Although I am a combat Veteran, I believe my success this year in the internship match process was largely due my overall application and interviews as well as my attention to fit at sites that I applied. I received a lot of feedback from those that I interviewed with about the quality of my essays, the breadth of my clinical experiences and my referral letters. My service, I believe was just a cherry on top. I had diverse training experiences including a large VA medical center, inpatient facility along with may others that are consistent with a generalist approach. I can not emphasize enough the importance of a good fit, applying to large Research VA's with very little or no research will be a waste of time even as a Veteran. I know of several other Veterans who assumed they would get preference and did not put much effort into their application, did not seek out diverse training experiences and the internship process was not kind to them. My advice, don't even factor being a veteran into your internship application process. Of course include it as an experience, but don't go into the process thinking that you have an advantage, because in reality you don't. All sites look for different things in applications and if you don't meet the standard of what they are looking for you will likely not even get an interview regardless of your veteran status. As WisNeuro said it's an "if everything else is equal" situation, you have to be qualified for the position first.
