Thank you. This is very helpful! My daughter’s GPA (4.17 weighted at strong private prep school; they don’t calculate unweighted and limit the number of AP classes you can take) and ACT (31 taken early junior year and not retaken due to covid) make her a pretty strong incoming student at most of these schools
I believe, but we are struggling with whether to go to the “strongest” of these schools or choose a bit lower for the reasons you mention. She is working the experience piece, too, and is currently spending a few hours a week shadowing a vet. She has experience volunteering at a couple of shelters, volunteering with a wildlife rehab place, petsitting, and attending a couple of vet camps, too. She struggled a bit to find a vet willing to let her shadow on a regular basis and finally found one just before covid hit. Then covid shut everything down and she lost that opportunity. She found another place this fall but didn’t get all the shadowing hours she wanted in the summer because of it. Oh well, she is back on track now adding to her experience hours. The difficulty she had finding a place to shadow really made her more focused on wanting to attend somewhere with lots of hands on opportunities early. U of Missouri claims to really emphasize hands on work as part of their university focus on “Show Me” (the state motto). It is hard to tell if they really are any different than the others, but it has caught my daughter’s attention.
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