By Vince Kotchian. Full-time GRE tutor since 2007, author of Barron's 6 GRE Practice Tests, three perfect 170 verbal scores on the real GRE, and moderator of r/GRE.
NEW: The 2026 winners are Hailey Laughter and Lillian Hughes. Scroll down to read their poems! Applications for the 2027 scholarship are open now.
2027 Pre-Veterinary Scholarship
The older I get, the more compassion I feel toward animals, which is why I have tremendous admiration and respect for those of you who are planning to care for animals in the future.
To show my support, I'm offering an annual scholarship which will take the form of a $500 award to two winners every year.
Scholarship at a Glance
| Award | $500 each to two winners every year |
|---|---|
| Who can apply | U.S. undergraduates in an animal sciences or similar program who plan to go to veterinary school |
| Minimum GPA | 3.33 overall |
| What you send | Your basic details and a Google Doc link to one original poem (500 words max) related to animals |
| Application period | October 20, 2026 to October 15, 2027 |
| Winners announced | October 22, 2027, by email and on this page |
| Cost to apply | Free |
Student Scholarship Criteria
- You're enrolled in good standing in an animal sciences or similar type of undergraduate program in the United States with the intention of going to veterinary school afterwards.
- You have an overall GPA of 3.33 or higher.
Application Requirements and Deadline
The application period for the scholarship begins on October 20th, 2026, and students may submit applications through October 15th, 2027. The recipients of the awards will be announced on October 22nd, 2027 and notified by email. Winners of past years' scholarships are not eligible.
How to Apply
To apply, please submit all of the following in one email to vince (at) vincekotchian.com with the subject line "2027 Pre-Vet Scholarship":
- Your first and last name
- Your email address
- Your current college
- Your GPA
- Your expected graduation date
- Your current course of study / major
- A link to your poem in a Google Doc. Write the poem in that doc from your first draft on, and share it with vince@vincekotchian.com with Editor access, so I can see its version history (I won't change anything). Don't attach the poem as a file.
- If you use AI to write your poem, may God have mercy on your soul.
I use what you send only to run this scholarship: to judge your poem and to contact you about it. If you win, your name, poem, and photo appear on this page. For more, see my privacy policy.
The Poem
Applicants must also submit a poem - yes, a poem - of no more than 500 words. Rather than write yet another scholarship essay about why you want to work with animals, I'd rather hear your voice in a different context.
"The pen is mightier than the sword" is not an empty phrase; the ability to convey emotion through writing is a valuable skill, and one that's increasingly neglected, in my view, in our STEM-focused education system.
The poem must be at least somewhat related to animals in some way. Other than that, you have carte blanche.
If you're serious about winning, please take the poem seriously and give it your best shot, since it is the sole criterion I will use to decide the winners!
If you win, I will share your poem and a photo of you (that you'll send me if you win) on this blog when I announce the winners. If you're cool with that, please apply.
Every poem goes through an AI detector, and I check each Google Doc's version history. This year a lot of entries came back as AI-written, and every one of them was disqualified on the spot. A poem that was pasted in all at once, or flagged as AI-written, is disqualified, and I keep a record of every flagged submission, along with the applicant's name and school.
Write your own poem.
Best of luck in your studies and beyond,
Vince
Free Help for Pre-Vet Students
Getting into vet school takes more than good grades. These free guides on my site can help:
- Veterinary scholarships for pre-vet and vet students: every national award I could find, each linked to the sponsor's official page and checked every month.
- VMCAS personal statement examples: six vet school personal statements, from a lab animal technician to an Army animal care specialist, each with notes on why it works.
- 30 graduate school admissions essay tips for any application essay, including your VMCAS essay.
- Some vet schools still require or recommend the GRE, so check each school's requirements. If yours want a score, start with my free GRE resources and the year-by-year GRE prep guide for college students.
- For one-on-one help with your vet school essay, Lauren Hammond edits VMCAS personal statements, and consultations are free.
2026 Winners and Poems
Hailey Laughter, for Til Death Do Us Part
Lillian Hughes, for Biopsy in the Breakdown Lane
Til Death Do Us Part
By Hailey Laughter
It’s just a cat.
But it’s not.
Why can’t I say he was the thing that saved my life?
No,
We saved each other.
Why can’t he be more than a cat?
Like your dog or horse that you boast so much about.
You make him seem so small and irrelevant.
But he was thrilled when a car door opened.
Knowing every gentle turn meant we were closer to home.
