DIVERSITY HELP I'M SORRY

[gud vibrations]

Hello!

My apologies for YET ANOTHER one of these threads (hence the title), but I am struggling with how to address the diversity topic. I have made a list of things that may make me “diverse,” and I would really appreciate some feedback!

1. My family has been low-income for as long as I can remember, and my parents are immigrants that did not finish college in their home countries. My father is an alcoholic and has been for much of my life, and he has been unemployed since I was a child.

2. I have a wide variety of hobbies that I have picked up over the years because there are so many interesting things in the world! They include playing the guitar, breakdancing, and beatboxing. To a lesser degree, I am also trying to learn how to lockpick.

3. I have worked with a variety of communities while volunteering in a big city and working in my current job. A good number of the people in these communities are immigrants (both legal and illegal), low-income/underserved, homeless, and drug abusers.

3a. I hope to leverage this into an essay about learning about others and developing connections with people. I appreciate the idea that everyone is “protagonist” in their own story, and I feel that understanding that and examining things through others’ perspectives makes life much more rich!​

I have already talked a bit about 1 and 3 in my personal statement, and I have more or less included what I wrote here in the “Disadvantaged” section of the App. As such, I’m hoping to include as little of 1 as possible in my app, since I feel like I’ve been using it as a crutch and will only continue to do so at this rate! I also feel like being low-income is not all that diverse!

As of right now, I am thinking of writing about my father’s alcoholism and how I initially demonized his behavior, but eventually grew to be more understanding of his behavior after learning about his own difficulties and poor role models growing up. This perspective has allowed me to be more empathetic to the different communities and people that I work with (point 3 and 3a).

What would be my best option, or should I look elsewhere to answer this prompt?
Thank you so very much to everyone who took the time to read this! Your help is very much appreciated, and I wish you all the best of luck in everything you do!

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[Goro]

This.

But lockpick????


2. I have a wide variety of hobbies that I have picked up over the years because there are so many interesting things in the world! They include playing the guitar, ukulele, and cello, breakdancing, Tae Kwon Do, and beatboxing. To a lesser degree, I am also trying to learn how to write in Copperplate calligraphy, to juggle, and to lockpick.

 

[altblue]

This.

But lockpick????


2. I have a wide variety of hobbies that I have picked up over the years because there are so many interesting things in the world! They include playing the guitar, ukulele, and cello, breakdancing, Tae Kwon Do, and beatboxing. To a lesser degree, I am also trying to learn how to write in Copperplate calligraphy, to juggle, and to lockpick.

Not suspicious at all. Lol

 

[LizzyM]

With all due respect to Goro, I think that the OP adds far more diversity to the class by combining #1 and 3. Applicants who grew up in poverty are in short supply and those who have grown in maturity to develop empathy for those who suffer from alcoholism, etc are very short supply. I would welcome the opportunity to interview/admit such an applicant. Breakdancing, guitar playing, lock-picker, not so much.

 

[Lost in Translation]

Lock-picking shouldn't be seen as sketchy. It can be used to demonstrate resilience and patience. Plus, it's a trade skill very few learn these days (not that it matters for medicine) so for someone to really get into it shows devotion and genuine interest.

I'll leave you skeptics with this:

 

[Goro]

With all due respect to Goro, I think that the OP adds far more diversity to the class by combining #1 and 3. Applicants who grew up in poverty are in short supply and those who have grown in maturity to develop empathy for those who suffer from alcoholism, etc are very short supply. I would welcome the opportunity to interview/admit such an applicant. Breakdancing, guitar playing, lock-picker, not so much.

The learned LizzyM and I add diversity to SDN, given the variance of our opinions!

 

[PreMedMissteps]

With all due respect to Goro, I think that the OP adds far more diversity to the class by combining #1 and 3. Applicants who grew up in poverty are in short supply and those who have grown in maturity to develop empathy for those who suffer from alcoholism, etc are very short supply. I would welcome the opportunity to interview/admit such an applicant. Breakdancing, guitar playing, lock-picker, not so much.

