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The most common question I see from pre-vet students is "What GPA do I need to get into vet school?" It's the wrong first question. GPA matters, but at some veterinary programs, such as Nebraska-Iowa State and the University of Tennessee, nonacademic factors account for more than half of the admissions score.
I've watched students spend four years obsessing over their science GPA while neglecting veterinary hours, skipping research entirely, and saving their personal statement for the week before the deadline. Then they're shocked when an applicant with a lower GPA and 800 hours of diverse clinical experience gets the interview instead.
Vet school admissions officers evaluate you across multiple competencies, and falling short in any single area can significantly reduce your chances, regardless of how strong the rest of your application looks. I broke down each vet school requirement below, so you know exactly where to invest your time before you apply.
Vet schools evaluate your GPA across multiple categories, not just one cumulative number. Veterinary Medical College Application Service (VMCAS) calculates several standardized GPAs during the verification process, including:
Many programs calculate a prerequisite course GPA and a last 45 credit hours GPA using the coursework data you enter into VMCAS. At programs like Nebraska-Iowa State, the required science GPA and the last 45-credit-hour GPA each account for 25% of the overall evaluation score, meaning academics alone drive half of the admissions decision.
The American Association of Veterinary Medical Colleges (AAVMC) no longer reports average GPAs, but in Fall 2021, the average cumulative GPA of vet school matriculants was 3.50. This was the last year AAVMC published an average GPA.
This average has likely increased over the years, so aim for an overall cumulative GPA of 3.70 to be a competitive applicant, though this will change based on the school you apply to.
If your early undergraduate grades dragged down your cumulative GPA, strong performance in upper-division coursework can offset that.
VMCAS science GPA includes courses categorized as:
Every science elective you take factors into the calculation.
The AAVMC's Summary of Course Prerequisites tracks which courses each member institution requires or recommends. Across the 34 U.S. veterinary programs, these are the courses required most frequently:
Six courses are required at nearly every accredited U.S. vet program:
These are the primary courses you need to become a veterinarian. They are the non-negotiable core of any pre-vet curriculum and cover the broadest range of schools with the fewest scheduling conflicts.
Most schools require a minimum grade of C or C- in all prerequisite courses, and upper-division requirements (biochemistry, genetics, physiology) must typically be completed at a four-year institution. Lower-division courses such as general biology, general chemistry, and physics can often be taken at a community college.
If you’re missing a prerequisite course, find a way to incorporate it into your vet school application timeline. Submitting an application with incomplete prerequisites puts you at a disadvantage in almost every program, and some schools will not review your file at all until every required course shows a final grade on your transcript.
If you’re missing a single prerequisite, you can usually complete it during a summer session at your university or a local four-year institution. Multiple missing courses may require a full post-baccalaureate semester.
Community colleges are good for lower-division courses like general chemistry or physics, but you have to take upper-division prerequisites (biochemistry, genetics, physiology) at a four-year school.
Some programs, like Cornell and Long Island University, allow you to have some prerequisite courses still in progress at the time of your application, provided those courses are completed before matriculation. Check each school's policy individually rather than assuming all programs handle in-progress coursework the same way.
If you graduated years ago and need to revisit foundational science courses, some schools accept prerequisite coursework completed within the past few years. For example:
When in doubt, contact the admissions office directly.
VMCAS defines veterinary experience as activities that took place under the supervision of a veterinarian and categorizes it separately from animal experience on your application. Most schools weigh veterinary hours far more heavily than general animal contact, since you were under the direct supervision of a veterinary professional.
Veterinary hour requirements vary significantly by program:
Meet each hour requirement for the schools you’re applying to, but also emphasize the quality of experience you’re getting. Shadowing at a small-animal clinic, assisting at an equine practice, and volunteering at a wildlife rehabilitation center each demonstrate different facets of the profession.
Admissions officers at vet programs want to see that you understand what veterinary medicine looks like across settings, not just that you accumulated an arbitrary number.
Animal experience refers to any hands-on work with animals that did not occur under a veterinarian's supervision. VMCAS classifies farm and ranch work, 4-H membership, animal training, and similar activities as animal experience when no veterinarian supervised the work.
Arush’s Pro Tip: Administering a vaccine to a dog in an animal clinic under a veterinarian’s supervision is veterinary experience, while milking a cow on a farm is animal experience.
Animal experience hours demonstrate breadth of exposure to different species and environments. Competitive applicants build a portfolio that spans working with companion animals, livestock, and wildlife.
