26 yr old female relatively traditional (knew I was pre-vet in undergrad, took 3 years off to work?), CA resident, 1st time applicant
~*~*~ there's hope for all you lower GPA folks!!! ~*~*~
Applied: UC Davis (IS), Western, Purdue, Tufts, Cornell, Penn, Sydney, Edinburgh,
Rejected: (all pre-interview) UC Davis, Purdue, Edinburgh
Interview Invites: Western, Tufts, Penn
Waitlisted: Cornell
Waiting to hear: Tufts (post-interview)
Accepted: Sydney (declined), Western, Penn
Attending: Penn (pretty sure, going to visit Cornell to decide if I will stay on their waitlist)
cGPA: 3.31 (3.26 from primary undergrad, 4.0 in 2 post-bacc classes)
sGPA: 3.34 (3.28 primary, 4.0 post-bacc)
Last 45 GPA: 3.57
GRE (V/Q/W)-: 169/160/4.5 (99%/74%/82%) (i took it 3 times to get my quant score to 160 and i think that it helped me immensely, esp in light of my GPA)
Undergrad Degree: BA Biology from a T10 undergrad (Dec 2015)
Veterinary Experience (~1300 hrs total)
-900hrs wildlife, seabird rehabilitation (including oil spill response), much of this time is performing avian anesthesia
-300hrs working with an ambulatory equine vet
-100hrs shadowing 2 small animal vets (one of them also saw exotics)
Animal Experience (~4600 hrs total)
-3200 hours staff at seabird rehabilitation and oil spill response facility (at same org as the vet experience above, but had to separate out my time actually spent with the vet). even though this time isn't vet experience, i have a ton of clinical experience from these hours. since our vet is only on the premises 4-6 days a month, staff is responsible for wound care, orthopedic care, radiographs, treatment plans, prescribing and changing meds as needed, euthanasias, etc.
-720 hours staff at wildlife rehab place. different place from ^^ where we treated everything (squirrels, opossums, terrestrial and aquatic birds, etc)
-60 hours of oil spill response training
-60 hours at rhino orphanage
-60 hours at a cattle station in australia, got to do preg checks, assist with some castrations, branding, dipping, and herding.
-180 hours riding horses in college
-35 hours microchipping and satellite collaring wild rhinos and elephants in ZA
-160 hours petsitting
-100 hours field work trapping and banding scrub jays
-10 hours field work catching and banding murrelets (on a zodiac, at night... it was such a cool trip!)
Research (~1850 hours)
-1400 hours of independent seabird ecology research throughout undergrad. started as an independent study and turned into a full thesis project. i was looking at the diets of a breeding colony of skuas on the antarctic peninsula. IDing the fish they were eating, relating fish consumption to breeding success, and ultimately relating it all to climate change and sea ice. presented my research at multiple professional conferences and wrote a 60-page thesis.
-200 hours compiling data for my org's vet on metabolic bone disease in juvenile herons and egrets
-200 hours as a research assistant to a PhD student in australia. conducted some field work with her and helped her prepare samples in the lab as well.
-60 hours working in a lab on ALS research in high school. PI was super nice and listed me as an author on the paper as well.
Extracurriculars /Awards (yes i listed high school stuff)
-SCUBA (rescue diver cert)
-Pottery (grandmother is a potter and i grew up in her studio, it's a pretty big part of my life)
-competitive + varsity cheerleader in highschool
-drama club in HS
-honor roll and deans list in HS
-placed 7th nationally in a french contest in HS
-AP scholar w/ distinction award in HS
Non-animal Volunteer
-Most of my time at the cattle station mentioned above was actually spent helping them cook, clean, babysit, etc
-Relay for life
Non-Animal Employment
-TA for ecology lab in undergrad
-internship in france after HS, internship was entirely in french/complete french language immersion
LORs
-undergrad academic and research advisor/mentor/generally amazing human being
-wildlife DVM from current job in seabird rehab/oil spill response
-bio prof from undergrad who i also worked with doing the scrub jay field work
-lead tech/internship coordinator at current job (i was an intern there first, so she oversaw me then and is now a good friend)
Essay Questions
I talked a lot about One Health and how I am passionate about conservation ecology and population health, but that I love clinical work as well. I mention that, as my clinical knowledge has grown, it's given me a broader context for my previous research and I have so many more questions that I wish I could have explored at that time. As a vet, I want to integrate ecology and population dynamics with clinical knowledge to improve conservation and wildlife medicine.
