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Mizzou c/o 2017 Applicants!
Started by wildcatj
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I'm applying to Missouri! It's my second choice after my IS.
Hmm, maybe I'll go start a bunch of threads for the rest of the schools I'm applying to, too...
EDIT: And then I did. 😀
Hmm, maybe I'll go start a bunch of threads for the rest of the schools I'm applying to, too...
EDIT: And then I did. 😀
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It's party time
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Any idea how Missouri picks which 4 LORs to read? I know they won't read more than 4, but I'm submitting at least 5 (since I'm also applying to Cornell, which wants LORs for everything basically).
Also, does pet ownership count for animal experience for Missouri?
Also, does pet ownership count for animal experience for Missouri?
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I think you list on their supplemental which recommendations they're supposed to read.
I imagine they just read the first four listed on your vmcas or the first four submitted. I have no idea about the second question, sorry! Maybe shoot them an email?
I would list them in the order you want them to read them on your VMCAS. I honestly don't remember if they let you write them down. You could definitely email them and tell them which ones you want them to read, though. I did that with a few schools that would only read a certain number of LORs (3, usually, and I had 5) and had no issues.
Unless they have changed their application to specify not to, include pet ownership. When I talked to Kathy Seay a couple years back, she said that they will look at pet ownership because the wording on the application is so open-ended, and advised me to include it.
Cool! ...so now I just need to figure out how many hours to put for it.
So.... The application processing fee is now $100. 
I'm going to be so poor after this.
I'm going to be so poor after this.
So.... The application processing fee is now $100.
I knoooooow...gosh, I really hope everyone else didn't decide to raise their fee by $30 too.
Yeah, me too. I've read here to go conservative, but even if I put an hour a week, I've had a dog for 5 years = 250 hours. It seems like too many to claim, but at the same time an hour a week is a ridiculous number. The dog I lost in February had IBD. There were times before he got on budesonide I could realistically have spent an hour a week just cleaning up after him (and he was the love of my life and I miss him every day. Just to be clear, I'm not picking on him. 😍). Anybody have thoughts about hours/week for pet ownership?
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I'm also having a hard time deciding how many hours to put for pet care. With my dogs, I have been relatively lucky and they've never had any major health problems. So, I'm having a hard time putting a number to the amount of time I spend with them, and what to include in the number.
With my goats on the other hand, I think I'm going to estimate around 600 because I definately averaged at least 15 minutes a day over the past 8 years I've had goats feeding them, exercising them (I got fairly competitive with my market goats
), and taking care of any special needs including medicating and helping with kidding.
I want to join the party too!
The essays on the supplemental: 👎barf:
I didn't think they were too bad. It's the first supplemental I've actually done any essays for (and only one so far...). Of course, I'm applying to Cornell (5 essays that are basically an interview) so my standards are probably skewy...as usual. 😳
You're right, they're not the worst. But ugh... what makes you unique? I hate that question. And why do I have to re-explain why vet med when it's in the VMCAS PS?
Don't mind me. I hate tiny essays, that's all. Good luck everybody!
What makes me unique? Hmmmm... I am a petite, caucasian female.... Who does that sound like? Sounds like 90% of the applicant pool this year! 🙄
I talked about my 5 years of being involved in residence hall leadership. You could talk about anything that you're involved in or have experienced. It is a much more broad topic than most people think.
Yeah... I personally don't have a problem with the uniqueness essay 🙂 I'm going to talk about my volunteer work abroad and how I'm exceptionally talented at finding four leaf clovers!
Subject to change of course since I haven't started writing the essay!
Yeah... I personally don't have a problem with the uniqueness essay 🙂 I'm going to talk about my volunteer work abroad and how I'm exceptionally talented at finding four leaf clovers!
Sounds good! Just wanted to throw it out there in case you or someone else wasn't aware 🙂
Thank you for mentioning that. CSU, I think, gave many examples for their version of this question, so I wasn't thinking that I had to come up with some superlative quality I have. I just hate the 1600 character limit, and the pressure to present myself as special (I'm a good candidate, don't get me wrong, I just don't like bragging or trying to brag.).
Yeah their limit is definitely funky, but it works I guess.
Thats another thing I have a problem with! I'm a very objective writer, and I hate referring to myself when I write. Writing 872 essays about myself is painful. But I've been told that if there was ever a time to toot our own horns, its now!
Yes, now is the time... it's still uncomfortable. Happy to be in good company with a fellow uncomfortable braggart. 🙂
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So... I think I finished the supplemental.I want to sleep on it and reread the essays before submitting, but... yeah.
