It depends on the school. Some schools will not look at pet ownership, others will. I would take a peek at the schools you are applying to, see what their policies are, and then go with the majority. Sounds like it would be a great experience to include.
I think it would be best to be as succinct as possible. I'm sure the admissions committees would appreciate it 🙂 That being said, don't leave anything out for the sake of brevity.
I would err on the very low side myself, but just my opinion. I would count active hours of caring for pets. So walking, actually feeding, etc. Not just hours they exist in your house.
I agree with wildcat, to estimate hours that you're actually doing something with the animals, like feeding, training, medical care, walking. For my application, I put down a pretty low estimate and then used the description box to say why I thought it was a valuable experience and describe some things I did (like medicating, doing glucose curves, giving insulin injections, spending extra time at the clinic watching their ultrasounds and surgeries and stuff). I thought that would be more useful to the ad coms than the exact number of hours that I spent doing it.
From my understanding, some schools just look at the VMCAS GPA, whereas others will calculate their own. Each school varies as to whether they'll exclude grades from a certain number of years ago, whether they include all attempts at repeated courses when calculating GPAs, etc. As far as I know, it will continue to be that way, VMCAS just kind of helps the schools out if they don't want to calculate it themselves. If you have questions about how a specific school calculates GPAs, it's best to look on their website or contact them directly. It can be kind of confusing, but it helps because you can look for the school whose way of calculating/weighing things will present you in the best light!
Thank you so much!
Yep, you can submit up to six. There are a few schools that you need to select a certain amount to submit on their supplementals (for example, Ohio State has you select only three to submit), but they usually have this on their website if you are worried about it.
I'm in the same boat! I would say call and ask. Mine splits up nicely where my majors are Bio and Writing, my minors are Chem and Lit. So it's simple enough to put the Chem minor with the Bio degree and the Lit minor with the Writing degree.
It's a good idea to check with the schools you're applying to. One of the schools I applied to said that I could submit more than three, but they would randomly select which three to consider and would not read the rest. It doesn't hurt to ask the admissions committees to be sure you know the requirements.
