University of Illinois c/o 2019 Applicants

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Gwenevre

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So Illi is on my list for now, but I really don't know much about the school or student life, so I'm debating whether or not to apply. Especially since I'm OOS.

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Well I applied last year, got an interview, and was waitlisted..... it was the only school that gave me any love, so I'm for sure applying again!

One thing I liked about UoI was that after you get past the first cuts and get an interview, they don't take your GPA into account anymore
 
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I am also considering this school, I was told they have a sizable wildlife program which is definitely of interest to me! (My dad has been a Game Warden in PA my entire life and all I do is care for wildlife)
 
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Good luck everyone! So excited to see this thread pop up :)

@haley120892 , There's a good amount of vet students here that are interested in wildlife, and everyone loves the Wildlife Medical Clinic because you learn a lot and get to do very hands-on stuff from the get go. In fact there's some people who aren't interested in pursuing wildlife but still volunteer there because they love it.

@Gwenevre, there's a video on the admissions page that sort of talks about the curriculum, not sure if you saw it or not. What I like about Illinois is that your first 8 weeks of first year you do 1 week rotations, which gets you acquainted with the hospital and gets you some early exposure without just jumping head first into the hard stuff.You also get to be in the clinics in the second half of your second year.
As for student life, the vet school is kind of separated from the main campus, but Champaign-Urbana is like any other college town, with lots of restaurants/bars/shops etc.

Hope that helps!
 
I haven't gotten to the school yet, but I love their class structure. They have us doing clinical rotations the very first semester, and I'm also big on exotics/wildlife and they do seem to have a lot of class opportunity towards those subjects. Right now, they have a rotation for wildlife epidemiology which I'm really hoping to be a part of, and they have a wildlife emergency hospital on campus that you can volunteer to help out in. And HowIMetYourPet, I hope you get in this year! I'm sending good vibes your way.
 
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Anyone notice they added a speech class as a prereq last year....which I don't have....ffffffffffffffffff
 
I am planning to apply here as well - but I was wondering in terms of prereqs do we get to be counted under Plan A if we will have our B.A. By the time we enroll to vet school? It doesn't have to be by the time we apply, does it?

Because I don't have the speech requirement either, and plan A was what I was counting on! I really want to apply here. :annoyed:
 
I think if you're going to have your BA by the time you enroll you're in Plan A.
"Plan A for those applicants who already have or will have their undergraduate degree at the time of Doctor of Veterinary Medicine (DVM) matriculation"
 
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Anyone notice they added a speech class as a prereq last year....which I don't have....ffffffffffffffffff
I am planning to apply here as well - but I was wondering in terms of prereqs do we get to be counted under Plan A if we will have our B.A. By the time we enroll to vet school? It doesn't have to be by the time we apply, does it?

Because I don't have the speech requirement either, and plan A was what I was counting on! I really want to apply here. :annoyed:
Ok, so I was taking my public speaking class the fall semester that applications were due. Heck, I even took it online so as long as you are in the process of taking it, they'll still count you in the pool of applicants to look at for interviews. I hope this helps you guys.
 
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Ah thank you guys. I had a major freak out and completely missed the "will have" part when reading their website.
 
I started yesterday. I seemed to find it kind of difficult to choose animal contact rankings for some of the species... The scale seems unusual since you can choose more than one ranking for each animal
 
This is silly, but can you start the supplemental before you submit the VMCAS?
 
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I am planning on applying here as well! I love the set-up of the curriculum.
 
Also applying here. :D

This is silly, but can you start the supplemental before you submit the VMCAS?

I'm pretty sure you can, but they won't actually start doing anything with it until you submit your VMCAS.
 
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This is silly, but can you start the supplemental before you submit the VMCAS?