Did you have any problems saving your essays?
I'm trying to save my service essay but keep getting an error ("A critical error has occurred with the web base application process.") that logs me out every time.
My service one uploaded, but not the other 2. Since I kept getting the error I sent an email and the response I got was "I forwarded this message to our IT director to address, but he is out of the office this week and may or may not have email access."
I had no problems at all, and I composed them right in the text box, not in a word processing program. 😕 I used a Mac, which is probably not relevant, but i know little about computers/the Internet. I hope it gets straightened out for you soon!
The IT guy asked me to copy the text I wanted to save so he can troubleshoot. So I guess he's going to read about why I want to be a vet. I'm not actually sure how to feel about this.
I'll let you know if he figures out the problem.
As far as ownership hours, I listed some in the thousands. But, I do train and comptete with my dogs, so if I figure four hours of class a week, plus one additional hour everyday, we're up to 11 hours a week, 52 weeks a year for 12 years. I felt weird about it but it was an honest estimate. I did the same for the other animals that I show.
Thank you for sharing this. You didn't get any raised eyebrows or anything over that many hours, right?
Not one. My K-state interviewers were pleasantly interested in my experiences showing and trialing dogs and other critters. My MU folks skimmed over it and asked some more pointed, ethical/political questions not relating to my animal experience.
I think for my other show animals, I figured something like 15 min/day every day of the year, bumped it to an hour/day for the months of April-August, then multiplied that by 11 years.
I didn't know how far back to go. I know "they" always say that admission peeps don't care about stuff prior to undergrad or hogh school, so I was going to just use those years. But then I thought, "gosh darn it, my experience goes way farther back than that; I'm going to claim it all." So I did!!
For my other critters that were "just" pets, not animals that I actively worked with for an hour+ each day, I just mentioned those in an essay or my PS. So my parrot and snake didn't get counted in the hours, but I wrote a blurb about having working knowledge of exotic animal husbandry blah blah blah. Since their hours would get smothered by my dog hours.
Wanted to add that I did clarify, in a round-about way, exactly where I got these numbers when I wrote an essay (I think. It was written somewhere.) Basically I just said something about my training schedule for my dogs and mentioned my animals in 4-H and figured from there, these smart people can deduce how I got my numbers.
That's a good point...I think the way I have it currently is just an estimate of 500 hours. I know it's really low, but since I haven't done showing or agility or anything with our dog, and definitely not with the family cats, it's a nice round number that's a conservative estimate. My "start date" on VMCAS is accurate for the year at least that we got the dog.
Is it normal for some of the supplemental essay material to overlap with what you write in the personal statement?
Apparently the system was having problems with "smart quotes" (the left-right specific versions of quotes), but now the code has been updated to deal with them. My essays uploaded fine now.
I tried to avoid it as much as possible, but it did, a little. I liked to think that the essays merely "reflected" what I wrote in my PS. My PS was a little more animal-based than others, so for the essay that asked about variety or diversity or whatever, I tried to avoid animal examples.
It was easier for me to talk a bunch about my animal-related things in my PS and then just a concise paragraph about something else for the essays (I picked my homeschooling and entrepreneurship).
My biggest issue, from what I remember, is that two of the essays were pretty much the same. Like "What experiences have you had that will add to the diversity of the class of 2015" and "what skills, experiences, and traits do you possess that will make you valuable to the vet med profession."
Clearly they are asking (sort of) different things, but it was sure hard to give two different answers when I was writing the essays!
For the "High school: number in graduating class" is that the class rank or the actual number of people in your graduating class? It sounds like the latter, but the former makes more sense (I think).
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I thought the latter. My high school didn't rank, so I couldn't answer the former, and even if I could tell them I was, e.g., 12th, that doesn't mean as much as it might if they also asked for the class size. I know some of the schools want to know if you're originally from a large or small community... not that that's going to correlate with school class size necessarily, but maybe they want to know what kind of learning environment you've been in?
Or maybe all of these questions are just meant to keep us wondering how they make their decisions.
I used the number of people in my graduating class when I filled it all out last year, I think. 🙂
Thanks.
Mizzou has been on and off my list to apply to (even though I've actually written one of the essays already, but will be using it similarly elsewhere).
Someone try to convince me to go ahead with it?
Someone try to convince me to go ahead with it?
Do apply, kakuru! It's been on your list, so go for it! Plus you can get in-state tuition after the first year, which is nice.
...only apply if you'd actually go there, of course. But if you would, you should totally apply!
Good motivation?
...only apply if you'd actually go there, of course. But if you would, you should totally apply!
Good motivation?
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