Totally agree. I think adcoms are far more interested in low income applicants, particularly ones who've overcome adversity (poverty, alcoholic unemployed father) and who are immigrants to the US.


And, please don't mention the lock-picking anywhere. Sounds creepy.

 

[Lost in Translation]

And, please don't mention the lock-picking anywhere. Sounds creepy.

I put Magic: The Gathering and got asked about it on my interviews despite some people telling me I shouldn't. I was willing to take the chance of broadcasting that I was in a "hobby for fat smelly antisocial nerds" because I consider it a big part of my identity and would be betraying myself if I didn't share that with schools I had a desire to attend.

OP, if you think lock-picking is a big enough part of how you identify, put it on your app. And if an adcom at a school instantly jumps to the conclusion that you're a criminal or a creep then you don't want to be at that school anyway. Plus, just think: you get to put whatever hobbies you want down on AMCAS, so it stands to reason that if someone thinks lock-picking is important enough to put down then there's zero reason to think there's some nefarious reason the applicant is participating in it. If OP was really a criminal or otherwise unsavory person, why would they ever think about putting that on their application since it immediately singles them out?

 

[altblue]

Totally agree. I think adcoms are far more interested in low income applicants, particularly ones who've overcome adversity (poverty, alcoholic unemployed father) and who are immigrants to the US.


And, please don't mention the lock-picking anywhere. Sounds creepy.

I think he can - he just shouldn't mention Lockpick with Small Guns or Sneak.

 

[Frogger27]

Hello!

My apologies for YET ANOTHER one of these threads (hence the title), but I am struggling with how to address the diversity topic. I have made a list of things that may make me “diverse,” and I would really appreciate some feedback!

1. My family has been low-income for as long as I can remember, and my parents are immigrants that did not finish college in their home countries. My father is an alcoholic and has been for much of my life, and he has been unemployed since I was a child.

2. I have a wide variety of hobbies that I have picked up over the years because there are so many interesting things in the world! They include playing the guitar, ukulele, and cello, breakdancing, Tae Kwon Do, and beatboxing. To a lesser degree, I am also trying to learn how to write in Copperplate calligraphy, to juggle, and to lockpick.

3. I have worked with a variety of communities while volunteering in a big city and working in my current job. A good number of the people in these communities are immigrants (both legal and illegal), low-income/underserved, homeless, and drug abusers.

3a. I hope to leverage this into an essay about learning about others and developing connections with people. I appreciate the idea that everyone is “protagonist” in their own story, and I feel that understanding that and examining things through others’ perspectives makes life much more rich!​

I have already talked a bit about 1 and 3 in my personal statement, and I have more or less included what I wrote here in the “Disadvantaged” section of the App. As such, I’m hoping to include as little of 1 as possible in my app, since I feel like I’ve been using it as a crutch and will only continue to do so at this rate! I also feel like being low-income is not all that diverse!

As of right now, I am thinking of writing about my father’s alcoholism and how I initially demonized his behavior, but eventually grew to be more understanding of his behavior after learning about his own difficulties and poor role models growing up. This perspective has allowed me to be more empathetic to the different communities and people that I work with (point 3 and 3a).

What would be my best option, or should I look elsewhere to answer this prompt?
Thank you so very much to everyone who took the time to read this! Your help is very much appreciated, and I wish you all the best of luck in everything you do!

Write about 1.

 

[Lawpy]

This.

But lockpick????


2. I have a wide variety of hobbies that I have picked up over the years because there are so many interesting things in the world! They include playing the guitar, ukulele, and cello, breakdancing, Tae Kwon Do, and beatboxing. To a lesser degree, I am also trying to learn how to write in Copperplate calligraphy, to juggle, and to lockpick.

