21 year old female, first time applicant, NJ resident (OOS everywhere) and extremely excited to get to post in this thread
Hopefully this gives some people hope who have average/below average GPA's, GREs and not a ton of vet experience!!!
Applied: Florida, Purdue, Tennessee, VA-MD, Cornell, Penn, Tufts
Interviews: Florida, Purdue, Tennessee, Penn, Tufts
Rejected: VA-MD
Waitlisted: Cornell, Penn, Tufts, Tennessee (pulled myself from this list)
Accepted: Florida and Purdue
Attending: No idea!! I go back and forth everyday
Degrees: BS in Animal Science, Molecular and Cellular Biology minor (graduate in May)
Overall GPA: 3.52
Science GPA: ~3.5
Last 45: ~3.5
GRE (Q/V/W): 161 (80%)/154 (63%)/5 (93%)
Veterinary Experience:
Vet Tech at Animal Shelter Spay and Neuter Clinic, 160 hours
Intern at an Equine hospital, 131 hours
Shadowed/tech at a small animal clinic, 350 hours
Research Experience:
None (writing an honors thesis on beluga whales in captivity but it is essentially a lit review)
Animal Experience:
Independent study assisting with management of horses on campus, 20 hours
intern at a wildlife rehabilitation center (not under an actual vet), 146 hours
volunteer at a conservation center in South Africa, 152 hours
volunteer at a local animal shelter, 150 hours
Non-Vet Employment:
Coach at school's field hockey camp
Counsellor at school's field hockey camp
Camp counsellor for local high school camp
Extracurriculars / Etc:
-Member of a Division I Field Hockey team where we won a total of 10 titles over the course of my 4 years (between conference and national)- thousands of hours (4 years experience)
-Participated in my school's dance marathon to raise money for the local children's hospital (4 years, 18 hours of dancing, 20 hours of fundraising)
LORs:
-Vet at the spay neuter clinic
-Vet at the small animal clinic I was employed at
-The animal science department head at my school (he was a one of my professors and would come to all of my games)
-My honors thesis advisor
-Vet at the equine clinic I interned at
-My Head coach
Personal Statement:
I opened with how this has been my dream forever and talked about an experience with a fawn that cemented that dream. Then I talked about the different experiences I have had and how they have helped me to reach my goal of becoming an Equine vet. I also talked about the different lessons and life skills I had learned about from playing a division I sport and how they would translate to vet school.
Overall my application wasn't the strongest but I hope this helps some people out! A large plus of my application that was discussed at my interviews was the amount of diverse experiences I have had. I also hope this helps anyone out who plays a Division I sport! The schools were very understanding about my lack of experience because of the demands of playing a sport (basically 40+ hours a week) and how difficult it is to balance a sport and school. Hope this helps some future vets out there
😀