I'm going to assume your decision is whether or not to apply for admission in the current cycle (i.e., entry September 2013), or stick around undergrad another year and put off an OVC application until next cycle (i.e., entry 2014), yes?
I'll start by saying this: your chance of getting in is
immediately better should you decide to go ahead and apply rather than not.
I suppose my approach to this situation is: what would you stand to gain by
not applying? I can't think of anything.
However, should you apply, one of two things will happen:
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Awesome. Mission accomplished. You'll be glad you decided to apply.
You don't get inWell that sucks... Might even wish you hadn't gone though all the trouble of the admissions process. BUT, guess what? At least you will have actually gained something:
- You will gain experience with the admissions process. You'll get to know the in-and-outs of the process, and figure out some of the important tricks to simplify things and improve your application.
- You'll get everything organized so it will be much easier the next time around.
- If you get an interview, you'll get to experience the process and improve your MMI skills, which are what trip up a decent number of applicants. The next time in you'll know what to expect and be more experienced, confident, and able to present yourself even better.
- You'll get info on what area(s) of you application really need the most improvement for the next round (i.e., not direct feedback from the admissions committee save for your interview score, but you can compare your grades and interview performance directly to the pool you were applying with. The interview score is actually a really useful piece of information, as it is sometimes quite a surprise for people who thought they did better than they did).
And you know what? You'd still have three more tries available for the future, so I wouldn't really say you'd wasted anything.
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So, what about "
stay[ing] back an extra semester to try to bump up [your] marks"(by which I assume you also mean putting off an OVC application for another year)? Yeah, you could do that. But couldn't you also do that
AND apply in the current cycle? (i.e., apply in the current cycle for all the reasons I mentioned above, but, at the same time set up the Winter 2013 semester (and Fall 2013 as well if you want) with courses you can use to bump up your averages). Personally, this was my approach. Had I not gotten in, I was all set up with the Winter and Fall semesters in courses that would be used to improve my averages; I would retake the MCAT over the summer to (hopefully) improve my scores; and I could use the summer to gain more vet shadowing experience, which would help both on the BIF and in the interviews.
Now, as long-winded as I can sometimes be (just see above
), I actually like to look as numbers, so lets move on to those:
You have low-80s averages... So, to put it semi-bluntly, you're not going to be at the top of the applicant pool, and you are going to be below the average for
admitted students (note: they only post the averages for the
admitted pool; the stats for the
entire applicant pool will be somewhat lower, though I can't say for sure how you'd compare to it).
BUT, you're also not going to be at the bottom. You're going to be somewhere in the large group of students in the middle of the pack, hovering above and below the applicant average (for once, the concept of a normal distribution actually comes in handy, eh?). If it means anything to you, I was also in the middle of the pack, with my averages slightly below the average for the admitted class. For the past two years, the averages for
admitted applicants were about 86-87%; for the preceding five years, it was steady at about 85%; the ranges for admitted students in both periods are from somewhere in the mid-70s to the mid-90s. (for some more detailed stats and a chance to compare how you stand, see the Excel spreadsheet I have linked to below)
So, what I'm sure it is you really care about in this whole thing: "
Can [you] even get an interview?" I don't know. It's definitely possible and I wouldn't bet against it. Really, this depends on the stats for the current application cycle. All I
can say for certain is that your chance of getting an interview if you
don't apply is
zero. Also, if you do apply and make it to the interview stage, keep in mind they have raised the weighting for the interview (now 35%), so if you did really well in your interview, it would compensate for a decent portion of your grades. Going by the information available on the split used in the previous admissions cycle (class of 2016), the numeric portion of the application is divided as follows:
- 65% Academic
which is further split 40:40:20 for your "8 Pre-reqs", "Last 2 Semesters", and "MCAT", respectively.
- 35% Interview
Using these values, the final admission score breakdown is as follows:- 35% - Interview score
- 26% - Average of eight required prerequisites
- 26% - Average of last two acceptable full-time semesters
- 13% - MCAT
The BIF (e.g., experience, essays) and reference letters come into things more as flags (i.e., a bad reference letter or very minimal animal/vet experience might be enough to flag your application for further review or rejection)
Here's a spreadsheet I used when I was applying that may help bring some of this together for you:
docs.google.com/open?id=0B08j-U1CX9S9M09UU1ZxNUJkZGc
Download it and fill out the yellow cells with your scores/grades. It will automatically calculate your averages, show how you compare to the averages of admitted students in previous years, and (on the second tab) has a summary of all the admissions statistics posted for the last 7 years.
So, I'm going to try to sum this up with:
What would I do if I were in your situation? (that's really all else I can offer here)
I'd go for it. At least by applying there's a
chance (what it may be, I'm not sure) of getting an interview, and then a
chance of getting admitted; by not applying, you
wouldn't have a chance at all. Plus, I don't think there's anything to lose by applying, and potentially a whole lot of useful experience to gain, whatever the final outcome. At the same time, I would definitely hedge my bets by setting up the upcoming winter and/or fall term(s) with courses that could be used to improve the application averages.
Best of luck with whatever you decide, and hope to see you at OVC in the future!
