WAMC First Time Applicant

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Tinytortoise

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I have wanted to be a vet as long as I can remember and since middle school have been working towards getting into vet school. Living in a rural area there are very few vets, and even less that are willing to allow people to shadow. And very few places to get animal experience, so must of my animal and vet experience is from the same couple places.

First time applicant, applying to Oregon State (In State), Iowa State (Out of State), and Washington State (Out of State).

Current Career Interests are Rural Practice (mixed) and/or wildlife/exotic.

Cumulative GPA: 3.90
science GPA: ~3.76
last 45: > 3.80

Any degrees achieved:
Will achieve Bachelor in Biology March 2026.

Veterinary Experience:
- ~500 hrs. Shadowing/Volunteering Vet Clinic at an AZA accredited Safari Drive Thru.

Animal Experience:
- ~2100 hrs. Volunteering cleaning enclosures, preparing diets, presenting animal talks, and building enrichment for AZA Accredited Zoo.
- Pet Ownership of dogs, rabbits, tortoises, and fish.

Research Experience: N/A

Awards/scholarships:
- Graduated high school as Salutatorian in 2023.
- Achieved Rank of Eagle Scout within the BSA organization.
- Joined Order of The Arrow BSA’s national honor society.

Extracurriculars:
- ~1092 hrs. Camping and Volunteering as a Boy Scout.
- ~900 hrs. Volunteering at a church helping with Audio & visuals, implementing new computer systems, and general I.T. work.

Employment:
-
~1800 hrs. Working at an AZA Accredited Safari in the Booths Department. Helped guests get their admission tickets, sold seed in the aviary and worked with the birds, and made sure guests were following the rules in the drive-thru and that deer were not causing any issues.

Letter of Recommendation
-
Biology Professor at OSU
- Exotic/Wildlife Vet at Zoo, but also works for OSU
- Supervisor at Work
- Pastor at church I attend and volunteer
- Committee Chair of Local Boy Scout Group and Head of the Hospital’s HR department.

I’m aware that my vet experience hours are on the low end, but I’m hoping higher GPA, strong LoR, and lots of general animal experience will help make up.

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I think the only real issue with your app is your lack of experience hours in general (or really any client facing) practice. I’d strongly recommend you do everything you can to find a clinical practice to shadow at. Dealing with clients is a whole different arena of vet med, but it’s one you need to experience before committing to this as a career. Exotics med can be a difficult field to enter, and exotics at a zoo will be quite different than life doing rural mixed practice or even companion animals and exotics in general practice. I think ESPECIALLY if you’re going to say you want to go into rural mixed, you need actual clinical hours in a regular practice to know it’s a good fit. The same goes for if your interest is exotics, make sure you’re okay with small or mixed animal GP as a backup option in case you don’t manage to specialize or work in zoo med. Most of the students that start school interested in exotics go on to get regular GP jobs. It’s only a small number that do exotics med/specialize. I am from a town of 800 people and had to drive to a larger town 45 mins away for vet experience, so I do understand the challenge, but you need this experience. Your grades are good and your other experiences are good, but if I were on an admissions committee, I’d be a bit hesitant to admit you without more experience in clinical vet med.
 
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Your GPAs are competitive at the majority of programs. Agreed with Jayna that your biggest weakness is your lack of client-facing hours, and no hours in mixed practice. If you're going to say that you want to do a particular area of vet med, it's really important that you actually have a good amount of experience hours in that area - otherwise, you don't actually know what you want, and that's a red flag from an admissions perspective.

Make it a priority to get that experience and then I think you'll be a competitive applicant at a pretty wide variety of schools.
 
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