vet school rejections

Hello to all future vet students who applied this cycle! hope y'all are surviving this exhausting January with all of these vet school decisions. I have a pretty good GPA (3.8), hundreds of vet med hours, even more animal hours, and tons of research hours with multiple publications. I applied to a whopping 16 schools (yes my bank account hurt after submitting that VMCAS and TMDSAS application button lol) and have been rejected from 10 of them. I managed to snag an interview at Auburn but i've already accepted the fact that I'll probably be applying next cycle. I feel like i've wasted so much of my time and money just to be rejected. When i got my rejection letter from NC State, I even got a separate email from one of the nice admissions people saying that they loved my application but only have 20-25 spots available and that she would love me hop on a call with me to discuss my application, which only made me have a mental breakdown because i don't know what i've done wrong!! Anyways, i was hoping to get some advice from the vet students who got in after multiple cycles. How did y'all spice up ur application compared to the first time and how did you not get discouraged?