Getting Into Veterinary School

With VMCAS opening in a few days, I thought this post was timely :) 

A bit about my application cycle to gain entrance into the class of 2016:

I am a resident of a state without a veterinary school.  This means I applied as an out-of-state applicant to each school.  (I will talk about residency later on).  I applied to 15 vet schools because, as an OOS applicant, my chances at any one school were markedly decreased.  Here's the breakdown:
Auburn: interview offered
Colorado State: rejected (expected, lol)
Florida: interview offered
Illinois: interview offered
Kansas State: interview offered
Louisiana State: top 150 OOS applicants
Minnesota: interview offered
Missouri: interview offered
North Carolina: rejected
Ohio: interview offered
Penn: rejected (this was really surprising)
Tufts: interview offered
Virginia-Maryland: interview offered
Washington State: rejected
Wisconsin: waitlisted (no interview)

Out of those schools, I went on five interviews and eventually received acceptances to seven schools.

GPA: 3.76
GRE: 1300 (740 Q, 560 V), 4.5 AW
Hours in shelter medicine, small animal general practice, small animal specialty practice, veterinary behavior, small animal emergency, and some equine.  Lots of animal and leadership experience.  Lots of research experience (thesis, conference presentations).

Here's how I did it (all the stuff you won't read on the internet, anyway):

How many schools should you apply to?

I am a huge advocate of applying to more rather than fewer schools.  As you can see, I applied to 15 schools and received a number of acceptances.  The school I am attending this fall did not make my top 3 list when I was deciding where I wanted to attend vet school. I feel like if I had applied to only 3 schools, I wouldn't be as pleased with where I would be attending.  Also, as an OOS applicant everywhere, applying to more schools gave me a huge advantage.  Fifteen schools may have been a bit overkill in retrospect, but I would rather spend the money to apply to more schools this one cycle than have to apply another year because I applied to too few schools.  If you have the money to apply to more schools, I would definitely recommend it.  Additionally, even if you have a veterinary school in your state of residency, definitely apply to a few schools out of state.  I know lots of people that have been rejected from their in-state school while getting acceptance to an out-of-state school.  Obviously, applications are very expensive (as are interviews), so money is very likely a large issue in deciding how many schools to apply to, but it will always be more expensive to need to apply another cycle (and therefore to lose a year of professional income on the back end).

How do I decide which schools to apply to?

Here was my process in deciding which schools to apply to.  I bought a copy of the VMSAR (a book, Veterinary Medical School Application Requirements).  It is updated yearly with the requirements and stats for each of the 28 vet schools in the United States plus those foreign schools that are accredited by the AVMA.  If you can get an earlier edition  (within a few years), that would also be okay (and a bit cheaper).  I went through and made a list of all of the schools that I met prerequisites for, then looked at the number of students that were accepted from OOS, then looked at everything else (things like unique programs, what state is the school in, how expensive tuition is, etc).  I had a few "maybe" schools and decided to add them on in the end.  This left me with my list of 15.  Then I went to each individual school's website and confirmed that information that was in the VMSAR (especially the pre-req information).  And bam!  Mileage may vary.  I applied to schools that accepted a lot of OOS applicants (Kansas, Penn, Ohio) and a few schools that accepted barely any (Washington, NCSU, Colorado).  Most fell somewhere in the middle.

Those are the two big questions that I see asked a lot.  If you have any other specific questions, please feel free to contact me--I would be happy to help choose schools to apply to, answer questions, or read through personal statements.

Some extra tips to help you through the process:

1.  Sign up for and (actively) post on Studentdoctor.net  When I mean post, I mean post.  Don't sign up and lurk around and wait for other people to ask questions and discuss the issues.  I don't know how I would have made it through the cycle without the support and encouragement of these wonderful people.  It truly is a community, and I have had so many questions answered by being an active contributor to this forum.
2.  If you can, get diverse experience.  Schools like to see some large animal experience (I actually only had a few equine hours and no food animal hours).  I live in suburbia and cows are hard to come by ;)  I realized going in that I was lacking in this area, and so I made sure to highlight my varied small animal experience.  I have truly experienced the gauntlet in small animal veterinary medicine and made sure to highlight that in my personal statement, experience section on my application, and in my interviews.  (I was asked about my lack of LA experience in 2 interviews; I mentioned that I did have some equine, but that I had varied SA experiences.  I got into both of those schools so I'm guessing they were okay with my answer.  In one of my file reviews for a school I got rejected from, I mentioned that I may have needed some LA experience, and the admissions person said they weren't expecting me to spend time on a farm if I was going into SA medicine.  It really depends on the school). 
3.  In order to cover all of your bases for each school, try to get both depth and breadth in terms of experiences.  If you want to go into SA medicine, make sure you have hundreds of hours in SA medicine.  At the same time, dabble in a few other fields to show the adcoms that you are knowledgeable about lots of different facets of the professions. 
4.  Get (quality) research experience, if you can.  IN EVERY SINGLE INTERVIEW, I WAS ASKED ABOUT MY RESEARCH.  Every single one.
5.  Brush up on your current events in veterinary medicine for your interviews. 
6.  Have lots of different people read your personal statement.  Make sure you answer all (3!) of the questions posed in the prompt.
7.  Make friends with vets so you can get awesome LORs.
8.  You don't need to be a vet tech.  I learned a lot of technical skills as a vet tech, but I learned more about being a veterinarian from shadowing the doctors.

GOOD LUCK!!!  You can do it!

~DVM2016