OVC’s Lack of Transparency in Admissions

[Anonymous]

I would like to share my experience applying to the OVC as I believe it sheds light on their application process.



I am a University of Waterloo student, and this is my second time applying to OVC, with an application that is clearly an improvement from the last. This year I applied with an average of 95%, based on the calculations on OVC’s “Selection Process” website. This academic merit is acknowledged by a handful of scholarships from my university. Furthermore, my experience shows ample interest in and knowledge of the veterinary field. I have experience with horses from a very young age; I got my first job at a veterinary clinic that sees small animals, exotics, and wildlife in high school, which I maintained to this day; I worked at a wildlife rehabilitation centre; I volunteered at a stable that offers therapeutic horseback riding; I shadowed a shelter veterinarian and a large animal veterinarian; and I am currently working at another small animal clinic. Furthermore, my references are from trusted mentors that all know me very well and helped me develop my experiential and academic strengths. Finally, I also did two placements in research, one of which led to my name being including in a published article.



Despite all this, OVC did not even offer me an interview, for the second year in a row.



In contrast, on my first try, I was accepted to the Royal Veterinary College, University of Glasgow, University of Edinburgh, and University College Dublin. I look forward to beginning my studies at the Royal Veterinary College this fall.

[tilac]

I'm sorry to hear about your experience with OVC's application process. If you were rejected prior to the interview my guess is there would have had to been some type of 'red flag' in either your marks or your experience.

In terms of marks you seem pretty well-off numerically and I'm going to guess that you likely weren't part of the historically ultra competitive international pool. Out of interest, did you verify that all your prereqs were acceptable and make sure to take them in full time semesters?

In terms of non-academic areas your animal and veterinary experience obviously sounds pretty solid at face value. However, did you have any extracurricular or employment experience outside of animals? If this was lacking it may have been a red flag as it shows a less well-rounded application. Also, I'm not sure how you would have classified your research experience or how OVC looks at it (and that is definitely an area of concern in terms of transparency). From reading through different threads I've found that research is more often taken into account in the grad cohort than undergrad (I'm not sure which you were in). As well, it's not clear about how references or the short answer questions are evaluated.

I'm genuinely unsure why you didn't at least get an interview with a CV like this. Did you try to get in contact with any of the admissions committee to see if there was anything wrong with your application? Either way, best of luck at RVC and in your future aspirations, I hope you've got some good financial backing for that international tuition as I know it can bite.

[._.]

Ok

[Deleted]

Yup this freaks me out too... we keep having examples of people who exceed the academic requirements and seem to have good extracurriculars, but still get cut before the interview.

I don't know of anyone who has actually followed up and got an explanation from OVC though. If you do contact them and they get back to you, I would love to know what their reasoning was!

I don't think comparisons with international universities are very useful though, since OVC has a very particular formula for admissions, and there are likely students with 4.0 GPAs who don't even get an interview but would be very competitive at international schools.

I do wonder, if OVC considered that an applicant didn't meet the academic requirements (e.g., invalid semesters or the chosen prerequisites were not approved), would they reach out to let you know for the future? Or would they just discard your application?

[Hopeful Applicant]

Jun 3, 2021 13:47:53 GMT -5 @wadeli said:

Yup this freaks me out too... we keep having examples of people who exceed the academic requirements and seem to have good extracurriculars, but still get cut before the interview.

I don't know of anyone who has actually followed up and got an explanation from OVC though. If you do contact them and they get back to you, I would love to know what their reasoning was!

I don't think comparisons with international universities are very useful though, since OVC has a very particular formula for admissions, and there are likely students with 4.0 GPAs who don't even get an interview but would be very competitive at international schools.

I do wonder, if OVC considered that an applicant didn't meet the academic requirements (e.g., invalid semesters or the chosen prerequisites were not approved), would they reach out to let you know for the future? Or would they just discard your application?

I don’t think they would tell you. As the applicant I think we need to make sure that we have everything in order and ask about prerequisites before applying.

[Deleted]

Jun 3, 2021 15:13:17 GMT -5 Hopeful Applicant said:

Jun 3, 2021 13:47:53 GMT -5 @wadeli said:

[...]

I do wonder, if OVC considered that an applicant didn't meet the academic requirements (e.g., invalid semesters or the chosen prerequisites were not approved), would they reach out to let you know for the future? Or would they just discard your application?

I don’t think they would tell you. As the applicant I think we need to make sure that we have everything in order and ask about prerequisites before applying.

Yeah I think that's reasonable given the number of applications...

In that case I do wonder if maybe the extreme cases of people with great averages and experience not getting in might have to do with prerequisites being completed during unacceptable semesters or similar reasons.

[tilac]

Jun 3, 2021 16:40:24 GMT -5 @wadeli said:

In that case I do wonder if maybe the extreme cases of people with great averages and experience not getting in might have to do with prerequisites being completed during unacceptable semesters or similar reasons.

That's my guess in this case. I don't mean to insinuate anything, but the OP sounds a little like someone unwilling to realize where they might have made mistakes. If I got rejected before the interview I would have heavily scrutinized OVC's requirements as well as my previous BIF for anything of issue before blaming the admission process itself. I feel like the process to get an interview is a lot more transparent than how interviewees are selected.  

Also, I have seen other threads where people have at least confirmed portions of their application were acceptable in the past by contacting admissions. However, none were recent so policy may have changed. 