Old and frail, yet a voice so high-pitched,
mistaken for a kitten,
At heart, he was.
Perched against the window
watching the skyscrapers fly by the river.
There was a refusal to let me navigate with both hands.
One must be used to show my affection.
I never contradicted
because he deserved the world.
On a whim
cross country I went.
Engulfing my clothes in orange and white hairs,
He went with.
Unstopable
The best description for us.
Everyone knew us as such.
My friends and family were left behind,
but not him,
not my cat.
New environments were fearful,
But when the sun went down,
It was just us.
Entangled in blankets
curled up side by side.
When the morning awoke,
He was right there,
waiting.
When class began and the time for me to depart,
He waited.
My mind, consumed by the question of his constant well-being.
When I sat in class,
When I grocery shopped,
whenever the image of another adventure crossed my mind.
But he was always there,
waiting to greet me again, the second my key jangled the doorknob of that big blue door.
We shared meals,
TV shows,
toys and blankets.
Nothing was exclusive.
As the end of the year approached,
The cold, hard tile was covered in new blankets and beds.
We stopped climbing the ladder of our tall bed after our last visit home.
I didn’t mind.
Sleeping alone no longer existed.
I tucked him in with a handwoven white-and-emerald-green blanket.
I got just for him.
It was softer than his fur.
The way he looked at me
something I will never forget.
Illness plagued us.
We were embraced since the first night.
As a young child
I drew him through my window.
ran across the hall
So my parents could not negotiate.
Eight beautiful years later
We were still embraced.
on that cold, hard tile
until life was no more.
Bright green eyes
Reduced to gray cataracts.
Yet that orange fur
still soft to the touch.
The sun will never shine as brightly.
as it did when a soul so precious
roamed this earth.
He saved me from the darkness that plagued this land.
I found reason to live.
love
keep going.
He fueled the passion that ran through every fiber of my being.
I should have known the light was dimming before it did.
But I didn’t.
Therefore, everything I do
I do for him.
I will help the ones just like us.
Because he was never just a cat.
Biopsy in the Breakdown Lane
By Lillian Hughes
I find fearlessness for the first time
clutched in curled keratin, tangled between
talon and beak, feathered down
a wing coiled taut and a wing
crumpled close. The roadside red
tailed hawk in my arms.
She is not titanium
tire treads, broadwinged billboard
logo, impervious to fear. She’s made
of the stuff—flight feathers memorized
into an asphalt scrapbook, gut full
of hunger and eyes broadcasting
in flicker fusion, her world time-lapsed
faster than my own. She is iridescent
with fear, oiled over every feather.
I think it must stick there, the way
I can’t seem to pry it out
from between my teeth, a tarlike
tapering of my tongue. Five years ago I first breathed
iodine in the OR, eagle eyed the surgeon
with the gall to memorize his movements—
he was made of surety, subcutaneous.
I assumed his confidence was the easy product
of a radiographed recipe, that he read cadavers
like cookbooks (1 tsp baking powder
and a splash of Propofol), that I only needed
to follow the same steps to be made
of the same stuff. The books I bought
told me the inches of every incision
he opened, and I drank in
the words, waited for them to instruct me
how to mattress-suture steel splints
into my nerves, how to stop the shake
of my hands in a crowded room.
To the animal cradled by the curb,
I wish to be audacious enough
to slice a life back together. She lays brilliantly
broken-winged, far from unafraid. I pick her up
off the pavement, and we are not yet fearless
but we are trying to become brave.
Pre-Vet Scholarship FAQ
Who is eligible for the pre-vet scholarship?
Undergraduates enrolled in good standing in an animal sciences or similar program at a U.S. college who plan to go to veterinary school, with an overall GPA of 3.33 or higher. Past winners can't apply again.
Do I have to write an essay?
No. Instead of an essay, you send one original poem of up to 500 words that relates to animals in some way. The poem is the only thing I use to choose the winners.
Why do I have to send a Google Doc?
Its version history shows the poem being written, which is how I make sure every entry is the applicant's own work. Share the doc with vince@vincekotchian.com with Editor access, since version history isn't visible to viewers.
When is the deadline?
Applications for the 2027 scholarship are accepted from October 20, 2026 through October 15, 2027. Winners are announced on October 22, 2027.
How many scholarships are there, and how much are they?
Two winners each year receive $500 each.
Can I use AI to write my poem?
No. Every poem goes through an AI detector, and I check each Google Doc's version history. Poems written with AI, or pasted in all at once, are disqualified.