take some time to figure life out
BUT dont sell yourself short. just because your stats arent perfect doesnt mean they wouldnt take you. maybe you coud get in touch with admissions to see if theyd give you any advice. and i wouldnt wait to apply based on 2 semesters, those credits will be a drop in the bucket. i doubt very much you'd budge your cum gpa more than .1 (if you're extremely lucky - im bad at math though and i dont think the odds of that are great) and thats not worth waiting on. i stressed a lot about the debt after i accepted, and i stress a lot about it now, but i think that it is doable, especially because you sound like someone who has thought it through and has a level head. debt is a big burden and big deal, but dont let it bully you out of doing something you love.
I think you are awesome for giving this serious consideration. It is not easy to step back and look at something like this that you have been planning on for a while and think hard about it. You deserve some applause for just taking the time to step back and give it good consideration and to voice out the concerns you do have.
No one can tell you what is going to be right for you. Everyone is different. $150K of debt (or more) might not be a big deal for some people while it might be a huge deal for others.
Ultimately, only you can decide what is going to be right for you. Give it some good thought and consideration, whatever you decide to do, I wish you the best.
You guys are wonderful, seriously. I don't post much at all, but I do lurk quite a bit, and I just have to say that this is one of the most helpful and supportive internet forums I've ever seen. Thanks so much for the advice!
My situation is a bit unique from a lot of others, I think. I nearly failed out of high school - in part due to flat-out laziness, but also in part due to severe clinical depression that actually went undiagnosed until my freshman year of undergrad. I never aspired to much. And no one else thought I really had a whole lot going for me in my future, either, including my family. Heck, my GPA in high school was so bad that I'm still amazed that I actually managed to graduate and get accepted into a state university (although my ACT score was very good, so that certainly helped). By the way, on the off-chance that any high schoolers are reading: take it seriously. It is SO much harder - or at least it has been in my experience - to actually receive any sort of scholarships or merit-based aid as a college student. The few that I
have received, I had to fight tooth and nail for.
My first year of undergrad wasn't much better. I arbitrarily chose to major in Spanish and minor in Japanese because I liked the languages and really didn't think I was "good" at anything else. That didn't turn out too terribly well, and I flustered and wound up with three Ds that year. Thankfully in nothing that could be considered a vet school pre-req, but still. After taking a Gen Bio class and getting an A, my love for the natural sciences was rekindled, so I switched to the biology major; my grades increased substantially and I haven't looked back since. I've got all As and Bs in vet school pre-reqs except for one C in Gen Chem 2 (ugh). I have also taken 18-20 credits every semester while working and shadowing and have just started working on a research project.
My GPA at the end of my freshman year was 1.6ish. Since then, I've managed to bring it up to 3.2. I know that's an accomplishment in itself, but I guess I've come to terms that that still may not be good enough. Especially for my IS, Mizzou, which weighs cum GPA much heavier than other parts of the application.
Add that onto the financial issues I mentioned before, and... yeah. Granted, I've only ever worked for minimum wage, so a veterinarian's typical salary sounds amazing on its own. But when viewed under the lens of all the debt that I will accrue, along with the loans I've already gotten from undergrad, it's really making me rethink it all. Which stinks, because I like the variety of vet med; I like that I get to combine a desire to work with animals, help people, and satiate my thirst for science. But I'm just trying to ground myself in the reality of the profession a little bit before I dive headfirst into applications. I know a lot of pre-vets (especially this cycle, it seems) don't like to hear anything negative about vet med, especially the current debt:salary issue and compassion fatigue, but they're very real problems and they
need to be talked about. And by continuously putting on blinders to what current vet students and graduated vets are saying, I really feel that they're doing themselves a disservice. I'm not talking about people on SDN specifically, but also at my own school. Meh. Obviously not saying that I think they need to change career plans or anything, but they really should at least educate themselves about the current state of the profession,
But yeah, I think I'm definitely going to take a few days or so and really consider it all. I may ask my adviser what she thinks, too (she's a DVM herself).
I very much appreciate the kind words. It's nice to have people to talk to about this who actually understand.
But it is cheap and works for what I need it for right now.