With all due respect to Goro, I think that the OP adds far more diversity to the class by combining #1 and 3. Applicants who grew up in poverty are in short supply and those who have grown in maturity to develop empathy for those who suffer from alcoholism, etc are very short supply. I would welcome the opportunity to interview/admit such an applicant. Breakdancing, guitar playing, lock-picker, not so much.

The learned LizzyM and I add diversity to SDN, given the variance of our opinions!

So just to clarify, the focus of diversity essays should involve how applicants can contribute uniquely to the future class. And if applicants have something in short supply (e.g. growing up in poverty, URM, undocumented, veteran, LGBTQ, etc.), it is much better to focus on it rather than elaborating on unique personal hobbies?

As such, could diversity essays actually be tied in closely to adversity essays?

 

[Frogger27]

So just to clarify, the focus of diversity essays should involve how applicants can contribute uniquely to the future class. And if applicants have something in short supply (e.g. growing up in poverty, URM, undocumented, veteran, LGBTQ, etc.), it is much better to focus on it rather than elaborating on unique personal hobbies?

As such, could diversity essays actually be tied in closely to adversity essays?

.

 

[LizzyM]

So just to clarify, the focus of diversity essays should involve how applicants can contribute uniquely to the future class. And if applicants have something in short supply (e.g. growing up in poverty, URM, undocumented, veteran, LGBTQ, etc.), it is much better to focus on it rather than elaborating on unique personal hobbies?

As such, could diversity essays actually be tied in closely to adversity essays?

I could see some of these life experiences covering the diversity and adversity essays by shifting the emphasis one way or the other. Keep in mind that the adversity essay is often more of a desire to see how you COPE with adversity and the skills you bring to bear when things are not going your way or how you react when you need to deal with the emotions that come with a disappointment or failure.

 

[Goro]

So just to clarify, the focus of diversity essays should involve how applicants can contribute uniquely to the future class. And if applicants have something in short supply (e.g. growing up in poverty, URM, undocumented, veteran, LGBTQ, etc.), it is much better to focus on it rather than elaborating on unique personal hobbies?

As such, could diversity essays actually be tied in closely to adversity essays?

The risk to the bolded is that you don't want to them to be a pissing contest for who had the most woeful life, a la the old TV show "Queen for a Day."

 

[IgEdoc]

OP, your history (poor immigrant parents, basic education, alcoholic father, etc) sounds like mine...explained my lock picking skills in connection to my interest in Magic (...as in escapology)
Good luck!!

 

[Suffer]

So just to clarify, the focus of diversity essays should involve how applicants can contribute uniquely to the future class. And if applicants have something in short supply (e.g. growing up in poverty, URM, undocumented, veteran, LGBTQ, etc.), it is much better to focus on it rather than elaborating on unique personal hobbies?

As such, could diversity essays actually be tied in closely to adversity essays?

Outside of those obvious short supply things what else makes someone "unique"? @Goro @LizzyM

Could I PM my ideas and get some thoughts as to whether or not I should keep thinking?

Also which schools can I expect to see this diversity question from?

 

[Goro]

My definition is "what makes you cool?"

Outside of those obvious short supply things what else makes someone "unique"?

No
Could I PM my ideas and get some thoughts as to whether or not I should keep thinking?

Lots of them. It's a common prompt. It definitely helps weed out those incapable of introspection, or the superficial.
Also which schools can I expect to see this diversity question from?

 

[LizzyM]

The questions asked in the secondaries are posted in the school specific threads. You'll have to look up each of the schools you are considering.

If you grew up in a rural area, particularly if you are applying to urban schools.
If you grew up in an unusual environment (military bases, American family living abroad, refugee camp, etc)
If you grew up with a parent or sibling with a disability.
If you lived abroad with a home-stay family for 6 months or more.

This is becoming a common question in grad schools too. It makes sense as an optional question but I feel your pain when it is a required prompt.

 

[gud vibrations]

This.

But lockpick????

