanks!
 
I am also wondering if contact numbers are needed for everything. For example, if I wrote for my high school newspaper and was in marching band, do I need to put a contact number for both? If so, can I just use the main number for my high school?
 
High school experience contacts don't need to be exact. General is fine
 
So I just submitted and when I go to look and print my app, the tabs are missing from my PS! I followed the instructions as per the vmcas site. What happened? Can I fix this somehow? I am so upset!
 
Also, my minor is not listed and I had entered it. Does it only list majors for the schools to see? If so why did it ask me my minor?
 
AussieDr said:
So I just submitted and when I go to look and print my app, the tabs are missing from my PS! I followed the instructions as per the vmcas site. What happened? Can I fix this somehow? I am so upset!
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No, it probably can't be fixed. My PS was DESTROYED last year and I followed the instructions too. It looked as I intended it to on the PDF I viewed when I submitted it. When the schools got it, they got question marks for almost all of my punctuation and NO paragraph separation. It was just all of my sentences in one massive paragraph. Luckily, I'm a good writer so the flow made sense according to the adcoms. Regardless, all of my time and effort went down the drain due to a technical problem.

@VMCASSTAFF , the school who talked to me at length about the appearance of my PS mentioned that they have brought this issue up to you guys before. Any idea what is going on?
 
Hey can we print the application after we submit it? I am not seeing a link to view or submit it :/
 
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Not only is my PS incorrect after submitting, but everything is out of order. When you enter things in your application, it arranges them by date, after I submitted, they are all jumbled and mixed up with no rhyme or reason. Does this happen to everyone? Why did things not stay in order by date like they were before submitting? I am so frustrated! Months of my life trying to make this thing perfect and with a click of a mouse and submitting, it's messed up. The PS really upsets me, I worked so hard and finally got it to where I felt I could do no better, and now I look like an idiot. :arghh:
 
Are you verified? Call VMCAS and see if the problem can be corrected since it is a formatting problem within the software.
 
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AussieDr said:
Not only is my PS incorrect after submitting, but everything is out of order. When you enter things in your application, it arranges them by date, after I submitted, they are all jumbled and mixed up with no rhyme or reason. Does this happen to everyone? Why did things not stay in order by date like they were before submitting? I am so frustrated! Months of my life trying to make this thing perfect and with a click of a mouse and submitting, it's messed up. The PS really upsets me, I worked so hard and finally got it to where I felt I could do no better, and now I look like an idiot. :arghh:
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I had the same thing happen to my experiences. I called VMCAS about it and they said it is a glitch and that the application the vet schools receive will have everything in order.
 
Puffins said:
I had the same thing happen to my experiences. I called VMCAS about it and they said it is a glitch and that the application the vet schools receive will have everything in order.
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Except it seems like vet school aren't receiving things properly from what some people are posting here.

Not only that but applicants are paying hundreds of dollars for this service, the least they can do is make sure that the applicant can view their application in the same way the school will receive it. Not only that, but it would be really nice if they could correct the bug, this isn't something new, it was like this back when I started applying in 2009, that is a bit ridiculous for them to know about this error for at least 5 years and not do something to correct it.

I really hope @VMCASSTAFF takes this seriously and implements measures to fix the error both on the applicant side and the vet school side. After all, we are paying them a lot of money or this, it should be a priority.
 
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Back when I applied I thought the PS section specifically said that formatting isn't preserved?

So I can't quite tell if: a) the problems people are talking about are more than just formatting, or b) if VMCAS took that warning off, or c) if people aren't seeing that warning and are getting annoyed at minor formatting changes?

Or are there other, bigger errors people are seeing?
 
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LetItSnow said:
Back when I applied I thought the PS section specifically said that formatting isn't preserved?

So I can't quite tell if: a) the problems people are talking about are more than just formatting, or b) if VMCAS took that warning off, or c) if people aren't seeing that warning and are getting annoyed at minor formatting changes?

