I was told by the admissions officer at the OSU vet school that, every year, at least one person tries to apply to every vet school. Each DVM admissions office gets a report from VMCAS which shows, for applicants to their school, the other schools those applicant also applied to. I of course believed her--she had seen the report showing that someone who applied to OSU also applied to all of the other US schools (there are 29 in the US). But now as I am working on the supplemental applications for the measly six schools I am applying to, I am not sure I believe that those crazy people really and truly applied to 29 schools. Sure, perhaps they paid the fee to send their VMCAS application to each one but it would take something inhuman to complete all of the supplemental apps too!
I am getting bogged down in prerequisites for two schools in particular. Some schools base their review on all of the course info you enter into VMCAS and the transcripts that VMCAS verifies, but others want you to fill out more or less the same information about specific courses using their forms and their terminology. I suspect a weedout mechanism. For example, for one school, if the title of your prerequisite course was not "Introductory Biology," you need to send the school a "prerequisite evaluation request" form, a copy of the course description, a letter from the instructor or program chair if the course description doesn't mesh well with theirs, unofficial transcripts, a cover letter (not explicitly required but sort of obvious), and so on. It has taken me several days to compile this kind of information for two schools in particular (I won't name them; I'm writing about the process, not trying to single any one school out). Then I mail out enormous envelopes and sit back and wait. I can't finish their supplemental applications until I get a response, and in fact, if my prerequisites don't meet their approval, I can't apply to those schools at all. That would make me sad but that's why I have a short list. I still have one school that I can add to the list if any of my first selections don't work out.
The supplemental applications all have essay questions. One school had a really great one about the role of the veterinarian in global health issues, using MERS as the discussion point (MERS may have camel origins). Some are more generic: describe a challenge and how you overcame it, that sort of thing. So in addition to the VMCAS personal statement, you must craft a bunch of other essays, some long, some as short as 200 words (but there were six of those).
I feel like I am in the home stretch now. Rather than send a nagging email to my referees, I sent them all a nearly final draft of my personal statement, using that opportunity to nudge them along. One of them submitted his letter today. I'm pleased he was so prompt because that is an important trigger. VMCAS won't begin to evaluate your application until all transcripts and at least one reference letter are in their hands--those basic elements are now in place. I haven't formally submitted my part of it yet (see: prerequisite comments above) but I at least know that when I click on that final "pay now" button, the VMCAS process will continue to roll along.
So far, I've been working on the vet school applications for about five weeks. This doesn't include the work I did in advance, like collecting emails and other things I've written that could be used in the personal statement, gathering transcripts, preparing for and taking the GRE. My goal to finish by the end of July was probably too optimistic. But I've still got a week!
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