Adversity/Diversity secondary?

[deleted969405]

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[deleted688779]

A diversity statement can have properties of an adversity statement and vice versa, but overall they should have a different big-picture and way you present your topics.

Diversity - What about you is cool and unique, what useful skill/talent/quality/wisdom do you bring to share with your classmates and will help you as a medical student? You can talk about culture but it will have to be about how it makes you different (in a good way) and how that "different" is beneficial to the community/peers/patients/school/etc.

Adversity - What challenges did you face in your life, how did it affect you, how you dealt with it, what you learned, and how you grew. The last three points are the most important; here you're focusing on how you overcame your challenge regarding culture and what you learned and how it shaped you.

Just a premed, take it with a grain of salt.

 

[deleted688779]

In terms of culture, could you give an example of being different in a good way? I feel like it would come off wrong if I make it sound like my culture employs XXXX (some good trait) which is not seen in American culture. Is it not enough to say I will share my culture with the class (and give examples of how, such as my cultural dance)? Or is that not enough?

You can write about culture but it can't be "I am x and therefore diversity", more like "I am x, through which I learned y, which is useful z." I am not sure about "culture X has qualities Y" though I would steer away from saying "my culture X has qualities that culture Y doesn't" have. I just wrote about what I insights learned from growing up in an immigrant family and then working with the same demographic which gives me a skillset I can use as an MS and MD, skills I otherwise would not have.