WAMC, decent GPA+experiences

[PcocoPriest]

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Hi I'm new to SDN, and I'm a little curious to hear what my odds are. I've been putting off applying for a couple of years now bc I needed to do some maturing and growing up, but I feel ready now. I think my grades are pretty decent. I got only 1 C in Calc 2 (because what even is that class).

Hours:
Wildlife (with vet): ≈2750 ish (I'm still volunteering currently, and it's busy season)
Large animal: 344(research),1035(LA emergency surge tech)+192(volunteer)
Small Animal(GP vet):384+720 (this is ongoing)
Zoo: 1164 (376 volunteering as a tour guide,788 animals experience)
Research: 344 LA research, 72 mouse nutrition, 520 synthetic chemistry (from a lifetime ago)
Volunteer: aside from the 376 hours as a tour guide, 462 hours as an animal science discord moderator
Employment: ≈1300-ish private tutor since 2018 for middle school, high school, and college STEM, and had the opportunity to work with some special education kids with IEPs, which was awesome. This has been my primary income for a while now.

Total veterinary hours: 4,241
Total animal experience: 980

LORs:
-SA vet (I came to her with 0 hours with small animals, and shes training me up bc its a slow clinic I can work on my tech skills in a low pressure environment)
-Mouse nutrition PI. He and I got close, I'd help people in his nutrition class, and we email semi-regularly, keeping in touch
-LA postdoc I worked for. I was with her for 4 feed studies and trained other interns on protocols, basic safe dairy cow handling, and milking
-Maybe my current wildlife vet? She agreed to write it, but I'm not too sure she will know me well enough by this fall, but was like "oh totally just join me whenever you see me working a case" but shes got externs now over the summer and I don't wanna overstep. I'll play it by ear


GPAs:
-Baccalaureate: 3.75
-Post-bacc GPA: 3 (planning to raise it to 3.5 taking cellbio online for CSU which will bump up the postbacc science GPA and overall a teeny tiny bit)
-Cumulative undergrad:3.72
-Overall:3.72
-Baccalaureate science:3.74
-Postbac science:3.0
-Cumulative undergrad science:3.7
-Overall science GPA:3.70
-Last 45 units GPA:3.76
-Community College GPA:3.63
-UC Davis (finished undergrad here after CC) GPA: 3.87

School List:
- UC Davis and tOSU (I have family in Columbus)
-UGA and CSU
-NCSU
-maybe Iowa

I'm mostly considering schools that have at least some semblance of nutrition, exotics/wildlife service, (being strong in academia would be a plus bc I like research too). I'm considering shadowing some specialty vets while I've got time, or getting a job in ER. I think my lack of long-standing jobs might be a red flag of sorts. That, and it's just really freaking hard to get into vet school, it seems like 95% luck once you check as many of their boxes as you can. I'm already telling myself I'm gonna have to reapply which sucks bc the essays are awful but its a numbers thing.

If anyone has any feedback I'm all ears. Thanks!

 

[beans2020]

I think your grades and experience hours look pretty good! Be sure to include any extracurriculars you did during school/are currently involved in too - admissions committees like to see what your interests are outside of vet med. The private tutoring is awesome!
I am a bit confused about your vet/animal experiences - namely the wildlife and zoo - were all of those hours under the direct supervision of a vet? Or were they animal experience hours? Regardless, you have enough diverse hours that you should have a good app, you just want to make sure you input them into VMCAS correctly.

I think you'll be ok with or without the wildlife vet letter, though that being said if she was excited to write it for you and didn't seem hesitant about it then I would go ahead and ask for it. That means she feels that she knows you well enough to do a good job.

What is your IS school? Absolutely plan on applying there. I highly recommend applying anywhere that allows you to switch to IS tuition after your first year or anywhere that has cheaper tuition overall, especially with the new loan changes. (Places like Mizzou, WSU, and Purdue come to mind. NCSU and Ohio as well which I see you already listed! Check VIN's cost of attendance map if you want to look more into this). There is nothing wrong for looking for places with exotics/wildlife, however it's more important to apply to places where you will be a competitive applicant and that are at least somewhat affordable. You can always get exotics/wildlife experience through externships and electives.