I want to say it has nothing to do with how often I lock myself out of my apartment, but..............
In all seriousness, it's more like a puzzle than anything! I think that it's really interesting how there's a whole subcommunity that has developed out of something so (relatively) mundane, but that really goes for any hobby I guess!

Totally agree. I think adcoms are far more interested in low income applicants, particularly ones who've overcome adversity (poverty, alcoholic unemployed father) and who are immigrants to the US.

@Frogger27 @PreMedMissteps @LizzyM Based on what I have gathered from previous "Diversity" threads, the low-income narrative seems fairly common, so I am wondering if it is all that diverse? By writing on what I've listed in 1 (which I have also included in my personal statement and disadvantaged section), would it not be seen as repeating the idea ad nauseum, bordering on the sentiment that @Goro is referring to?

In any case, thank you so much for your feedback! It looks like 1 and 3 are my best bet for now

OP, your history (poor immigrant parents, basic education, alcoholic father, etc) sounds like mine...explained my lock picking skills in connection to my interest in Magic (...as in escapology)
Good luck!!

I guess I'll have to start looking into escapology soon
Thank you, and I wish you good luck too (in whatever you may be pursuing at the moment hahaha )!

I put Magic: The Gathering and got asked about it on my interviews despite some people telling me I shouldn't. I was willing to take the chance of broadcasting that I was in a "hobby for fat smelly antisocial nerds" because I consider it a big part of my identity and would be betraying myself if I didn't share that with schools I had a desire to attend.

OP, if you think lock-picking is a big enough part of how you identify, put it on your app. And if an adcom at a school instantly jumps to the conclusion that you're a criminal or a creep then you don't want to be at that school anyway. Plus, just think: you get to put whatever hobbies you want down on AMCAS, so it stands to reason that if someone thinks lock-picking is important enough to put down then there's zero reason to think there's some nefarious reason the applicant is participating in it. If OP was really a criminal or otherwise unsavory person, why would they ever think about putting that on their application since it immediately singles them out?

the only thing criminal about me is my good looks ha ha ha
...
But thank you for your kind words
You seem like a very nice person!
I ended up not putting lock-picking in my application, but I did put a few of my other hobbies down so hopefully they will come up as positively for me as Magic has for you!

 

[xialmos]

The questions asked in the secondaries are posted in the school specific threads. You'll have to look up each of the schools you are considering.

If you grew up in a rural area, particularly if you are applying to urban schools.
If you grew up in an unusual environment (military bases, American family living abroad, refugee camp, etc)
If you grew up with a parent or sibling with a disability.
If you lived abroad with a home-stay family for 6 months or more.

This is becoming a common question in grad schools too. It makes sense as an optional question but I feel your pain when it is a required prompt.

@LizzyM, do you think that writing about being a guitar and piano player is a weak way to go about the diversity essay? How they gave me the drive to explore, be curious, something along those lines.

 

[LizzyM]

@LizzyM, do you think that writing about being a guitar and piano player is a weak way to go about the diversity essay? How they gave me the drive to explore, be curious, something along those lines.

The diversity essay is a way to go beyond racial URM to say that there are other ways to assemble a class that provides a diversity of life experiences and points of view. What unique contribution would you add to a group of 10 assembled to work together as a team.

 

[gud vibrations]

Hello! Would anyone be willing to take a look at a draft of this essay?

 

[478sr478]

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[LizzyM]

And if we don't have anything like the unique life experiences you listed, is it okay to talk about hobbies like playing an instrument (even if it's just for a hobby)? Obviously that won't be the strongest essay, but is it actually harmful? I'm struggling to think of anything else.

If you've got nothing else, what can you do? You gotta go with it and hope it doesn't hurt. At worse, you'll just be seen as a cookie cutter applicant who is indistinguishable from 1,000 others just like you. Maybe you break through the pack and are chosen. all the more reason to apply early before the school has already queued 20 other guitar players for interivew.

