Non-trad HS Honors VMCAS Question

[bclover]

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Okay, folks, my age is showing: I have been out of high school in excess of two decades and, as I am working on my VMCAS application, I am a bit limited in what I remember regarding the honors I earned/received back then. I remember the 'biggies' - like valedictorian, class president, etc. - but not much else. And, I can't seem to put my hands on old annuals to help right now either. So, does anyone have any idea how critical this is - in particular the volume of things included - for those of us "much" further down the road?

Thanks!

 

[AuburnPreVet]

I would say that since you've been out of school for a while, HS stuff would be less crucial for you... assuming you've made use of all of the time you've been out of school.

 

[kate_g]

I had the same dilemma - seemed fantastically lame to actually make individual entries for every honor and award I got in high school - and I "only" graduated 13 years ago. What I did instead was make a single entry called "high school honors and awards" and made basically a bulleted list of the big things I remembered. I figured a high school award I didn't remember winning could not possibly make the difference between acceptance to and rejection from vet school.

(That said, I had a fairly long list of stuff from college and afterward. If you happen to be the slacked-in-college, scrambling-to-repair-GPA sort of nontrad, and you're counting on hearkening back to your nerdy high school days to demonstrate that you can actually study, then you might want to make a bigger deal of awards and honors from "way back when.")

 

[bclover]

Good idea, kate_g, re:bulleting honors from HS! And, yes, I do have a significant amount of accomplishments from college and my career to really focus on, so I believe I will follow your lead - thanks!

 

[philomycus]

Welcome here BClover. I've got two of the little 4 legged kids myself- they are a handful!

 

[bclover]

Welcome here BClover. I've got two of the little 4 legged kids myself- they are a handful!

Thanks! And, yes, they can be a handful, but a better dog you won't find! (IMHO) My husband and I have two at the moment as well - along with two other four-legged kids (actually we have a total of 28 others: two more dogs + sheep, cats, & llama). My 'big guy' (BC) is thirteen and began having seizures this winter - albeit infrequent - so he gets a little extra special consideration around here these days. [While other folks buy bones and the like for their dogs, we went and bought 20 acres, fencing, a barn and some sheep for ours to 'play' with. 🙂]

 

[pressmom]

I graduated HS 9 years ago and my dad managed to find on his OLD desktop a list I made for applying to undergrad of my HS awards. I used this and put most of them in. Do you have any old resumes? I found that first and it had the biggies in every subject area. Also, I like the idea of just entering the few you remember. That should be fine, especially if you have had achievements since. (Scholarships, grants, publications, etc)

 

[critterfixer]

Honestly, I don't think it matters since it was two decades ago. I had the same problem, in that I graduated in 1983. I think I ended up putting down a couple of things for HS and then moved on to the rest of the application.