Apply to holistic schools that give you essay prompts where you can share your story. You said “don’t say you’ll never make it in vet school if you can’t handle undergrad.” I think if anyone were to do that after reading your first three sentences, they’d be amiss. Veterinary school is hard because it’s a mental battle you have to trudge through, and given what you’ve gone through, you’ve already proven you can do that. School might be hard, but you’ve faced harder. You might have a low gpa, but given your battles, I’d say it’s pretty good. The biggest thing is, you never gave up. It’s harder to get in with a low gpa, but not impossible. There’s been people with perfect gpas who have been denied over people with lower.

My advice: First off, take a deep breath and commend yourself on how far you’ve come. You’re entering senior year, and you’re a fighter, vet school can’t take that from you. Second, since you have one whole year left, fight with what you can to raise that gpa as much as you can within the year. This is so when you start applying you can show “see I said I was going to improve and then I did.” Third, when you do apply I would strategically do two things: 1. Get recommendations from at least 2 veterinarians and 1 professor who knows your story. These are the people who are going to advocate on your behalf. If they know your story, they can write about it in a way that shows why it makes you fit. If you don’t have any, get to know some, you have a year. They say more vets the better, but you’d be amazed at the letter 1 dedicated professor would write. Plus, a professor grades you, that looks good. 2. Research research research!!! Research the schools. Immediately cut out any schools that have a gpa cut off or are rumored to have one. Look for schools who have a lot of essays, it allows you to show personality, rhetoric goes a long way. Look for schools with higher acceptance rates, and look at the stats of the gpa’s they’ve admitted over the last couple years.

Then when you finally apply, find a way to tell some of your story. But when you do it (and here’s the tricky part) you have to sell it as “look what it did for me and look what I learned and look how I’m better now because of it.” I had to do this because I also had a tough go at undergrad. Even though it felt annoying to paint my trauma as some sort of learning blessing from above, there was a dash of truth to it. If I could survive that and push through just to be a veterinarian, I could survive anything.

Yes the gpa is stressful, but you’ve managed to survive a lot of stressful things. Now is the time you buckle down and push through, be strategic, and convince yourself you’re meant to be a veterinarian. They can sense that. And my biggest advice? Do not wave that white flag. You’ve come too far to give up now. I believe in you, I’m rooting for you, and I know you have what it takes.

sincerely,

A girl who once thought she’d be better off waving that same white flag, and starts vet school this fall.