Disadvantaged essay, how did you write it?

[Cerbernator]

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Curious how others did it. I mean, the main bit of my being disadvantaged is already in my PS. Should I just elaborate on this?

 

[Anka]

I wrote about it in the PS only as it was directly relevant to the reason I wanted to go into medicine. I used the disadvantaged portion of the application to describe in factual terms what the nature of the disadvantage was and how it affected educational opportunity.

Anka

 

[Fermata]

"Back in my day I had to get up before daylight to go to school. I would have to walk 15 miles in each direction. With no shoes. While it was snowing."

Or something like that.

 

[curlycity]

In one secondary, I spoke about moving many, many times throughout school and put it in the context of how always being the new kid, the smart kid, the kid with funny hair, whatever, taught me how to make friends quickly, interact with many different types of people - and that would help me communicate with and put at ease many different sorts of people in a new, scary environment like a medical facility. That's not exactly discussing 'disadvantaged' but it's just an example of a 'spin' you might find useful ... you could point out how your socioeconomically checkered background has given you skills working with people from all walks of life, empathy with their priorities, etc. I know for myself, it's really aggravating when docs have *NO* idea what their recommendations are going to cost and have no alternatives in mind for people who have a problem paying for their healthcare ... not that it's going to be our job to know the price for every little thing, I'm just saying it's annoying that it does not even occur to some docs that a patient would have to consider such a thing - expensive diagnostic test or school supplies for their kids. I appreciate a lot of docs I've worked with that are aware of their patients' needs and try to work with them as best they can. You could address this in secondaries ... your heightened 'awareness.' Put a positive angle on being po' folk.

 

[i61164]

Here's my disadvantaged essay. As you can see, I tried to answer the question "what makes you think that you had a disadvantaged childhood," not "why will you be a good doctor." Basically, I tried to give as much of my story as I could in the allowed space.


I have nothing but fond memories of my childhood. My parents were never married and I was raised by a single mother. My father didn?t pay child support and my mother and I lived on government assistance, off and on, for eight years. There were times when we survived by eating out of dumpsters. When I was five, my brother Alex was born, also out of wedlock. His father didn?t pay child support either. Our situation bottomed out when mom, Alex, and I lived in a homeless shelter for two weeks.

We moved around a lot and by high school graduation, I had attended 13 schools. I spent three years each in San Diego, CA (noted above) and Rocky Hill, NJ, which is more than I spent anywhere else.

All of the moving and financial hardships occurred before I was 13. After that, our situation stabilized considerably. My mother got married and had another baby in San Diego. However, when the marriage turned sour, I moved to New Jersey to live with my father for the last three years of high school.

I don?t think that any of this has negatively affected my academic performance. Rather, my academic achievements were always strong in spite of this, which is a source of great pride for both of my parents, neither of whom attended college.