WAMC? (Low GPA)

[kcapplicant]

(Updating this on my partner's behalf)

Colleges I'm Applying To
Definitely: UGA (IS), Iowa, Western, Washington State, Glasgow, UCD, Bristol, Edinburgh
Probably: Wisconsin, Minnesota
Possibly: Louisiana, Colorado, LMU, Midwestern, Tufts, UC Davis, Missouri, Penn, Florida

Cumulative GPA: 3.49 (with grade replacement); 3.1 (without)
Science GPA: 3.39 (with GR); 3.1 (without)
Last 45: 2.8 (Last 36: 3.1; Last 30: 3.5)

Degrees achieved
BSc in Biology (originally a music major)

GRE results: 169/163/6.0

Veterinary Experience:
6000+ hours as vet tech (mostly SA but some LA and avian)
x hours shadowing LA vet (starting soon)

Animal Experience
80 hours volunteering at a wildlife center
X hours volunteering at a stables (starting soon)

Research Experience:
100+ hours lab experience

Awards/scholarships:

• Graduated with honours
• Honors scholarship
• 1st year music scholarship
• Hope scholarship

Extracurriculars:

• Concert clarinetist
• Music tutor (for high school students)
• oSTEM member
• Science Olympiad volunteer
• Volunteer at foot clinic for open door community

Employment:

• 3+ years as a vet tech/lead tech
• Grocery stores, a coffee shop, and a bookshop

Summarize any concerns you have
The priority is to apply to schools that do grade replacement, which all of the above US schools do to some degree (save UGA, the IS). Planning to apply to the UK schools through UCAS as that only requires you to upload your transcript directly (which is from a college that does do grade replacement) rather than having you enter every grade individually as VMCAS does (which is then calculated sans GR). This should practically function as grade replacement.

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[JaynaAli]

Is the GPA you list using your retake grades only or all of them? A 3.5 seems high to include 10 failed but I imagine you have a ton of credits after seven years of classes so I wasn’t sure. The UGA website says they use both grades in their GPA calculations. Knowing that all-inclusive GPA would probably be beneficial in better guessing your chances. Why did you fail the ten classes and and what have you done to make yourself successful since then? Is whatever the issue was a one-off or something that will be a issue in vet school? That’s mostly rhetorical but you’ll need to explain what happened and how you’ve learned/changed in your explanation statement to make these things less of a red flag. You have varied experiences and a good bit of vet experience too, which will be in your favor. You may have to explain your path and the major changes, but that’s what an explanation statement can be used for too.

 

[kcapplicant]

Correction: that should have read 8 failed classes, not 10.

Is the GPA you list using your retake grades only or all of them? A 3.5 seems high to include 10 failed but I imagine you have a ton of credits after seven years of classes so I wasn’t sure. The UGA website says they use both grades in their GPA calculations. Knowing that all-inclusive GPA would probably be beneficial in better guessing your chances.

Thank you for your reply. Yes, that's including the retake grades (you're right; there's a lot of credits after 7 years!). Without retakes my GPA is more like 3.7, but I know UGA includes both.

Why did you fail the ten classes and and what have you done to make yourself successful since then? Is whatever the issue was a one-off or something that will be a issue in vet school? That’s mostly rhetorical but you’ll need to explain what happened and how you’ve learned/changed in your explanation statement to make these things less of a red flag. You have varied experiences and a good bit of vet experience too, which will be in your favor. You may have to explain your path and the major changes, but that’s what an explanation statement can be used for too.

It was due to multi-year medical issues, surgery, and anxiety/depression resulting from all that. I don't want to explain my medical history in detail on my statement but it's not a recurrent medical problem so hopefully I can emphasise that it's dealt with and that I'm healthy and stable now. I know I'll need to narrativize it all somehow so I need to work on that.

 

[Lupin21]

Correction: that should have read 8 failed classes, not 10.



Thank you for your reply. Yes, that's including the retake grades (you're right; there's a lot of credits after 7 years!). Without retakes my GPA is more like 3.7, but I know UGA includes both.



It was due to multi-year medical issues, surgery, and anxiety/depression resulting from all that. I don't want to explain my medical history in detail on my statement but it's not a recurrent medical problem so hopefully I can emphasise that it's dealt with and that I'm healthy and stable now. I know I'll need to narrativize it all somehow so I need to work on that.

I would be a little careful with saying it was a one time thing and you are all recovered now. Sometimes medical things go wrong during vet school as well, so maybe make sure to include how you would deal with something similar happening again. It's all about growth and handling the unexpected.

 

[Georgethecat]

Hi there, 27 y/o GA resident here, first time applicant. I have wanted to apply to vet school for a long time but it hasn't been possible due to family and financial reasons. I'm now working on putting together an application, probably not for this cycle, as I've got to take some prereqs that are going to cost about $8k that I need to save for. I'm concerned about making such a big financial commitment if my application is too weak to be in with a decent chance, as I have a lot of failed classes on my transcript (see details below).

