This may already have been said, but I didn't read all the posts, so forgive me if I'm just repetitive. Hopefully these will be words of encouragement, so even if they're repetitive, still nice to hear. 🙂
First of all, something that my fiance and I have been discussing recently as I've been worrying about whether or not I'm doing enough this summer and using my time wisely (give me a chance and I'll worry about ANYTHING!). Anyway, he pointed out to me that when I was getting stressed after talking to my classmates about all of the cool things their doing, that I was looking at them all in a lump sum. People are going to Africa, doing research on sea lions, studying fetal development, shadowing dairymen and dairy vets, doing externships at clinics of all kinds, etc. But the thing is, they're not each doing all of those things. One person is doing one thing, someone else is doing something else, and so on. It's so easy to get overwhelmed by what everyone else is doing as a group. But really, if you think about what any one individual person is doing, it seems much less intimidating. If that makes sense.
So basically, when you go read the Successful Applicants thread, keep that in mind. If you built a candidate from all of our best attributes, you'd have an applicant with a 4.0, stellar GREs, a Masters and a PhD, fantastic in-depth veterinary experiences with every species you can imagine, and awards up the wazoo. But that's not what's out there. There are some people with strong GPAs and other parts of their application that are weaker. People with strong experiences and weaker GPA/GREs, etc. So don't compare yourself to everyone else all lumped together. Just my 2 cents.
The other thing that I wanted to point out is, if you read old Successful Applicants threads, you'll see that practically every one of us starts our post with the caveat of "I hope my story can give some inspiration to others out there with dismal <fill in the blank>". So EVERYONE feels inadequate about some aspect of their application. And that just can't match up with reality. So take a deep breath, realize that you're probably in much better shape than you give yourself credit for, and try to hold together whatever shreds of sanity that you can. You'll need them for the coming months of waiting! 🙂
Good luck you guys. I know you're all going to rock the application! Now you just have to believe it, too. 😉
I find it hard to look at my experiences section, or dare I say it, my courses. The strong parts of my app are really strong, and the weak parts are really weak. Does anyone else ever get the feeling that EVERYONE else has a better shot than you do? As October first gets closer and closer, my confidence level falls lower and lower, it's exhausting and it might be killing my on the inside a little bit.
