I’ve seen one or two posts detailing individual schools number of applicants this year versus last year. I’m wondering if there is a general trend across all schools either up or down. So if you know the relevant numbers for one or more schools please post them here!
2019-2020 application cycle numbers
- Thread starter Hp48g
- Start date
- Joined
- May 24, 2019
- Messages
- 168
- Reaction score
- 245
I’m currently at a conference and spoke with a representative with Iowa States Vet program and she said they had ~1500 applicants last year, and it seemed implied that they had about the same this year
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2014
- Messages
- 4,706
- Reaction score
- 6,090
I honestly wouldn’t stress about the number of applicants and whether it goes slightly up or down. You can’t really control it and it varies from school to school every single year 🙂
- Joined
- Dec 7, 2014
- Messages
- 4,706
- Reaction score
- 6,090
so much better uses for ones time....there’s life to be lived!...and vet school...is just vet school.
D
deleted676737
Pro-tip: don’t. You’ll drive yourself insane. You can't control how many people choose to apply; why stress over it?
Vet school, if/when you get in, will offer up more than enough stress for a lifetime. I definitely regretted freaking out over applications like I did.
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 7,405
- Reaction score
- 17,042
The straight numbers also dont matter as much as the seats to applicant ratios, either. If illinois and texas had the same number of applicants, out of staters would still be better off applying to illinois due to how many out of state seats they have compared to texas.
And, honestly, that doesn't even matter. There are more qualified applicants than seats total. So you just have to make your app the best it can be for the schools you're applying to. At this point, applicants should be acting as if they wont be accepted and improving their app for next year. The numbers dont help you there.
And, honestly, that doesn't even matter. There are more qualified applicants than seats total. So you just have to make your app the best it can be for the schools you're applying to. At this point, applicants should be acting as if they wont be accepted and improving their app for next year. The numbers dont help you there.
D
deleted676737
You might be, but I've also been around these forums for years and I've seen a lot of people post similar things who aren't kidding about letting the stress of applications take them over despite things now being at the point where they're well out of the applicants' control (and, let's be real, the overwhelming majority of pre-vets are type A personalities who do tend to obsess over such things... and I definitely would've considered myself to be one of them, ha). It can sometimes be difficult to tell who is and isn't being serious.
Any guesses as to why UC Davis (#1 ranked vet school by US News & World Report) has supposedly 1168 apps and CSU (3# ranked school by US News & World Report) has allegedly 2450 applicants? CA has a much higher population than CO (although it seems many of them are moving to CO) so I presume would have more in-state applicants.
My understanding is that ranking is done by surveying staff, faculty, etc. and has not much to do with program quality. Plus UC Davis is notoriously competitive even for IS so they probably draw less applicants due to that
- Joined
- Jun 21, 2012
- Messages
- 14,629
- Reaction score
- 19,556
Rankings are not something to pay attention to in the veterinary world unless research is a primary goal. It has nothing to do with the quality of education or the competence of the graduates. It is easy to fall into the trap of thinking our world is similar to human med for that kind of thing, but cost of total education is the number one consideration for our profession.
I'd add that some of the numbers may have to do with prerequisites - CSU has fewer than Davis (essentially a semester's worth of classes). Davis also requires a BA/BS degree. CSU does not require a degree meaning you could apply your junior or even sophomore year of college if you'd completed the prereqs. Thus, more students in the overall applicant pool are eligible to apply to CSU.
Most of it likely has to do with targeting by OOS students (which I think others have mentioned above). The average GPA for an OOS student at Davis was 3.94+. If you had a less than that would you apply? Or would you rather apply to a school like CSU which had a GPA range of 2.65-4.0 for their last class (not broken down by OOS vs IS - overall average of 3.59). I'd guess that a larger number of applicants from other states would apply to CSU vs Davis for that reason. This seems to be reflected in the applicant pool- ~1900 of CSU applications were OOS, and just ~200 were IS. For Davis, 500+ applications were IS vs less than 450 OOS.
I'd also guess that larger state populations don't necessarily translate to more applicants.
Percentage wise, I'd say a rural student is more likely to be a vet school applicant than an urban one.
Looking at CSU, they said 42% of their most recent class came from a rural area despite the fact that only about 14% of Coloradans live in a rural area and o ly about 20% of Americans do. (Didn't see this info for Davis). CSU didn't publish rural vs urban numbers for applicants, but I'd venture to guess rural applicants were overrepresented in the applicant pool too.
On a sheer number comparisons - Colorado has about 715,000 rural residents while California has about 840,000. That's not that different, especially compared to overall state populations (5.7 million in CO vs 39.5 million in CA), so if rural applicants are overrepresented in the applicant pool, you might expect that they'd have a similar number of rural applicants, meaning that the applicant numbers for IS applicants would be closer together than one might expect based on total state population.
Sent from my SM-G892U using SDN mobile
- Joined
- Nov 22, 2013
- Messages
- 7,405
- Reaction score
- 17,042
Because rank means nothing and CSU *was* arguably "easier" for an out of state student to gain acceptance to. Now, CSU has 15 applicants per seat, which ups the competition level to a certain extent. As a CO native, there's been a massive influx of people into the state in general. People just seem to want to live in CO for whatever reason, and a good way to test drive a new state is to go to school there.
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2019
- Messages
- 262
- Reaction score
- 326
Washington State: 1,600 applicants
Similar threads