 

[478sr478]

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[LizzyM]

Thanks! Now that I think about it, would having a parent who required multiple hip replacement surgeries throughout my life since childhood count as "growing up with a parent or sibling with a disability"? This family member was always temporarily disabled around the time of the surgery, and this has definitely been a significant source of stress for them and has required patience and care from the rest of our family. However they are not chronically disabled. Would this be better than talking about music for the diversity essay? It didn't even occur to me until just now because it was always such a normal part of my life.

This could work if it gives you a point of view of how it is to live as a person who is unable to walk, etc for weeks at a time while raising a young family. Was your parent unable to function well for a period of time preceding each surgery (I would assume so) such that activities of daily life had to be adapted to accommodate the disability? Think of what your experience and knowledge of this situation would bring to the table when you are caring for families that are facing temporary or permanent disability of one of the family members.

 

[478sr478]

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[cactusman]

It definitely has done those things. I guess I just feel weird acting as if I am "special" or "unique" for having a family member undergo major surgeries. It really doesn't answer the "what's cool about you?" question that some people tell you to think about for the diversity prompts.

Would you say it's okay to go either way - with the "what's cool and unique about you" angle, or with the "what experiences have you had that would contribute to our medical school" angle - and basically just go with whichever of these angles is stronger for you personally?

Not an adcom, but I think "what's cool and unique about you" angle is essentially a more specific rewording of the latter approach, geared toward people who don't have a more obvious unique perspective and might otherwise write detailed explanations of their ethnicity or economic status in an attempt to sound more disadvantaged than they actually are.

 

[478sr478]

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[LizzyM]

What's cool about you is one interpretation of that prompt but would anyone really say it is their Mexican heritage or their lesbianism, yet those are two contributors to diversity that some schools are particularly interested in.

 

[tantacles]

What's cool about you is one interpretation of that prompt but would anyone really say it is their Mexican heritage or their lesbianism, yet those are two contributors to diversity that some schools are particularly interested in.

Oddly, schools and applicants seemed very interested in my personal lesbianism. I can't seem to understand why.

It definitely has done those things. I guess I just feel weird acting as if I am "special" or "unique" for having a family member undergo major surgeries. It really doesn't answer the "what's cool about you?" question that some people tell you to think about for the diversity prompts.

Would you say it's okay to go either way - with the "what's cool and unique about you" angle, or with the "what experiences have you had that would contribute to our medical school" angle - and basically just go with whichever of these angles is stronger for you personally?

It just depends on the prompt and what you want to advertise. You have to sell yourself as an applicant, and at some point, it comes down to what you think will help you market yourself best. There's no best answer to this situation. It's possible that both of the things you listed will get you an interview, it's possible that neither will, it's possible that you will get an interview based on the other parts of your application as long as you don't write anything super controversial or offensive, and it's possible that your specific reviewer might find one version of your essay better than the other. I suggest you write your best piece about the thing you want to advertise and feel most comfortable talking about and relating to your medical career, going with it, and then not taking it personally if you don't get an interview.

I know that it's easy to latch on to these small essays because it's the only piece of the application you have control over at this point, but at a certain point, it becomes too much. Just do your best on this essay writing about the thing you want to talk about on your interview day, proofread it, and submit it. I promise you that your life is more than choosing between these two essays.

 

[478sr478]

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[joeception]

I also have a quick question I have been taking different approaches with the diversity essay and I keep getting different opinions.

I first wrote about how I could contribute to the class and talked about my leadership experiences, but I kept getting told I missed the mark so then on my second attempt I am describing living in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood and being considered an at risk youth.

 

[LizzyM]

I also have a quick question I have been taking different approaches with the diversity essay and I keep getting different opinions.

I first wrote about how I could contribute to the class and talked about my leadership experiences, but I kept getting told I missed the mark so then on my second attempt I am describing living in a low-socioeconomic neighborhood and being considered an at risk youth.

BINGO! Given that a large proportion of med school matriculants are from upper SES households, you do bring a different experience to the table.