Guidance After Waitlisted.

[winniekate07]

I am a non-traditional student. I have had an interesting path (to say the least) but these past 7ish years have been dedicated to vet med. I did very poorly in my under grad 11 years ago and ended up failing out. Those grades have obviously negatively impacted my cumulative GPA so I only applied to schools that would look at last 45/Science/Pre-reqs or schools that would disregard my previous GPA.

One school I was waitlisted at didn't include my previous GPA and they didn't re-evaluate it when offering admissions (admission was dependent on interview and applications).

I have great letters of rec from doctors I have worked with for years. I have 15k vet hours 1/2 or more of those include exotics. I have nearly 10k of rescue/foster hours. I have 1k in large animal. No research as I was struggling to get experience during covid- I am hoping to improve that part of my applications. In addition to that I have 3 years experience working within a sober living facility.


I guess I am looking for guidance on what I can do to improve my application. I feel like I have varied experience and I have worked so hard for this (like I know so many of us have). I am feeling extremely defeated as I will be 35 if I get in next round.

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[PetVet23]

I am a non-traditional student. I have had an interesting path (to say the least) but these past 7ish years have been dedicated to vet med. I did very poorly in my under grad 11 years ago and ended up failing out. Those grades have obviously negatively impacted my cumulative GPA so I only applied to schools that would look at last 45/Science/Pre-reqs or schools that would disregard my previous GPA.

One school I was waitlisted at didn't include my previous GPA and they didn't re-evaluate it when offering admissions (admission was dependent on interview and applications).

I have great letters of rec from doctors I have worked with for years. I have 15k vet hours 1/2 or more of those include exotics. I have nearly 10k of rescue/foster hours. I have 1k in large animal. No research as I was struggling to get experience during covid- I am hoping to improve that part of my applications. In addition to that I have 3 years experience working within a sober living facility.

Last 45: 3.7
Science: 3.68
Cum w/o previous GPA: 3.64

I guess I am looking for guidance on what I can do to improve my application. I feel like I have varied experience and I have worked so hard for this (like I know so many of us have). I am feeling extremely defeated as I will be 35 if I get in next round.

It sounds like you're definitely on the right track with your application. My biggest piece of advice is to reach out to admissions and see if they do any kind of file review/interview feedback. I applied 3 times before getting offers and was able to set up review meetings (they were all over the phone) for all but one school that I applied to those first 2 years. They were honestly so helpful and really showed me what I needed to work on or improve for the next cycle. I know this can be a sad and frustrating time, but hang in there and try to put a positive spin on it

 

[TabbyCat2]

If this is your first cycle please don’t be discouraged!! I’ve heard this cycle was extremely competitive with the increase of applicants, and the application itself is a beast of its own. Looking here on SDN, I truly feel like so so many people who were rejected (including you) could make amazing veterinarians and deserve it, so don’t give up hope and keep persevering! I applied 2 times before getting in, and I did a rejected applicant webinar with my top school after my first round and it helped improve my application a ton. It may be something as simple as how you enter in all of your experiences. Also, for my first round I was overwhelmed with the application and tried so hard to portray the “perfect” applicant. My second round I threw that out the window and brought in so many personal stories in my essays and showed who I really was. Maybe focus on re-writing your essays to make them stand out from the rest of the crowd, and utilize your explanation statement to explain the poor grades. Also, is your cGPA with all grades lower than a 3.0? If so, that could have automatically rejected your app from several schools. If it’s below a 3.0 I would highly recommend taking a few more classes to boost that GPA and your last 45 GPA! Look into Mizzou. You can choose not to include old grades if they don’t include any pre reqs.