[Ovc Hopeful]

Jun 3, 2021 21:33:04 GMT -5 tilac said:

Jun 3, 2021 16:40:24 GMT -5 @wadeli said:

In that case I do wonder if maybe the extreme cases of people with great averages and experience not getting in might have to do with prerequisites being completed during unacceptable semesters or similar reasons.

That's my guess in this case. I don't mean to insinuate anything, but the OP sounds a little like someone unwilling to realize where they might have made mistakes. If I got rejected before the interview I would have heavily scrutinized OVC's requirements as well as my previous BIF for anything of issue before blaming the admission process itself. I feel like the process to get an interview is a lot more transparent than how interviewees are selected.  

Also, I have seen other threads where people have at least confirmed portions of their application were acceptable in the past by contacting admissions. However, none were recent so policy may have changed. 

This is true. Especially if you are a student who attended a university other than guelph. Assuring that your courses are acceptable as prerequisites prior to applying is important! Guelph has laid out the courses acceptable for guelph students but students from other universities should almost always send in a form to confirm

[Guest2021]

Something I learned after my first year applying is that OVC doesn't care about how good of a candidate you feel you are, and if you feel entitled to anything from them you are going to be sorely offended when you don't get what you think you deserve. I thought I would fly through admissions my first cycle as well and while I interviewed, I was ultimately rejected. I have never been an outwardly thingyy person but I very quickly let go of any presumption that I deserved to be anywhere except where I was, which was not admitted. You may not like their reason but they do have one for not offering you an interview and there's nothing you can do to change that. I am waiting on my third admission decision but may very well see you at RVC in September.

[Guest2021]

Jun 4, 2021 7:47:36 GMT -5 Guest2021 said:

Something I learned after my first year applying is that OVC doesn't care about how good of a candidate you feel you are, and if you feel entitled to anything from them you are going to be sorely offended when you don't get what you think you deserve. I thought I would fly through admissions my first cycle as well and while I interviewed, I was ultimately rejected. I have never been an outwardly thingyy person but I very quickly let go of any presumption that I deserved to be anywhere except where I was, which was not admitted. You may not like their reason but they do have one for not offering you an interview and there's nothing you can do to change that. I am waiting on my third admission decision but may very well see you at RVC in September.

And by thingyy I mean thingyy. Silly phone.

[Deleted]

Jun 4, 2021 7:47:36 GMT -5 Guest2021 said:

Something I learned after my first year applying is that OVC doesn't care about how good of a candidate you feel you are, and if you feel entitled to anything from them you are going to be sorely offended when you don't get what you think you deserve. I thought I would fly through admissions my first cycle as well and while I interviewed, I was ultimately rejected. I have never been an outwardly thingyy person but I very quickly let go of any presumption that I deserved to be anywhere except where I was, which was not admitted. You may not like their reason but they do have one for not offering you an interview and there's nothing you can do to change that. I am waiting on my third admission decision but may very well see you at RVC in September.

This is very true! But I think what is frustrating is that the way OVC describes their admissions process, it more or less seems clear cut: if you have experience and you meet the necessary academic average, you will be offered an interview (except for exceptional circumstances). So when people exceed the interview minimum but don't get an offer they are upset.

If you look at med school applications, plenty of people with 4.0s don't get in or don't even get an interview. But it's not as frustrating, because everyone knows there's a lot more to the admissions process than just your GPA.

So I think it would still be helpful if OVC could clarify a little bit. Literally the only sentence on the entire website about how applicants are chosen for interviews (beyond academics) is:

"The OVC admissions committee reviews the applications of the top applicants to verify that they are suitable for interviews."

What does this mean? Are there objective criteria? How do they decide who is "suitable"? How many applicants are eliminated at this stage, on average?

I think it would be useful to provide a bit more information.

[tilac]

A lot of med schools are still pretty close to 4.0, like I think U of T has been mid 3.9s for a long time. Remember it's also possible that people applying to OVC and getting in are sub 4.0. For example, if you got 97, 84, 94, 97, 84 in a semester that would give you an 91.2 average (well within accepted range for last year) but that would be a 3.88 GPA for a lot of schools, while someone with all 90s would have a 90 average and a 4.0 GPA. It just kind of highlights how different marking schemes affect different applicants (i.e. consistency is more valuable for OMSAS GPA).

In terms of how many people get rejected based on their application, I think that unless you're missing something big, so long as your marks are high enough you will get an interview. Some possibilities for rejection could be no animal or vet experience (or your validators refusing to acknowledge you), a missing reference letter, no extracurriculars, etc. I'm not sure when they examine the content of those letters or short answers though. I heard a story that someone once got all the way to the interview stage and got rejected somehow later learning the reason was a bad reference letter from one of their supervising vets. The following year they were accepted when they used a different vet as a referee. Of course this is a rumour and I'm not sure if that's even possible.

Anyways, this does highlight the fact that we don't really know why some people are rejected with good marks prior to interviews. I can only speak from experience when I say that I followed the instructions on the selection process portion of OVC's website very carefully and I also got an interview, which would be expected based on my marks and OVC's stated process. I recommend anyone struggling to do the same. Also, don't believe that you are owed an acceptance or even an interview as Guest2021 previously said. There are many great applicants out there and OVC knows it, if there's a flaw in your application they'll happily drop you for the next person in line. It's your job to convince them you're right for the role.