Hey all, I have one semester left of undergraduate in English. My GPA is a 2.95 at my university, and then I have a 4.8 from community college (about 7 classes worth). Have not taken the GRE yet. I have a good amount of experience: volunteer for wildlife center, worked as a small animal vet assistant for a year part time, part of intercollegiate riding team/secretary, barn manager, and currently I am working as a vet assistant for a holistic/diagnostic vet. I also breed and show dogs. I know that I want to go to SGU and I just want somebody to ease my fears of my gpa. My school is a very difficult university as well, top 100 in the world, and really difficult science courses. Also, I am local to the SGU admissions office, do you think it would be a good idea to pop in there and meet a rep? I've been to the open house already in NYC and I know that's where I want to go for sure. All of my core classes are a C or better. This last semester was a 3.5 and I have one more semester to go. When is the best time to apply (When I am still in classes next Fall 2011 or after those grades come in?) I think starting in January would be easier admission? I know that if they grant me an interview, and see my letters of recommendation they will be pleased... hopefully it gets that far! I've done the most research on SGU and I love it, should I even bother applying to the other Caribbean schools? Thank you for reading! I know it's a lot, it's my first time on this forum. Any advice/opinion is well appreciated.
If you have the opportunity to meet with an SGU admissions person, I think thats a great idea. Thats probably the most accurate way to figure out what they think of you from an academic standpoint.
In case you can't tell by my status above my piggy, I will be attending SGU in the fall and I couldn't be more thrilled. After applying to 6 US schools but not really having any likes or dislikes about them (my line of thinking was hey, it's a vet school! if they'll take me then fantastic!), I absolutely fell in love with SGU. I could list all my reasons on here but I don't think the world really cares to know haha so feel free to PM me if you really want to know.
I think I've heard that the Jan. term is not quite as competitive simply because there aren't as many applicants, but they have rolling admissions which i think puts less stress on competitiveness (as in they're really looking more at you rather than comparing you to everyone else all at once).
I also won't specifically go into my stats (PM for those too) but my GPAs were low and my GREs were about average. After reading about other people's stats on here, I'm convinced that with another round or two that I could get into the right OOS school without working on my GPA, but I'm not willing to wait and I love SGU. I don't think I'd get into my IS school without either going to grad school or taking approx. 2 more years worth of courses on top of the 4 years of undergrad I already have. This is because I went for 2 degrees during undergrad (yay me) BUT I accumulated A LOT of credits and once you have a lot, it gets VERY difficult to move the numbers around. My IS school recommended CC classes to supplement the low GPA and bring it up over grad school. I also couldn't justify spending the money. I'm already looking at approx. $200k in debt from school (and I happen to be one of the lucky individuals with no prior debt). All of that added up to a definite YES to SGU's offer
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As for other caribbean schools, IMHO, the only other one I'd recommend looking at would be Ross. While similar to SGU, there are several substantial differences and it comes down to preferences. Ross is a great school, AVMA accredited, and people have been going there for 30 years. Their program isn't for everyone. I would have accepted with Ross if I had been declined from SGU (I withdrew from the app process because I heard from SGU fairly quickly). In the end for me, vet school is vet school and I wasn't going to turn down an offer. I didnt apply to AUA or St. Matthews. AUA is brand new and there seemed like a lot of risks involved (not doing well enough to transfer into a partner program VMRCVM or Australia, having 1 or 2 too many ahead of me for a transfer spot-it would be awful to be 4th in your class but there only be 3 spots that year, its brand new, etc). None of the vets I talked to seemed to know anything about St. Matthews which concerned me because my current goals include an internship and residency. I didn't want a stigma attached to me coming from a little known school (could be wrong though). The other thing that bothered me about St. Matthews was I was the president of our PVMA this year and when I contacted AUA, Ross, and SGU about visiting our club, they all were ready to jump through hoops to make it work. St. Matthews sent an email saying they'd forwarded my request to the appropriate person, and then I never heard from them again. The other 3 schools were so pleasant to work with that I was really turned off by the lack of response. That could be totally atypical and I just had an abnormal experience, totally my opinion (as is all of this).
Anyhow, feel free to ask more questions, hope this helps!
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