Wednesday, March 18, 2015

Applying to Vet School: An Update

I haven't posted on this topic in a while! Information about the process of applying to vet school is unreliable and spotty at best. It is frustrating that every applicant has to learn anew what other applicants already learned then either forgot or repressed....

The 28 US vet programs and the handful of foreign programs that are accredited by the AAVMC all agree to accept a unified application (regulated by VMCAS), to accept the same deadline for completion of that application (October of the year before you want to begin vet school), and to use the same deadline for acceptance of admission offers (April 15 of the next year). But some schools have supplemental applications. All six of the schools that I applied to had some sort of supplemental application that was either a rehash of the VMCAS material (that was frustrating) or additional questions that were relevant to that particular program or the state in which it is located (for residency decisions, etc.). Some schools interview candidates. The time at which admission offers are sent out varies widely, with some schools sending out offers in December, others waiting until late March. So there is some overall structure but the details will be quite different depending on which school(s) you apply to.

My list of six has narrowed down to five. University of Illinois invited me out for an interview/info session. But if I declined to attend one of their pre-determined dates, my application would no longer be considered. I declined.

Why would I do this? Well, an offer to attend an info session is a guarantee of absolutely nothing. Even being invited out for an interview means nothing. I would have had to miss classes (I currently have a 4.0 GPA for my graduate course work and I work quite hard for it). I would have had to pay for airfare, hotel, meals, and transportation out of my own pocket. And out of my six, Illinois was without question the last on the list. 

And there was another reason. In early December, I received an email from Oregon State University (where I am now completing my MS degree) with an offer of admission to their vet school program for fall 2015. So with an offer in hand, I looked at the pseudo-offer from Illinois sitting there in the bush and made my first decision. Six became five.

Oregon is unusual in jumping out of the gate so early, but that admissions offer is for an out-of-state slot, and there is a fixed number of those. They also sent out first-round rejection letters to in-state applicants at the same time. They didn't send offers of admission to in-state applicants until early February, following a more normal time schedule for those sorts of things.

All vet schools have an alternate list for candidates that meet their criteria but for some reason just weren't enticing enough to put into the first round of admission offers. I am on the alternate list for three schools, and in ranked position one for one of them. I don't know the size of the lists or my rank on the other two; most schools are quite coy about this. But there are many good reasons for this. Sometimes there is no rank at all. Vet schools may seek to balance each incoming class between large animal and small animal, or research and clinical, or even males and females (women outnumber men by a large margin). 

I still haven't heard from one school but I know that it is interviewing applicants now so I expect to know something from them soon.

I am of two minds about being put on an alternate list. I am disappointed that I did not make the cut at those three schools but I am pleased that they didn't reject me outright.

I've been talking to my network of mentors and advisors and have learned that all schools, every single one, even Cornell and UC Davis and others with that glittery panache of reputation and national ranking, dip into their alternate lists. This horse trading will begin in April and can continue up to the weeks before classes start in the fall! To get an offer from one of the schools that put me on their alternate list, someone else has to decline a prior offer of admission. Maybe several someones. There is a good probability that I will receive an offer from the school at which I'm ranked alternate one; I have no idea about the other two.

Which brings up an extremely important question: how valuable is an offer given to me in early May from school X when they didn't love me enough in January to make me an offer then?

I will of course accept Oregon's offer of admission. But this puts me in a bit of a quandary. How long do I wait to hear from the other schools? If I am going to move to some other place, I need time to find a new place to live, to pack, to move, to settle in. I'm not 21 years old, carefree and footloose, with possessions that fit in the back of my car. I passed that point decades ago.

I am drifting in unmapped territory. Most people apply to only one vet school, the one in the state in which they reside. Some of the high achievers apply to several. But "here be dragons".

I had hoped that the more information I gathered, the easier my decisions would become. Instead, I am only becoming more anxious about this process. 

If you started reading this hoping for resolution, I'm sorry to disappoint. It may be weeks yet before I know what is going to happen this coming fall.

But one thing is certain. I left Saudi Arabia two years ago with a plan, a crazy plan, to get into vet school (well, to be honest, I conceived the plan almost three years before that). And somehow, I managed to pull it off. I will be going to vet school in the fall. I just don't know which one it will be!

1 comment:

Oldgraymare said...

Regardless where you go, the goals you've set for yourself will be achieved. So excited to see you heading for new adventures. Life's too short not to make the most of each moment. Really proud of you!