I also talked about the connections between human and animal health, and that human and animal populations are not separate. Our actions as humans ALWAYS impact animals in some way, and that as vets, it is our job to ensure the health and wellbeing of these animals, whether they are pets who need treatment or endangered species facing climate change and habitat loss. Also, that ensuring the health of these animals in turn ensures the health of humans: pets keep us happy and we rely on them for emotional wellbeing, food animals keep us fed, and wild populations are part of an ecosystem that, when thrown out of balance, impacts the health of our planet and everything on it (yes, including humans).
In Tufts' essay, I talked about doing pottery in my grandmother's studio and how working with clay has taught me how to manage my own emotions in stressful times (ya can't throw a good pot if you're having an anxiety attack, i've learned that from experience haha).
For penn, I talked about One Health and research, and how Penn's focus on both of those was a huge draw for me, as well as the option to join their dual degree program after matriculation, since it's something that I'm interested in but not sure enough about to apply to at this time.
***When I got rejected from Davis, Purdue, and Edinburgh before christmas and without an interview, I thought for sure I was screwed with my GPA.
I think that my GREs, LORs, and essays were big attributes for me, and that the schools willing to look at my whole application and not just my GPA could see that I am really passionate about the work that I am doing, and that I'm super driven.
At Penn's interview, they asked me if there was anything about me that I wanted to make sure they knew before I left, and I told them that I am incredibly determined. When there is a goal that I want to reach, I do everything in my power to reach it. I think that my interview there went well, but I think that is what sealed it.
If you have a low GPA, it's tough. I'm not gonna lie. I obsessed over every. single. part. of my application because I knew that it had to be perfect to make up for a 3.3. And my GRE helped me out big time too.
I was not smart in the schools I chose to apply to and I got REALLY lucky to not have to apply again with my school list. Schools like Michigan, where as long as you have a 3.0 your GPA doesn't factor anymore, or IA where they focus more on your last-45 (which still isn't great, but a 3.5 is much more competitive than a 3.3) would have been smarter than:
-Purdue who doesn't look at GRE, so that didn't help me at all there
-Edinburgh who has a 3.4 gpa cut off that I didn't know about (apparently this is all the UK schools!)
-I mean... Davis is Davis and if it hadn't been my IS I probably wouldn't have even bothered.
-Sydney, who accepted me but they start in Feb and I was never planning on moving to Sydney before even hearing back from US schools, so I really shouldn't have wasted the money.
Get your GRE up as much as possible.
Get killer LORs
Have anybody and everybody read and re-read and re-re-read your essays. I think I had like 5 different people giving me input on my essays. I wrote them all in google docs and just invited them to edit it. I got SO much really great and super important feedback. Also, the editing and writing styles of so many different people meant that literally nothing was missed. Grammar, passive/active voice, syntax, weird "is this really how you want to say that? because this is how it comes off to me" stuff, "did a thesaurus barf on the page?" stuff, all of it, and if I only had one or two people reading it a lot would have been overlooked. I also had people from different backgrounds reading my essays: my mom was an english major so she was really focused on grammar and style, but not so much content and had some comments about the science stuff being "boring". Since I knew that it would be science-minded people reading my essays, I also had 2 science/vet med friends read them over (consensus: my science talk was not boring
).
also, double check re-reqs. i was stupid and did not do that. I'm now taking 2 classes online for Penn before matriculation.
ETA: I also wrote an explanation statement. I got thrown from a horse sophomore year and had a pretty bad concussion. i had to withdraw from a course, take another P/F that semester, and the next semester I got my only C and was the only semester with no As. Also explained that it was not my first brain trauma since I had brain cancer as a teenager, so my post-concussive syndrome was pretty severe and for a first concussion. I talked about the techniques that i used then (and continue to use) to manage the stress/anxiety and be able to focus during/after recovering
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