WAMC: High GPA Low Vet Hours

[HerdingDogRun]

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Hello! I am JR at university of Alaska Fairbanks. I’m debating applying to some programs sooner than next year. I currently live in rural Texas so tech and A&M are my instate. While I’ve met the requirements for tech this cycle, I’m not going to apply there yet. This cycle I’m considering applying to RVC primarily. If there’s another school that you’d suggest feel free!

Cumulative GPA: 4.0
science GPA: 4.0
last 45: 4.0

Any degrees achieved
Jr in Biological sciences

Veterinary Experience:
- Low cost vet services: 26 hrs (Vet assistant)
- General practice (small animal and companion exotics) : 204 hours hrs Vet assistant
- Board Radiologist 14 hrs Vet assistant
- Board Cardiologist 8 hrs Vet assistant and shadowing
- Board surgeon 11 hrs Vet assistant and shadowing
Total: 263 (would have 300 my time of submitting VMCAS)

Animal Experience:
- Dog Trainer 315 hrs (probably closer to 350-375 at submission)
- pet sitting 163 hrs
- Animal shelter volunteer 80 hrs
- Owned dogs so 100 hrs
Total: 720 hrs

Research Experience:
None

Awards/scholarships:
- Nanook Pledge
- Honors Usibelli
- chancellors list x 4

Extracurriculars:
- At large (‘24), Vice chair (‘25) and chair (‘26) board member of local agility club
- Gilderlinderman Undergraduate Advisory Council 24-25, and 25-26
- AKC Trial Committee member

Employment:
- Dog trainer (Two different facilities since 2/3/25)
- Photographer (about two years)
- Pet sitting

I’ve taken hard course (Orgo 1, calc 1, full year bio, microbio etc) and my 4.0 survived, but I’m not sure if it would be advantageous to try applying now while I for sure have the 4.0 but lower vet hours! Pretty much I really want to use my gpa to my advantage but not necessarily wanting to just throw money down the well so trying to be strategic.

The primary issue is that despite living in rural Texas, I have like 10 “rural” hours. Tech is holistic and once you meet the gpa minimum, they don’t look at it again. So there isn’t a large advantage that my gpa gives there. I of course can also apply there thought I have very little hope of competing with those with hundreds to thousands of rural or mixed animal hours.

Unfortunately for A and M, organic 2 has to be completed at the time of submission and I am taking it this upcoming fall semester (my school’s schedule…).

 

[pp9]

Why are you not immediately applying to your two cheapest options with stats like that?

 

[JaynaAli]

You didn’t explain your reasons for choosing RVC (nor do you owe that to us) but I think it’s silly to not apply to your in-state. ESPECIALLY when your instate is one of the cheapest. Your grades are great, obviously. Your vet hours are definitely low and more would be lots better, but it’s not awful. If you aren’t successful the first try that’s the easiest thing to change about an app. You say you won’t want to “throw money down the well” on an app, but you’re going to throw like $228,000 (before years of interest is added in) down the well by going to RVC over your in-state?! The AAVMC cost comparison tool shows 468,000 total cost of attendance at RVC vs 240,000 total cost for in-state TAMU…I’m not trying to be dramatic that’s a life altering difference in debt, especially considering that 268k of that would need to be private loans…if a private lender will even give a US student that much for an overseas school? I think if you’re gonna do a “try it and see what happens” app this cycle you should apply to TAMU because of the costs and then broaden your options later on and include tech and other places in subsequent years.

 

[HerdingDogRun]

You didn’t explain your reasons for choosing RVC (nor do you owe that to us) but I think it’s silly to not apply to your in-state. ESPECIALLY when your instate is one of the cheapest. Your grades are great, obviously. Your vet hours are definitely low and more would be lots better, but it’s not awful. If you aren’t successful the first try that’s the easiest thing to change about an app. You say you won’t want to “throw money down the well” on an app, but you’re going to throw like $228,000 (before years of interest is added in) down the well by going to RVC over your in-state?! The AAVMC cost comparison tool shows 468,000 total cost of attendance at RVC vs 240,000 total cost for in-state TAMU…I’m not trying to be dramatic that’s a life altering difference in debt, especially considering that 268k of that would need to be private loans…if a private lender will even give a US student that much for an overseas school? I think if you’re gonna do a “try it and see what happens” app this cycle you should apply to TAMU because of the costs and then broaden your options later on and include tech and other places in subsequent years.