Examples that strengthen an application include:
Not every school sets a hard minimum for animal hours specifically, but the combination of your veterinary and animal experience tells admissions committees whether you have a realistic understanding of working with animals day in, day out.
The physical demands, the emotional toll of animal suffering, and the unpredictability of animal behavior are realities that classroom learning can’t replicate.
Don’t list the same experience under both categories on VMCAS. Select one category that best describes each experience; don’t list an experience more than once.
Pulling together prerequisite coursework, veterinary hours, a strong personal statement, and targeted letters of recommendation is a lot to manage on your own. Our vet application support team has guided hundreds of applicants through the VMCAS process and knows exactly what admissions committees prioritize at each program.
Take a look at the video below for a full breakdown of the veterinary application process:
After speaking with our top veterinary application advisors, I learned something that reframed how I think about the entire vet school process.
The applicants who score low on the nonacademic evaluation describe every experience in terms of the animals they worked with and never once mention the people. Every essay is always about holding a puppy after surgery or watching a horse recover from colic.
Very few describe how the applicant explained a treatment plan to a worried owner, navigated a disagreement with a clinic supervisor, or coordinated with a team during a busy shift.
The AAVMC's Health Professions Advisor Guide says veterinary medicine is "80% people and 20% animals," and admissions reviewers evaluate your application with that ratio in mind. Despite the fact that veterinary medicine is animal-oriented, you’ll be working much more with people.
So, I’ve outlined the skills below that reflect exactly what veterinary admissions officers are looking for when they read your essays, review your letters, and listen to your interview answers.
At the Nebraska-Iowa State Professional Program in Veterinary Medicine, the application review accounts for 45% of the overall evaluation score, equal to the weight given to academics. The University of Tennessee assigns 40% of its total admissions score to the academic review, meaning the majority of the evaluation at both programs comes from nonacademic factors.
Application reviewers assess:
The AAVMC's Competency-Based Veterinary Education (CBVE) framework defines nine domains of competence and 32 core competencies that veterinary graduates must demonstrate.
While this framework was designed for DVM programs to assess students during their education, it clearly outlines what admissions committees screen for at the application stage.
The nine domains are:
Five of these nine domains (communication, collaboration, professionalism, financial management, and scholarship) are entirely people-facing skills. Your application needs to demonstrate early evidence of these competencies through your experiences, essays, and letters of recommendation.
The CBVE framework expects veterinary graduates to listen attentively, communicate professionally, adapt their communication style to diverse audiences, and prepare documentation appropriate for the intended audience.
Admissions committees look for early signs of these abilities in:
Veterinarians explain complex medical information to pet owners who are scared, grieving, or confused. They negotiate treatment plans with clients who have financial constraints. They coordinate with technicians, specialists, and support staff under time pressure.
Practice your communication skills whenever you can. Working as a veterinary receptionist, volunteering at an animal shelter where you interact with adopters, and tutoring peers in science courses all give you solid examples you can reference in your application.
The CBVE collaboration domain requires veterinary professionals to solicit and integrate others' contributions, function as a leader or team member depending on context, maintain ongoing relationships, and demonstrate inclusivity and cultural competence. Admissions committees want to see that you can work within a team and step into a leadership role when the situation calls for it.
Leading a pre-vet club, captaining an intramural sports team, and managing volunteers at a shelter all count. What matters more than the title is your ability to describe what you did, what decisions you made, and how the team functioned because of your involvement.
The CBVE professionalism domain covers ethical decision-making, time management, self-reflection, self-directed learning, attention to personal well-being, and career planning.
Vet schools aren’t just admitting students who can handle science. They’re selecting future colleagues who will make sound judgment calls with animal lives and client trust on the line.
Interview questions frequently test ethical thinking. You might be asked what you would do if a client refused to euthanize a suffering animal, or how you would handle a disagreement with a supervising veterinarian.
Your veterinary experience hours are where you develop this judgment. Logging time in clinical settings exposes you to the ethical gray areas of the profession:
Reflect on what those hours taught you about the realities of the work.
The CBVE framework explicitly addresses wellbeing, stating that veterinary professionals must "recognize sources of workplace stress and act to remedy adverse situations" and "recognize signs of stress in self and colleagues." Veterinary medicine has one of the highest rates of burnout and compassion fatigue among healthcare professions. Admissions committees pay attention to whether applicants understand this reality.