Or are there other, bigger errors people are seeing?
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Huge errors. I typed my PS into notepad like recommended (so there wouldn't be any formatting problems). The jumbling hoopla happened anyways. The worst part is the fact that, according to the person I spoke with, VMCAS has been made aware of these glitches (or whatever they are). I imagine a fix isn't easy, especially since I'm not very tech savvy. But just a tad upsetting.
 
LetItSnow said:
Back when I applied I thought the PS section specifically said that formatting isn't preserved?

So I can't quite tell if: a) the problems people are talking about are more than just formatting, or b) if VMCAS took that warning off, or c) if people aren't seeing that warning and are getting annoyed at minor formatting changes?

Or are there other, bigger errors people are seeing?
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That warning was still there when I applied too, but why should there be formatting issues? We are paying how much money and they can't figure out how to get the program to format it so that both the applicant and the schools see the application the same way? I personally think that is a bit ridiculous.

Not only that, but it appears that the veterinary schools are also receiving applications with formatting issues, changed punctuation and no spaces between paragraphs (which is important to the flow of a personal statement).

You don't have to agree, but I find it rather sad that VMCAS can't resolve these issues after how many years? There should be no reason an applicant can't save their application as a pdf and see it exactly as the vet school will.
 
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LetItSnow said:
Back when I applied I thought the PS section specifically said that formatting isn't preserved?

So I can't quite tell if: a) the problems people are talking about are more than just formatting, or b) if VMCAS took that warning off, or c) if people aren't seeing that warning and are getting annoyed at minor formatting changes?

Or are there other, bigger errors people are seeing?
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This is what it says on the instruction page for the PS:
FORMATTING: The VMCAS text box standardizes text formatting. Special characters such as bullets, bold text, italics, underlining, spacing, and indenting will NOT be retained from programs such as Microsoft Word. VMCAS highly recommends using a text editor (such as Notepad or TextEdit) to adjust the spacing in your essay.

It also says this:
Please also note that the printed version of your personal statement may not display paragraph indentations or character returns. However, the copy received by your selected colleges will display proper formatting such as paragraph indents and character returns.
So @AussieDr even though you can't see the indents, the schools most likely will. It would be nice if we could actually see our app the way it will appear to the schools though.
 
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I read and followed the instructions to the letter for my ps so hopefully schools will see it correctly. How do I know for sure they will? It is not just the tabs either, there are a couple of characters that just stick out randomly at the side. And it is not just my ps, as I said, all of my experiences are out of order and jumbled up. I will be calling VMCAS first thing in the am.
 
DVMDream said:
That warning was still there when I applied too, but why should there be formatting issues? We are paying how much money and they can't figure out how to get the program to format it so that both the applicant and the schools see the application the same way? I personally think that is a bit ridiculous.

Not only that, but it appears that the veterinary schools are also receiving applications with formatting issues, changed punctuation and no spaces between paragraphs (which is important to the flow of a personal statement).

You don't have to agree, but I find it rather sad that VMCAS can't resolve these issues after how many years? There should be no reason an applicant can't save their application as a pdf and see it exactly as the vet school will.
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I do agree, and I clearly said as much earlier when I pointed out that we pay a lot for what I perceive is not a very highly-engineered service. You know me; I come out of an Internet engineering background, and VMCAS should be absolutely embarrassed with how long it takes them to accomplish things like storing info from year to year. That would have been a one-month project at my last job or I would have replaced the team member tasked with it.

I was asking because I couldn't tell if it's worse than when I went through the process (i.e. they introduced problems), or whether it's just getting more attention, or .... etc. Just trying to understand.

In the big picture, the problem is lack of competition. There is none. There is no incentive for the service to be improved. The best way to handle this would be for the schools to agree on an open-format for application submission that any company could engineer software to interact with. (For all I know that exists and it's just that nobody has decided to compete.) But if you want the VMCAS service to be improved; put a fire under their feet with the thought of a competing service taking away their paying customers.
 
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pinkpuppy9 said:
Huge errors. I typed my PS into notepad like recommended (so there wouldn't be any formatting problems). The jumbling hoopla happened anyways. The worst part is the fact that, according to the person I spoke with, VMCAS has been made aware of these glitches (or whatever they are). I imagine a fix isn't easy, especially since I'm not very tech savvy. But just a tad upsetting.
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I would be more than a tad upset. You paid a lot of money for them to essentially take some data from you and transfer it intact to some schools. It's not a difficult task.
 