Well I've started mine and I haven't submitted my VMCAS....I just wanted to get a jump on the Essay (which is going to require far more work than last year's did) while I'm waiting on people to get back to me with personal statement edits. I'm also waiting to submit because I'm taking one class this summer and I want it to count towards my last 45, so I'm waiting until I can put it in VMCAS (because I have 44 credit hours in my last three semesters....which works out to be like a 3.67 or something, but if you go a 4th semester back, its my worst semester ever and makes it like a 3.35 or something)
 
Well I've started mine and I haven't submitted my VMCAS....I just wanted to get a jump on the Essay (which is going to require far more work than last year's did) while I'm waiting on people to get back to me with personal statement edits. I'm also waiting to submit because I'm taking one class this summer and I want it to count towards my last 45, so I'm waiting until I can put it in VMCAS (because I have 44 credit hours in my last three semesters....which works out to be like a 3.67 or something, but if you go a 4th semester back, its my worst semester ever and makes it like a 3.35 or something)

I wanted to do something similar to this since my very bad first attempt at Orgo is included in my last 45, but I'm taking physics 2 over the summer and it would suck to get like a C or something and have it included and hurt my last 45 GPA more. If I were taking a biology upper division or something then I'd probably wait to submit too.
 
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Well I've started mine and I haven't submitted my VMCAS....I just wanted to get a jump on the Essay (which is going to require far more work than last year's did) while I'm waiting on people to get back to me with personal statement edits. I'm also waiting to submit because I'm taking one class this summer and I want it to count towards my last 45, so I'm waiting until I can put it in VMCAS (because I have 44 credit hours in my last three semesters....which works out to be like a 3.67 or something, but if you go a 4th semester back, its my worst semester ever and makes it like a 3.35 or something)
What's the topic for this year? Hopefully nothing too complex.
 
What's the topic for this year? Hopefully nothing too complex.
MERS is the topic, at least the one I have. MERS and the role veterinarians play.
 
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You guys have fun with that topic and I'll send good vibes your way.
 
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Do you guys think we have to cite our sources in a formal bibliography for the MERS essay?
 
If you use specific information (lie #s) I would mention something in the sentence, like "according to the CDC X number of people have turned into zombies because of MERS"
 
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If you use specific information (lie #s) I would mention something in the sentence, like "according to the CDC X number of people have turned into zombies because of MERS"
inb4 the Zombie Apocalypse
 
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HowIMetYourPet I'm in the same boat as you- interviewed and then waitlisted. But this school sounds pretty awesome so I'm definitely reapplying. I have a friend who will be a 2nd year and she was very involved in the wildlife rehab program that they have. The way she described it makes it sound like exactly the thing I would love to do... crossing my fingers I get in this year!

You guys are right, this essay is going to require a bit more research than last years... I'd better get started.
 
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Good luck dragoncat! I hope to see you guys at the interviews in February.
 
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Do you guys think we have to cite our sources in a formal bibliography for the MERS essay?
I asked about this specifically in an email. They responded " It does not have to be extremely formal, but your citations should be listed somewhere. " Hope this helps! I am a bit thrown off by this essay because it seems like a hw assignment or something, not like a personal statement type thing where you give a personal opinion. So I have yet to start it too :/
 
Yikes. I already submitted and did not put any citations. In the first paragraph, I put "According to the CDC..." at the beginning of one sentence, but other than that I did not cite. Hopefully they don't say I plagiarized and reject me outright or something like that. :( Most of my essay was opinion anyway; just the first paragraph had a lot of factual items in it.
 
I'm sure they will accept many forms of the essay. It totally depends on how you wrote it. So I would say since you basically cited all your facts in the beginning with the "according to the CDC" bit that should be good and then since the rest of your essay was mainly opinion its fine for you not to have cited anything else. I don't think you should worry too much.

It would be bad to not site throughout if say your whole essay consistently stated facts that caused them to question "where did she get these facts" and had no indication of where they were from.

Plus there are tons of other factors besides that small essay. Nice job getting it done so soon! I'm jealous bc I haven't even started yet blehhh I hate writing..
 
I've been working on it, but it definitely isn't coming to me as easily as last years. Probably because it's a topic I didn't know about until I read the prompt...
 
Yikes. I already submitted and did not put any citations. In the first paragraph, I put "According to the CDC..." at the beginning of one sentence, but other than that I did not cite. Hopefully they don't say I plagiarized and reject me outright or something like that. :( Most of my essay was opinion anyway; just the first paragraph had a lot of factual items in it.
How stiff do you think the page limit is? How long did yours turn out to be?
 
