Do I have a chance of getting into vet school?

[thereservoirdog]

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Hey,

I'm a junior at San Jose State University and this semester I realized being an electrical engineer isn't what I want to do. I have always loved animals and wildlife but the idea of becoming a vet hadn't crossed my mind until now. The problem is my gpa dropped to about 2.5 this past year because I was so unmotivated in engineering. But I know I will do very well in biology and I have 2.5 years left to fix my gpa.

Also, I know to get into vet school you need a lot of experience with animals so this summer I am interning at a wildlife rehabilitation clinic, which should give me about 500 hours of experience. And then I will probably work as a vet's assistant after that during school.

So do you think that even though I had trouble with my gpa and I still need tons of experience with animals, I could still get into UC Davis vet school?

 

[jeeney]

yea..why not?! what i believe is, if your heart knows that this is something you want to committ yourself to, then you will stop at nothing to achieve it......my response may be too simply-put, but this is what i believe in 🙂 ...good luck, though!

offtopic, but my bf goes to san jose state too...he was a meteorology major, but just switched to kinesiology...

 

[RazorDoc2010]

I don't know specifically about UC Davis (from what I understand, it's hard for anyone to get in there), but I went through the same thing (I'm ChemE) and decided it was best for me to stick it out in my own major. Anyways, I think you would be able to explain why EE wasn't for you and just make the grades to show that you can handle the curriculum in a vet school. And your experience will be hugeee (especially for those of us that didn't come into college sold on vet med...we have a lot of catching up to do!!) Good luck to you!

 

[Bluepawelephant]

Almost all Vet schools focus a lot on science GPAs more than the overall GPA. Look into the classes that UC. Davis requires, then focus on getting good grades in those. Also, Experience, Experience, Experience, will help compensate for lower grades but not bad ones, so try to that GPA up.

I don't know if your school does on-campus and off-campus internships for grades, but I know that they are a great way to boost GPAs while getting great experience.
Good Luck, you can do it if you set your mind to it.

 

[TurboVet]

i had trouble with a low GPA because of illness in school. when i applied to vet schools with a 2.93 i didn't get anywhere becauee a lot of school's have a GPA cutoff as their first step. i have TONS of animal experience in different fields and facets, but the fact is that a lot of schools do the cutoff before they look at the rest of your app. thus, they never even see your experience or essays. if they have 300 people with grades higher than yours, why should they take you? you knwo what i mean?
my advice is to get A's in all of your classes from now on- work really hard to prove to them that you can make it in their curriculum, and vary your animal experience- try research, farms, etc as well. it took me 2 more years to raise my GPA up to a suitable level because of the weight of the other years of school bringing it down. if you start out strong now, you should be ok by app time. and if you think you're going to get bad grades becaue of your disinterest in a subject, change your major! do the pre-vet reqs and try to get a degree out of it too, but don't be miserable in school. 🙂