Congrats to those of you who have received interview invites to the School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis. Those invites are quite coveted and represent a huge accomplishment! You might be half-optimistically wondering whether that invite means anything, so let me tell you — it does!
The School of Veterinary Medicine at UC Davis consistently receives over 1,000 applications each year for approximately 130 seats in the incoming class. If you do the math, your chances of being in one of those seats when you hit submit on VMCAS are about 13% — not great odds considering that many of the most competitive undergraduate universities have acceptance rates of 15-20%.
However, once you consider that the school only interviews 220 prospective students, your odds immediately increase — drastically — to almost 60%! 3 out of every 5 students interviewed will receive an acceptance letter in March. And when you consider that approximately 25 are waitlisted, with 5-15 accepted off the waitlist in a given year, your chances are not bad at all!
[And in case you were wondering, I know multiple people who were accepted off the waitlist and are thriving here and not treated any differently than those who received outright acceptances.]
All things considered, your interview invite means the admissions committee is serious about you. Your interview is just a way for them to see who you are and determine whether or not your application was an honest representation of your experience. With such good odds of being accepted, go in with a good attitude, a smile on your face and have fun! Of course, don’t be cocky by thinking it’s in the bag either — an interview flop can cause that interview invite to slip from your hands and be placed in the hands of another applicant.
That being said, congrats again and good luck to all of you!