Very fair question!! They are definitely my first choices. The primary issue is that despite living in rural Texas, I have like 10 “rural” hours. Tech is holistic and once you meet the gpa minimum, they don’t look at it again. So there isn’t a large advantage that my gpa gives there. I of course can also apply there thought I have very little hope of competing with those with hundreds to thousands of rural or mixed animal hours.

Unfortunately for A and M, organic 2 has to be completed at the time of submission and I am taking it this upcoming fall semester (my school’s schedule…).

 

[HerdingDogRun]

Why are you not immediately applying to your two cheapest options with stats like that?

Very fair question!! They are definitely my first choices. The primary issue is that despite living in rural Texas, I have like 10 “rural” hours. Tech is holistic and once you meet the gpa minimum, they don’t look at it again. So there isn’t a large advantage that my gpa gives there. I of course can also apply there thought I have very little hope of competing with those with hundreds to thousands of rural or mixed animal hours.

Unfortunately for A and M, organic 2 has to be completed at the time of submission and I am taking it this upcoming fall semester (my school’s schedule…).

 

[JaynaAli]

Very fair question!! They are definitely my first choices. The primary issue is that despite living in rural Texas, I have like 10 “rural” hours. Tech is holistic and once you meet the gpa minimum, they don’t look at it again. So there isn’t a large advantage that my gpa gives there. I of course can also apply there thought I have very little hope of competing with those with hundreds to thousands of rural or mixed animal hours.

Unfortunately for A and M, organic 2 has to be completed at the time of submission and I am taking it this upcoming fall semester (my school’s schedule…).

I would apply to tech even if it's a long shot and/or just wait a year then. I mean it's your money to spend, but the cost savings by going in-state is immense and especially with the current state of student loans and cost of education, I'd try to exhaust those more affordable options before taking on nearly a half million dollars in debt (before interest) by going out of state. I'd urge you to really look into what repayment would look like and how much your estimated payments would be on that much debt with private loans before you apply to OOS schools. VIN has some simulators and estimates that you can play around with to see what the payments would be which you can then compare to the average salary you can expect. This is ESPECIALLY important if you're wanting to remain rural, since rural salaries are nowhere near the range they are in urban centers. I live in a very rural area too, and I all but guarantee the loan repayment amounts for that level of private and federal debt are more than my friend who until recently did rural mixed practice made in an entire month. And yes there are some extra incentive programs for rural vets, but those aren't guaranteed to be available or remain funded, so they really shouldn't factor in to your long term loan repayment plan.

Edit: I was curious and went to look, and it doesn't look like international programs like RVC are included on the VIN resources directly. I ran sims for Tufts (400k) and Midwestern (480k) since it's likely RVC would hit somewhere in the middle of those two according to the AAVMC data (closer to midwestern but I'm giving a little grace and maybe you can cut housing costs or something) but it estimates the federal payment alone will be like $1200/mo if you make an average salary of $140,000, and then your private loans would ALSO cost you between $2600 and $4000 at a ~10% interest rate (which is what I did see someone post in a FB group they were finding this year) depending on if you're borrowing more like 200k in private vs 280k in private. So that's like at least $4,000/mo maybe as much as $5200/mo in loan repayment every month. Takehome pay on 140k/yr would probably be about $8,000/mo which leaves you with 2800 for housing, bills, retirement, etc. Doable? Maybe for some if your housing is cheap. If you make 140k/yr or more. My friend made 80k in rural mixed med which would be 5000k take-home pay/mo and is in fact less than the high end repayment requirement like I suspected. I ran it for TAMU too, which showed total repayment to be about 2000k/mo on their total borrowing of about 215k.

 

[battie]

Wait the year and apply to both texas schools. Use the gap year to gain experience. Unless you absolutely bomb the next year of courses, any drop in your grades will be nominal.

 

[kitzsuna]

Yeah, with that gpa definitely apply to TAMU next year if you apply to tech and don’t get in this year. They weigh gpa very heavily in their admissions process