Mine was more like 3/4 of a page, single spaced, 4 paragraphs. I'm not sure how stiff they're going to be about the page limit, but I wouldn't go too much over.
 
Ugh I am literally putting this essay off until I do ever other supplemental...it sounds down right painful.
 
I think I've decided to add Illinois to my list! It sounds like I might be a bit of a masochist with this supplemental essay, but oh well. I'd rather write something like that than have to BS about how I'm diverse, like some schools require. :p
 
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I asked about this specifically in an email. They responded " It does not have to be extremely formal, but your citations should be listed somewhere. " Hope this helps! I am a bit thrown off by this essay because it seems like a hw assignment or something, not like a personal statement type thing where you give a personal opinion. So I have yet to start it too :/
They are just trying to evaluate your in depth understanding of the profession and how it applies outside of the small animal clinical sphere. Write what you think, add some opinion, and include facts. Its not supposed to be a book report.
Good Luck everyone!
 
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They are just trying to evaluate your in depth understanding of the profession and how it applies outside of the small animal clinical sphere. Write what you think, add some opinion, and include facts. Its not supposed to be a book report.
Good Luck everyone!
Yeah it actually wasn't bad, I got it finished easily once I read a couple articles on the subject
 
I'll be throwing my hat in the ring. Luckily a professor on my POS committee is working with MERS in Africa right now. Looks like I'll have to attack him in the hallway soon.

Good luck everybody
 
I knew nothing about this topic either, so to compensate I may be doing too much research and not enough actual writing. I just hope it turns out at least half-way decent :p
 
Hey guys, for the supp app animal contact experience descriptions how "concise" are you guys making it? I don't see any word/character limits but I don't want it to be overly long
 
Agreed, mine are very concise. Like for dogs I literally just put "I have worked at two different vet clinics."
 
Hey guys, for the supp app animal contact experience descriptions how "concise" are you guys making it? I don't see any word/character limits but I don't want it to be overly long

I was specific with mine. I described my handling capabilities and level of comfort with each type of animal. I was especially specific with my avian and exotic animal experience since it's the one that makes me stand out from the average applicant that mostly has small and large animal experience. I'm kinda afraid that they won't look at the VMCAS application as much as their own and just use the VMCAS app to verify the transcripts, so I treat the supplemental apps as if they were their own separate application. That's just me being paranoid, though. :p

I really like UI's supplemental app.
 
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I can't remember what all I said so I can't comfort y'all on the experience part.
 
Agreed, mine are very concise. Like for dogs I literally just put "I have worked at two different vet clinics."
That is how they gave the example description, but I didn't feel okay with it being so short and not descriptive. But I'm sure they like not having to read a whole ton of explanation.. idk :/ I'll just try to make mine not so long.

Thanks for the input guys!
 
Last year I literally put "have had as pet for several years; working in a veterinarian's office; grew up on a livestock farm" for things like pigs, cattle, etc. If it was something like OTHER where you had to put in a exotic type animal I did about the same thing. For example I put amphibians/reptiles then put "have had as pet for several years; volunteering in a zoo; breeding cornsnakes and axolotls for several years". In the directions it says to briefly explain and since I got in by just putting what they said to put, I think that as long as its not a book you should be fine. Hope that helps!:cat:
 
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hey does any one know how much Illinois weighs the GRE??
 
hey does any one know how much Illinois weighs the GRE??
Their website just says "The initial applicant assessment ranks all applicants (usually between 800 to 900) numerically according to a composite score derived from the Cumulative and Science Grade Point Averages, the GRE percentile score, and an evaluation of the rigor of the undergraduate collegiate academic experience." I would suggest contacting them if you want to know more specifically. I think it's really interesting that if you get an interview, they just take into account your interview and the subjective aspects of your application in making admissions decisions. That could help some people and hurt others.
 
Yeah I saw that on their website I might just contact them to get more specifics. I personally like that about the interview part because I have great experience and hopefully good LOR's but my gpa/gre are my low point :/
 
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I'm actually also curious how they determine the rigor of the undergrad experience. Do they look at school ranking?
 
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