Apparently we do NOT know for sure about the order of anything on our app. VMCAS told us that even though our finalized PDF that we can see once we submit might be incorrectly organized, the schools get a corrected version. But apparently the opposite occurs, because my essay appeared fine and was then destroyed.

I was brief in describing my situation before, as I was on my phone, so I'll re-explain with more detail:

My PS was typed into notepad and copy/pasted into the application per VMCAS instructions. I had spaces for indents and hard returns to break up paragraphs. When I hit submit, my indents were lost (paragraph separation and punctuation intact), and I shrugged it off.

Fast forward to my file reviews: 1/5 schools mentioned it, so make note of that. I suppose it's possible that each school got an application that was different, because a mumbo jumbo PS is kind of a big deal not to mention at 4 other file reviews (unless the other schools have seen this enough that they just overlooked it and knew it wasn't an applicant error). The school that talked to me about it in length said my essay was one massive paragraph with punctuation that turned into question marks (apostrophes, commas, and periods). I made it clear that I absolutely spent countless hours on that essay and my essay did not appear that way when I hit submit or looked at my PDF. In comes the "Oh, we've brought this problem up to the service several times." So VMCAS absolutely knows that there are MAJOR flaws in a MAJOR part of the application, as well as other parts.

I'd like to know if anyone else has had a school tell them that their PS turned into a POS.
 
AussieDr said:
I read and followed the instructions to the letter for my ps so hopefully schools will see it correctly. How do I know for sure they will? It is not just the tabs either, there are a couple of characters that just stick out randomly at the side. And it is not just my ps, as I said, all of my experiences are out of order and jumbled up. I will be calling VMCAS first thing in the am.
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Did you read what @Puffins posted? VMCAS has already said that experiences being jumbled up is a glitch, and schools will see your experiences in order. It is hard to trust that everything will look right on the schools' end, and I agree with other posters that some of the issues VMCAS has are ridiculous. Hopefully the schools are smart enough to realize that VMCAS is flawed, and not ding applicants on minor formatting errors.
 
Rest assured the schools are aware as we are in touch with all the school admissions offices. We also share your posts from SDN with the AAVMC and VMCAS admissions enhancement committee.
 
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We are planning significant upgrades to vmcas next year!!
 
@VMCAS I noticed a mistake on my coursework section after I submitted the app. I went over it thoroughly but some how still managed to miss this one. Is VMCAS able to correct it and will schools see this mistake? I basically wrote in the wrong course subject for one of the courses.
 
The verification process should find and correct this for you.
 
I did call VMCAS, I wanted reassurance that schools would see things correctly, I was told that schools will see things as I had them on my application, that they will see them correctly. One thing I guess I don't understand, and I should have clarified with VMCAS, is that won't schools want a pdf too so they can download and print our applications? If the pdf we see is all messed up, how do we know for sure that what they get is not? I asked if I could get a copy of what the schools will actually get and see but the question was avoided and not answered, just basically "they will see what you had on your application" and then a whole spiel on how they are changing everything next year.
What do the schools get if not the pdf? And why can't we see it?
 
Now a days, schools are working with electronic data in their admissions portal. They can print a pdf if they want, but most schools export digital data files and import the data into their own admissions databases.
 
I've been waiting for my final letter of rec from a vet to be submitted and found out today that vet passed away unexpectedly. Needless to say, I'm a little bit in shock and so so sad for their family and employees.

How doI handle this in my application? My instate school specifically says that two letters of rec should come from vets and this leaves me with one from a vet and two from research mentors. I definitely don't have enough time to request one from someone else, nor do I have anyone else that I think would be comfortable writing a strong one. I haven't yet submitted (I know.) so is this something that should go in the explanation section? Or should I email each school individually? Of all the things that I counted on going wrong this application cycle, I was not expecting this.
 