The AAVMC Advisor Guide notes that students should "understand the realities of the profession, including student mental health and wellness, student debt, veterinary salary, and understanding that you cannot save every animal." Your personal statement and interview responses should reflect an honest awareness of these challenges, not just enthusiasm for working with animals.
Programs want applicants who have thought seriously about why veterinary medicine is worth the demands it places on you. Framing your motivation around a single childhood experience with a family pet is not enough. Show that you’ve seen the hard parts of the profession firsthand and still want to pursue it.
Estimate your veterinary admissions odds in just five minutes or less with our admissions predictor below:
VMCAS requires a minimum of three electronic letters of evaluation (eLORs) and allows up to six. Every eLOR you submit goes to every program you apply to through VMCAS, so choose recommenders whose perspective applies broadly rather than tailoring letters to individual schools.
Aim to acquire these letters at a minimum:
The veterinarian letter carries the most weight at nearly every program. A DVM who supervised your clinical hours can speak to how you:
Evaluations should demonstrate commitment, maturity, work ethic, leadership, and communication skills. A generic letter confirming you showed up and observed appointments doesn’t accomplish that. Choose a veterinarian who watched you do meaningful work and can describe specific examples.
Evaluators must send all letters via the VMCAS Evaluator Portal, so make sure your recommenders are comfortable with the electronic submission process. Evaluators can’t be related to you by blood or marriage.
Arush’s Pro Tip: Submitting more than three letters is fine if each additional letter adds a meaningfully different perspective. A fourth letter from a research PI covers different ground than your veterinarian and professor letters. A fifth letter from a second veterinarian at the same small animal clinic doesn’t.
The VMCAS personal statement is a one-page essay with a 3,000-character limit (including spaces) that answers one question: Why do you want to pursue a career in veterinary medicine? Once you submit your application, you can’t edit the essay, so finalize every word before you submit it.
Here’s what you need to do to write an effective personal statement:
At 3,000 characters, you have roughly 500 words. Write your essay in Microsoft Word or Google Docs first, revise it over multiple drafts, and have at least two people read it before you paste it into VMCAS.
Extracurricular activities are a distinct category within the Experiences and Achievements section of the VMCAS application. Extracurricular activities are experiences you were involved with from high school until the present, including:
Always list the most recent activity first.
Don’t include any experience already listed under the veterinary, animal, or research categories in the extracurricular section. If you led a pre-vet club and also logged veterinary hours through club-organized shadowing events, the shadowing goes under veterinary experience, and the club leadership goes under extracurricular activities.
Admissions committees use extracurricular activities to evaluate who you are outside of the clinic and the classroom. Leadership carries particular weight because veterinary medicine requires it daily. Leading a pre-vet club, captaining a sports team, organizing a community service project, and managing a team in a part-time job all demonstrate the ability to take ownership, coordinate with others, and produce results.
When describing each extracurricular activity on your VMCAS application, focus on what you did and what it produced rather than listing a title and organization name.
Good example: "Organized a campus blood drive that collected 200 units over two semesters."
Bad example: "Member, Student Government Association."
The GRE isn’t required at any vet program, and the Casper is only required at 2 out of 34 vet programs in the U.S. If you’re applying to Iowa State University or Long Island University, take the Casper.
Veterinary students must be able to restrain animals of varying sizes, stand for extended periods during surgery and clinical rotations, and use fine motor skills for tasks like suturing, catheter placement, and dental procedures.
No, VMCAS doesn’t set a minimum number of credits per semester. Individual schools set their own expectations. For example, Kansas State encourages applicants to carry a full-time undergraduate course load of 15 to 16 credit hours per semester, noting that students at that pace will be better prepared for the 20 to 22 credit hours per semester required in the DVM program.
No U.S. vet school lists research experience as a mandatory prerequisite. The University of Florida notes that research experience is recommended but is not included in veterinary hours. Iowa State counts research hours toward their recommended 200 hours of combined quality experience (veterinary, animal, or research).
Yes, most vet schools require specific vaccinations before starting. Cornell requires all incoming DVM students to complete a two-dose rabies vaccine series. Lincoln Memorial University requires proof of vaccination against rabies, varicella, Tdap, and MMR before the first semester, and students who don’t provide documentation won’t be allowed to participate in live animal labs.
Dr. Jonathan Preminger was the original author of this article. Snippets of his work may remain.
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