Question about inputting experiences on VMCAS

[heymimi]

Hi all! I had a question about putting experiences into VMCAS. I've been told that it's fine to put in animal/vet hours gained during class labs and I was wondering what I should put for the issuing organization? Should I put in the name of my course (ex: X University Systemic Physiology Lab) or should I put the location where we worked (ex: X University Equine Center)?

Also, would the time spent researching an individual project for a class count as research hours? I don't have any experience working in an actual lab and was wondering if the quarter I spent researching for my Animal Behavior course would count.

Ok finally question (sorry!!) but does anyone know if vet schools care more about the number of vet/animal experiences or the hours dedicated to each experience instead? I'm realizing that I have slightly more animal experiences than vet, but most of my hours come from my vet experiences! I also realized that I have quite a lot of non-animal volunteer experiences from high school (blood drives, walk to feed the hungry, cultural exchanges, etc.). Should I be including all of them or just the ones I find most important?

Thanks for all the help and good luck to those who are also applying this cycle!!

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[yogivet]

Hi there! Not sure how much help this will be hahaha but here are my thoughts. Not sure about your first question (sorry!)
For the second question, I could be wrong, but I don't believe that classwork research is able to count for research hours. From my understanding, many courses such as Animal Behavior, Microbio, etc, all have some inherent small research components, so I think that that is expected as a part of those courses. So I would say that you could totally write essays about that experience and/or talk about it in interviews, but I don't personally think that they would be able to count for research hours (unless the course was specifically an independent research course). But that's just how I handled my courses like that!
For the third question, I have heard that it is important to have both breadth and depth of experience, meaning that it is important to have a range / number of experiences of different natures, but also to show commitment to maybe one or a couple and build valuable relationships with your peers or mentors (which is also helpful for letters of recommendation!). In terms of veterinary VS. animal experiences, from what I know, this doesn't matter too too much, as long as you have a mix, and as long as you have at least one DVM letter of rec.
For high school experiences, I only put down my most notable ones, or ones that I continued into college. However, if you are trying to paint a picture of how you came to become passionate about veterinary med, maybe include the ones that are relevant!
Hope this helps

 

[yogivet]

Know too that you can always reach out to VMCAS (for things like "can I include this?" or formatting things for sure) and individual vet schools to see what their preferences are!

 

[heymimi]

Hi there! Not sure how much help this will be hahaha but here are my thoughts. Not sure about your first question (sorry!)
For the second question, I could be wrong, but I don't believe that classwork research is able to count for research hours. From my understanding, many courses such as Animal Behavior, Microbio, etc, all have some inherent small research components, so I think that that is expected as a part of those courses. So I would say that you could totally write essays about that experience and/or talk about it in interviews, but I don't personally think that they would be able to count for research hours (unless the course was specifically an independent research course). But that's just how I handled my courses like that!
For the third question, I have heard that it is important to have both breadth and depth of experience, meaning that it is important to have a range / number of experiences of different natures, but also to show commitment to maybe one or a couple and build valuable relationships with your peers or mentors (which is also helpful for letters of recommendation!). In terms of veterinary VS. animal experiences, from what I know, this doesn't matter too too much, as long as you have a mix, and as long as you have at least one DVM letter of rec.
For high school experiences, I only put down my most notable ones, or ones that I continued into college. However, if you are trying to paint a picture of how you came to become passionate about veterinary med, maybe include the ones that are relevant!
Hope this helps

Thank you so much!! This really helped me clear things up

 

[wysdoc]

Here is also a general VMCAS thread where you can see questions others have asked and links VMCAS Questions and Rants c/o 2026

 

[that redhead]

What do you mean by “time researching for animal behavior class”?

As for quality vs quantity of experience, think of it more like breadth and depth. So you want to have different types of experiences - large animal, small animal, wildlife, research, zoo/aquarium, etc- but you also want to have meaningful hours that help you build your application narrative. If you spent one day at a hundred different places, it doesn’t carry as much weight as one year at four different places. Similarly, spending 5,000 hours at one vet job isn’t going to help much either. You need a sweet spot to show you understand the breadth and impact of the field but also the depth of experiences to show you actual understand that breadth.

For high school activities, I would really only include those that were recurrent (like you donate blood every month or whatever), part of your “story” or that were continued in to college.

 

[heymimi]

What do you mean by “time researching for animal behavior class”?

As for quality vs quantity of experience, think of it more like breadth and depth. So you want to have different types of experiences - large animal, small animal, wildlife, research, zoo/aquarium, etc- but you also want to have meaningful hours that help you build your application narrative. If you spent one day at a hundred different places, it doesn’t carry as much weight as one year at four different places. Similarly, spending 5,000 hours at one vet job isn’t going to help much either. You need a sweet spot to show you understand the breadth and impact of the field but also the depth of experiences to show you actual understand that breadth.

For high school activities, I would really only include those that were recurrent (like you donate blood every month or whatever), part of your “story” or that were continued in to college.

Hi! So my animal behavior class was basically us working on our own research projects for the entire quarter. Since I took the class right after COVID hit, I had to work from home and created an experiment to see if my dog has a temperature preference for his food. I spoke with some other applicants after posting this and found that this will unfortunately not count since I have no experience in an actual research lab. However, I think it will be fine to list this under animal experiences instead

Also, thank you for the explanation regarding experiences! I definitely plan to include high school experiences such as volunteering at a shelter and leading a class trip to the local animal shelter. However, I actually attended the first half of high school in a temple and was able to get involved with A LOT of volunteer work (1200 hours including cleaning the temple, helping the nuns with tasks, farming, etc.) and I do believe those experiences have helped me become who I am today.

In addition to 2300 hours I spent in a vet clinic as a receptionist, kennel assistant, vet assistant (they had me doing everything ), I also have gotten involved in shelter medicine, managing a cat shelter in college, and I have a good amount of food animal and equine experience from my labs in undergrad. I'm hoping this is broad enough but just in case, I'm also trying to get involved with an online research opportunity with zoo animals since I'm at home taking classes and helping my parents raise 2 Dobie puppies