Question regarding coursework:
Are we able to edit planned/in-progress Spring 2015 coursework? I included a tentative semester schedule that I am not 100% sure of... I'm worried that my schedule may change and I won't be able to adjust this on my application. Anyone know the answer to this?
 
Prevet2019 said:
I've been waiting for my final letter of rec from a vet to be submitted and found out today that vet passed away unexpectedly. Needless to say, I'm a little bit in shock and so so sad for their family and employees.

How doI handle this in my application? My instate school specifically says that two letters of rec should come from vets and this leaves me with one from a vet and two from research mentors. I definitely don't have enough time to request one from someone else, nor do I have anyone else that I think would be comfortable writing a strong one. I haven't yet submitted (I know.) so is this something that should go in the explanation section? Or should I email each school individually? Of all the things that I counted on going wrong this application cycle, I was not expecting this.
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Wow, what a tough situation. :( I would suggest contacting your in-state and seeing what they recommend. If this is only a requirement for the one school, and since you have your three letters required for VMCAS, I don't think an explanation statement is the place to address it. You could write a brief one if you want, though, if this is someone you got a lot of experience hours with and you don't want it to look weird that you didn't get an eLOR from them.

Hopefully the school is willing to let it slide. There's no way you could have anticipated this, and it is too late to ask anyone else.
 
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I'm sorry to hear this. I would contact your schools for guidance immediately. Some will work with you on this, someday not. But do it asap!
 
If you have everything else in, you should submit your app as schools will not know your applying without submitting but see who will work with you first, then adjust your designations accordingly before you hit submit.
 
Ok, I submitted and am awaiting verification. When I go to my application preview, my coursework is there, but under the gpa statistics (science etc) theres nothing in any of the boxes. I have no numerical stats other than student reported gpa. Is this until after verification, or is this a glitch I need to call vmcas about?
 
RS1 said:
Ok, I submitted and am awaiting verification. When I go to my application preview, my coursework is there, but under the gpa statistics (science etc) theres nothing in any of the boxes. I have no numerical stats other than student reported gpa. Is this until after verification, or is this a glitch I need to call vmcas about?
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Not a glitch. VMCAS GPAs are not available until you have been verified.
 
AussieDr said:
Also, my minor is not listed and I had entered it. Does it only list majors for the schools to see? If so why did it ask me my minor?
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I didn't see an answer to this and I had the same question. Can anyone clarify? I'm just curious since schools aren't receiving our transcripts, is there any way for them to know if we have completed a minor?
 
Okay, so where/when on my VMCAS portal can I see this pdf of my application that the schools get?
 
VMCASSTAFF said:
I'm sorry to hear this. I would contact your schools for guidance immediately. Some will work with you on this, someday not. But do it asap!
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I'm not sure why schools other than her in-state would need to work with her since she already has three eLORs in? Unless they also require two letters from vets.
 
Gwenevre said:
Okay, so where/when on my VMCAS portal can I see this pdf of my application that the schools get?
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Well, the jury is still out on what the schools will see but you can see a PDF of your application under the College Designations section by clicking on application preview :)
 
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Gwenevre said:
Okay, so where/when on my VMCAS portal can I see this pdf of my application that the schools get?
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On the designations section there's a column that says "application preview", click the little buttons there. :) I never knew it existed last year myself! But apparently schools see something completely different, so I don't know how useful it is other than being a printer-friendly way to print your app, and that's where you'll see your VMCAS-calculated GPAs after verification.
 
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LyraGardenia said:
I'm not sure why schools other than her in-state would need to work with her since she already has three eLORs in? Unless they also require two letters from vets.
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Some schools do have different requirement, i.e. two vet requirement.
 
Maizeandblue2014 said:
I didn't see an answer to this and I had the same question. Can anyone clarify? I'm just curious since schools aren't receiving our transcripts, is there any way for them to know if we have completed a minor?
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Guys, schools DO get your transcritpts, they are available for schools to view and print through their portals.
 
In anyone else still "meeting requirements"? I submitted 22 days ago, still not verified. Getting uncomfortably close to the deadline... I recall it going MUCH faster last year...
 
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