Colleges I'm Applying To
Just University of Georgia College of Veterinary Medicine (due to the lower tuition fees for in-state applicants)

Cumulative GPA: 3.5
Science GPA: 3.7
Last 45: 3.5

Degrees achieved
BSc in Biology (originally a music major)

GRE results: currently studying for it

Veterinary Experience:
4000-5000 hours as vet tech. Including doing surgery prep/recovery for several diff types of surgeries (not just spay/neuter) and everything associated with that, performing exams (including skills like fecal flotation, skin scrapes, basic urinalysis, drawing blood), responding to emergency medical cases that came in (skills like bandaging wounds at various stages of healing, iv catheterization). Filling medications, administering daily meds, monitoring medical cases. Mostly small animals but some goats/horses/pigs/sheep/chicken and occasional exotics.

Research Experience:
100+ hours lab experience (worked on mitichonria-localized ubiquitin in a trypanosome model organism)

Awards/scholarships:

• Graduated with honours
• Honors scholarship
• 1st year music scholarship
• Hope scholarship

Extracurriculars:

• Concert clarinetist
• Music tutor (for high school students)
• oSTEM member
• Science Olympiad volunteer
• Volunteer at foot clinic for open door community

Employment:

• 2 months - present as surgery tech (transferred to a different branch)
• 14 months as lead vet tech (promoted)
• 8 months as a vet tech in shelter medicine
• Before that I worked at grocery stores, a coffee shop, and a bookshop.

Summarize any concerns you have
Due to issues in my personal life, I had a difficult time during my bachelors. It took 7 years for me to graduate (3 years as a music major, 4 as a bio) and I have 8 failed classes on my transcript. This is my biggest concern. I retook all failed bio classes and scored As and Bs but I am still very concerned about all those failures on my transcript, the length of time it took me to graduate, and how that looks to an admissions committee.

I'm also concerned how I explain all that on my personal statement. I assume they'll expect some explanation, but the reasons are very personal/medical. How cagey can I be about this on my PS?

I am intending to do some shadowing and volunteer work with animals to bolster my CV.

I am only currently planning to apply to UGA for financial and family reasons. I'm willing to consider applying elsewhere but cost is a major factor, and I don't want to be too far from GA. One issue with UGA is that, even though I have a biology degree, I need to take gen bio prereqs to meet their specifications. My undergrad institution had a "bridge"program" whereby if you had already taken non-major's gen bio, instead of having to retake the same year-long class but geared towards science majors, you could take this intro molecular cell biology class, and that would in combination with non-major gen bio fulfill the requirements to take upper-level biology courses. UGA doesn't accept this as meeting the gen bio reqs so I have to take that class.

Thanks in advance for any help with this.

I’d highly recommend calling Admissions and talking with Parker (Director of Admissions) and maybe even setting up an appointment to meet in person.

Your GPA’s are not bad and certainly around the ranges that UGA has posted in the past. Do be aware that instead of a true science gpa, UGA uses a pre-req gpa. It’s definitely to your advantage to pick your best classes/grades to fulfill the pre-req’s (for the ones that you have options on). As others have also said, I’d be prepared to succinctly explain your situation, how you dealt with it, and what you learned from the experiences.

Not sure how many pre-req classes you still have to take (besides general bio), but it might be best to wait and apply after you have taken the majority of them so that you can demonstrate academic success in your most recent classes. This can also help boost your last 45 hours gpa.

UGA is a great school and you can’t beat the price tag as an instate student. Best of luck to you!

 

[kcapplicant]

I’d highly recommend calling Admissions and talking with Parker (Director of Admissions) and maybe even setting up an appointment to meet in person.

Your GPA’s are not bad and certainly around the ranges that UGA has posted in the past. Do be aware that instead of a true science gpa, UGA uses a pre-req gpa. It’s definitely to your advantage to pick your best classes/grades to fulfill the pre-req’s (for the ones that you have options on). As others have also said, I’d be prepared to succinctly explain your situation, how you dealt with it, and what you learned from the experiences.

Not sure how many pre-req classes you still have to take (besides general bio), but it might be best to wait and apply after you have taken the majority of them so that you can demonstrate academic success in your most recent classes. This can also help boost your last 45 hours gpa.

UGA is a great school and you can’t beat the price tag as an instate student. Best of luck to you!

I didn't know that about UGA not using a true science GPA, so I'll need to look into that. I think my priority for now needs to be saving for the prereqs, so it might be a while yet before I can apply. Thank you for the advice!

 

[Georgethecat]

Thank you for posting this information. I’m still touching up my admissions info webpages and didn’t know this (iirc the verbiage on the UGA-CVM official site didn’t go into a whole lot of detail on the actual evaluation process and didn’t seem to imply that this was the case); will be adding it!

Looking forward to seeing it when you’re done!

Back to UGA, since they have changed around their website (not nearly as much info as there used to be regarding class statistics etc) they don’t currently say anything about science gpa. At least for classes 2020 & 2021 UGA considered just their science pre-req’s. At that point in time those classes were General Biology (8hrs and has to be biology for science majors), General Chemistry (8hrs), Organic Chemistry (8hrs), Biochemistry (3hrs), General Physics (8hrs), Advanced Biology (8hrs).

OP, probably worth checking directly with admissions to see if this is still the case.