Hahaha. Exactly what I was thinking. Like, it's not even VMCAS season yet!
Ketoone,Hahaha. Exactly what I was thinking. Like, it's not even VMCAS season yet!
Good luck to everyone who's looking to apply for the ISU CVM c/o 2021!
VMCAS opens on May 11th, 2016 for the next cycle! I don't think it's too early to get started though
Good luck, everyone!
Wow, 2021 threads already? LOL. VMCAS does open May 11, but it is never too early to start drafting your PS and deciding who is going to write your LOR. If you have any specific questions, you can post them here or pm me. Happy to help.
Like everyone else has already pointed out, VMCAS is opening on May 11th this year, so you can't exactly jump in quite yet. Something I would recommend doing, however, is getting things ready to input ahead of time -- it will save you lots of headache while actually applying. Get a good start on your personal statement and even start an Excel spreadsheet (if you haven't already) to organize all of your experiences along with the hours you participated, as well as important information such as address, supervisor names, and phone number/email, as you'll need them for VMCAS. Perhaps make sure that your eLORs are set in place, too. ISU's supplemental application, if I remember right, didn't actually open up for registration until a week or so after VMCAS opened, but someone can correct me on that. And I actually think that that was only because the new CAS IDs are shorter than the old ones were and so the supplemental system had to be updated.
I really love Excel and the spreadsheet I made for VMCAS is slightly terrifying - it even has a built in GPA calculator and will make pie charts and spreadsheets of the distributions of your veterinary/animal/non-animal employment hours.
I second this! The personal statement is the first thing I started on for my applications and it's the first thing I finished - because I worked on it for months before I even entered anything substantial into VMCAS. I went through approximately 4-5 drafts of it before I really got an essay that I liked, and that was after several "false starts" where I started an essay and stopped because I didn't like the direction I was taking it.
I'm seriously extremely jealous and impressed. You totally could sell this to the 2021 applicants... I betcha it's a helluva lot better than VMCAS's PTE service
Haha, I just love Excel! My friends make fun of me for it all of the time - but you can bet when they want statistics run or graphs made, I'm the first person they come to! I mostly make crazy spreadsheets so I can procrastinate on other, more important real life things.And I thought my array of google docs were type A!
Oh, man, I learned so much about Excel during my research methods class in undergrad. It's absolutely crazy how much analysis can be done with that program if you know how. Granted, it's no Graphpad InStat or Prism, but it's surprisingly pretty powerful in the right hands.Haha, I just love Excel! My friends make fun of me for it all of the time - but you can bet when they want statistics run or graphs made, I'm the first person they come to! I mostly make crazy spreadsheets so I can procrastinate on other, more important real life things.
I was actually thinking about posting it somewhere on SDN for people, but I would have to clean it up a bit first so people can't break the spreadsheet by accident (I know what I'm doing so I never had to hide any pages/lock formulas). I've also been thinking about a few more features I want to add into it, but we'll see...
There are people who know how powerful Excel is, and then there are people who use it because it will let them put dark lines around the cells so they can make a sign up sheet.
Ah! I love that feature, too!There are people who know how powerful Excel is, and then there are people who use it because it will let them put dark lines around the cells so they can make a sign up sheet.
But I'm at least 50% less cool in real life!Ah! I love that feature, too!
Seriously, between what you've said in this thread and in Pre-Vet Gamers, I feel like we'd be good friends IRL.
They give you a character count (not a word count!). This year I believe it was 4500 characters, which comes out to about a page long.
I would consider that animal experience, if your work did involve working with the animals there at least part of the time. When you enter it into VMCAS, you will have the option to designate it as a paid experience.Question for those who have done the VMCAS application:
I'm at the Experiences tab and I'm not sure what to put. I worked at SeaWorld for 3.5 years as an aquarist and SCUBA diver; do I put this down as animal experience or employment? Because I mean technically it's both but I'm not sure which one is 'favored' to the admissions board? I also volunteered at the Aquarium of the Pacific for 5 years, so would that be a volunteer position or additional animal experience?
Thanks for your input!
Are you IS? Iowa is pretty far up north, compared to where I'm living now. How's the weather like?
You will freeze your great butt off. A warm day in winter is when the temp gets above freezing. Buy your winter coat once you get to Iowa, don't bring one of those wimpy ones from the South.
wimpy ones from the South.
North Face makes a range of coat weights, so it depends on which one you get. Anything that you walk into the store to buy is likely to be too light. My brother went to school in Georgia, and he told me you just can't find anything heavy enough down there.
Ledges State Park is nearby; it's got decent-sized hills for hiking and streams to splash in during the summer. Popular place for students to walk dogs. There's also the High Trestle Trail for biking or hiking. Ada Haden is a park in Ames that has a pretty little trail around a lake. There are a lot more little parks and trails around the area, but I figure that's a good start. You won't find mountains in Iowa, obviously, but there's still a lot to do outdoors.
I'm not non-trad, but you should put together a list of your courses older than 8 years as well as descriptions of them and send them to ISU to ask if they'll take them. It'll be easier in the long run to know the school is good with your courses, they won't have to spend a ton of time reviewing them when they receive your application (since they'll be doing the legwork now), you won't have to worry about taking a ton of pre-reqs in ~a semester (since they likely wouldn't be able to tell you to retake something until after the fall semester has already begun), and if the school does take new issue with pre-reqs after applying you can point them to your communications with them where you were told your courses were okay.