 

[PcocoPriest]

I think your grades and experience hours look pretty good! Be sure to include any extracurriculars you did during school/are currently involved in too - admissions committees like to see what your interests are outside of vet med. The private tutoring is awesome!
I am a bit confused about your vet/animal experiences - namely the wildlife and zoo - were all of those hours under the direct supervision of a vet? Or were they animal experience hours? Regardless, you have enough diverse hours that you should have a good app, you just want to make sure you input them into VMCAS correctly.

I think you'll be ok with or without the wildlife vet letter, though that being said if she was excited to write it for you and didn't seem hesitant about it then I would go ahead and ask for it. That means she feels that she knows you well enough to do a good job.

What is your IS school? Absolutely plan on applying there. I highly recommend applying anywhere that allows you to switch to IS tuition after your first year or anywhere that has cheaper tuition overall, especially with the new loan changes. (Places like Mizzou, WSU, and Purdue come to mind. NCSU and Ohio as well which I see you already listed! Check VIN's cost of attendance map if you want to look more into this). There is nothing wrong for looking for places with exotics/wildlife, however it's more important to apply to places where you will be a competitive applicant and that are at least somewhat affordable. You can always get exotics/wildlife experience through externships and electives.

Hi! My IS is UCD. And I did some reconsidering of my hours (and remembered I can include high school stuff, though I'm not sure how much it's valued). I've got a little bit under 1600 extra-curricular hours ( zoo tour guide no animal interaction=376 hours, discord moderator=308 hours and ongoing, high school club founder and president=296, section editor of high school paper = 716hrs, volunteer tutor for middle school kids, and kids with terminally ill families=390 (after high school, I switched to tutoring to pay rent), foodies club member during undergrad = 212hrs). So if they actually care what I did during high school, awesome, if not, then I've got like 520ish hours, which isn't nothing.

My wildlife work was all under the direct supervision of a veterinarian, as we do intake exams and help with rounding. I'm kinda iffy on the wildlife vet letter. I've only known her since February, and when I brought it up, she was like, "Sure! But I'll need to get to know you a lot better, so if you catch me working on something, just ask to join, and by the end of the season, I can write something," so who knows. I have my 3 letters all locked in, and I'm not entirely sure if schools even read extra LORs (I heard UCD faculty don't read extra LORs, but I don’t know, maybe it's just them).

And thanks for the heads up about WSU! I'll ask around and see if it'd be a good fit for me 🙂

 

[beans2020]

Absolutely include those high school hours! Worst case scenario the admissions committee doesn't read them. I included hours from an activity i did from elementary school all the way up until high school and it was brought up in an interview so you literally never know!

I maybe wouldn't worry about the wildlife vet letter then - I applied with just the 3 letters and was fine.

 

[HorseObsessed]

Hi ! Fellow tutor here— great source of income and I'm going to keep doing it in vet school. You have a reasonable school list but keep in mind UGA, CSU, NCSU have a very very low out of state acceptance rate. I would consider broadening your school list a little bit if you want this cycle to be your best bet. With your research background, diverse hours, and reasonable GPA, I'd consider adding Penn, Cornell, UF, if your overall GPA as calculate in VMCAS is 3.6+ (I had success at these schools with diverse hours & research). I think any school is reasonable to have on your list provided you get that last 45 up a little bit. Remember that it's a bit of a crapshoot so it's wise to apply broadly if you can afford it. Good luck!
I had many short term jobs, most 2 months-2 years. My longest standing jobs were outside of vet med— cashier (3.5 years) and tutor (5 years)— and this didn't seem to be a hindrance.

 

[PcocoPriest]

Hi ! Fellow tutor here— great source of income and I'm going to keep doing it in vet school. You have a reasonable school list but keep in mind UGA, CSU, NCSU have a very very low out of state acceptance rate. I would consider broadening your school list a little bit if you want this cycle to be your best bet. With your research background, diverse hours, and reasonable GPA, I'd consider adding Penn, Cornell, UF, if your overall GPA as calculate in VMCAS is 3.6+ (I had success at these schools with diverse hours & research). I think any school is reasonable to have on your list provided you get that last 45 up a little bit. Remember that it's a bit of a crapshoot so it's wise to apply broadly if you can afford it. Good luck!
I had many short term jobs, most 2 months-2 years. My longest standing jobs were outside of vet med— cashier (3.5 years) and tutor (5 years)— and this didn't seem to be a hindrance.

Hi! Always love meeting other tutors. One of the big factors for my school list is the cost of attendance, which also includes average rent within a 40 min drive from campus(which is a mostly arbitrary number its more like I know if there's a teaching hospital, I gotta be a short drive away if I'm on call), so that's why I didn't include Cornell. Funny enough, I did write the essays for UF, but then got cold feet (I drove through Gainesville and it had weird vibes, but looking back, that's just normal Florida vibes), so now the essays are just sitting around. My hesitation about applying to schools for the sake of "what if I get in" is like I don't wanna go somewhere that I don't think would be a good fit for me, you know? But I'll look into Penn, UF, and WSU and see if it sparks anything in me. Do you happen to know if they have any kind of veterinary scientist training program? I know Purdue does.

For the long standing jobs, I know I don't have many long-term jobs (aside from tutoring, dairy research 1.5 year, sx tech for 1.5yr, and small animal VA for 1 year), most of the things I've done were ≈6mo or less. I don't know if that raises any kind of red flags, but I took the whole "explore the field of veterinary medicine" to heart and did as many different things as possible. And do research hours actually matter for certain schools?

 

[HorseObsessed]

Hi! Always love meeting other tutors. One of the big factors for my school list is the cost of attendance, which also includes average rent within a 40 min drive from campus(which is a mostly arbitrary number its more like I know if there's a teaching hospital, I gotta be a short drive away if I'm on call), so that's why I didn't include Cornell. Funny enough, I did write the essays for UF, but then got cold feet (I drove through Gainesville and it had weird vibes, but looking back, that's just normal Florida vibes), so now the essays are just sitting around. My hesitation about applying to schools for the sake of "what if I get in" is like I don't wanna go somewhere that I don't think would be a good fit for me, you know? But I'll look into Penn, UF, and WSU and see if it sparks anything in me. Do you happen to know if they have any kind of veterinary scientist training program? I know Purdue does.

For the long standing jobs, I know I don't have many long-term jobs (aside from tutoring, dairy research 1.5 year, sx tech for 1.5yr, and small animal VA for 1 year), most of the things I've done were ≈6mo or less. I don't know if that raises any kind of red flags, but I took the whole "explore the field of veterinary medicine" to heart and did as many different things as possible. And do research hours actually matter for certain schools?

Penn and Cornell both have DVM/ PhD VSTP programs as well as summer research programs. The DVM/ PhD programs at both those institutions cover full tuition I believe.
Penn is just as expensive as Cornell, but I know both institutions offer scholarships to some students. Cornell, according to their website, gives an average of $10,000 a year to 70% of students— I was unable to apply because my parents wouldn’t fill out the aid form lol and they require parent information. Penn offered me a large recruitment scholarship but I’m not sure how common that is.
Obviously not an option for everyone, but my mortgage 20 minutes from Cornell is only $800 a month (and I only pay half of that) if you’re willing to go a little farther. Newfield, 20 minutes away, and Horseheads, 40 minutes away, are much cheaper.
I had pretty unique financial circumstances that led me to Cornell, so I understand the hesitancy for sure. Hope the info helps.
I had a similar resume to you with a couple long term jobs and a lot of hopping around and it didn’t hurt me at all.
Research will help you anywhere, but it’s not required anywhere. During my interview and essays with Penn, I really got the vibe that they valued it. UF interview didn’t talk about research as much, but they seemed to love my varied vet experience, so there’s points for you too.
If you’re really interested in VSTP official program, as in a DVM/ PhD, check out Cornell, Penn, Colorado, UC Davis. All very competitive but they all have some level of funding for the DVM portion and significant funding for PhD. I believe NCSU, UTK, and Michigan are worth looking into for this too.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Pursuing a Combined DVM/PhD Program | SDN

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