Does this count as disadvantaged?

[Wanderer_]

If one parent and two of your sisters had severe addiction problems (two of the three are still in that black hole all these years later, around 12 years to be exact) and the other parent was mentally ill but could still work, all while you were growing up, does that count as disadvantaged?
It certainly has shaped my thought process and who I am as a person..

To elaborate a bit: My dad sometimes made some good money because his profession pays pretty well, but he was always contracted so jobs were rather unreliable. He was sometimes unemployed for 6 months out of the year, and when you are a family of 6, that's incredibly stressful. My mom worked but didn't make much. When drug abuse problems are added to that mix, you end up with enormous financial problems.
Both of my parents had some college education but neither of them have a degree, so technically I am a first generation graduate. I lived at home my freshman year of college and then moved in with my best friend for two years. She started getting really sick about 8 months after we got a house; later we found out she has had undiagnosed Lyme's disease for 'longer than 5 years'. My grades plummeted junior year of college due to taking care of her while we waited out our lease because neither of us had the money to break it and move back home. This is all while I was working 35+ hours a week as a waitress to support myself and do whatever I could to help her. The whole reason to bring up my family's financial issues is to state that while I was in college, my parents couldn't help me monetarily. I used loans to pay for school and worked to have money to live and to help my sick friend. Her parents weren't in any better of a financial situation, but they did what they could to keep a roof over our heads and get her adequate medical attention. I moved in with my boyfriend when our lease was up and she moved home.

I don't know if I sound whiny or if I come off as just trying to explain how I grew up and things that have happened in life. I just need to know if I should include this on the primary application or in a secondary or not at all.

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[TMC07]

If I am not mistaken, disadvantaged in terms of the AMCAS only asks about ages 0-18. Therefore, college years would not apply. However, if this affected your ability to succeed in school and the opportunities you had throughout your life, it would not hurt to write the short essay and see what comes of it. It is hard for people on here to say exactly who is disadvantaged and who is not as we really have no idea how AMCAS decides given that there are so many different types of hardship one may have faced. We do not know how extreme the "sob story" has to be. But, I do not think it would hurt to check the box. The worst that can happen is AMCAS saying "No, we do not consider you disadvantaged."

 

[7331poas]

What do you mean by disadvantaged?

 

[Wanderer_]

What do you mean by disadvantaged?

There is a portion on the AMCAS that asks if you are considered a disadvantaged applicant. To me, it could mean a plethora of different things.. I don't really know what AAMC considers disadvantaged.

 

[LizzyM]

Recently, AMCAS started classifying applicants according to parents educational attainment and professional status but that is a separate issue from "disadvantaged". It is entirely possible to have parents who never finished college and yet made good money (e.g. members of the trade unions). Likewise, it is possible to have a parent who completed med school and boards but is disabled meaning that the family income may have been low and placing the applicant at a disadvantage compared with peers.

The AMCAS also has a section to describe how you paid for college (% your funds, % your parents, % merit scholarships, % loans, etc) . The experience section is where you can show that you were employed for x hours during a specific time period thus informing the adcom that you worked 35 hours per week while enrolled in college.

Disadvantaged from 0-18? Did your family qualify for free or reduced price lunches? Did you have food stamps (LINK)? Was your family ever evicted or have the utilities shut off for non-payment? Did you have to forego even the most inexpensive class trips for lack of funds? Did you live in a school district that was so poorly funded that you didn't even have class trips to museums or other local educational sites? did you feel that you were at a disadvantage compared to your peers when you got to college because of your economic status as a kid?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself as you decide whether or not to check the box and write a paragraph about why you consider yourself "disadvantaged".

You can also save this (or use it again with more elaboration), for the secondary essays that ask about adversity or about coping skills or how you deal with stress.

 

[Blp1994]

Recently, AMCAS started classifying applicants according to parents educational attainment and professional status but that is a separate issue from "disadvantaged". It is entirely possible to have parents who never finished college and yet made good money (e.g. members of the trade unions). Likewise, it is possible to have a parent who completed med school and boards but is disabled meaning that the family income may have been low and placing the applicant at a disadvantage compared with peers.

The AMCAS also has a section to describe how you paid for college (% your funds, % your parents, % merit scholarships, % loans, etc) . The experience section is where you can show that you were employed for x hours during a specific time period thus informing the adcom that you worked 35 hours per week while enrolled in college.

Disadvantaged from 0-18? Did your family qualify for free or reduced price lunches? Did you have food stamps (LINK)? Was your family ever evicted or have the utilities shut off for non-payment? Did you have to forego even the most inexpensive class trips for lack of funds? Did you live in a school district that was so poorly funded that you didn't even have class trips to museums or other local educational sites? did you feel that you were at a disadvantage compared to your peers when you got to college because of your economic status as a kid?

These are the questions you should be asking yourself as you decide whether or not to check the box and write a paragraph about why you consider yourself "disadvantaged".

You can also save this (or use it again with more elaboration), for the secondary essays that ask about adversity or about coping skills or how you deal with stress.

Just out of curiosity, do the AdComs factor in these disadvantages post interview as well, or primarily when inviting students to interview?

As you being an Adcom would you mind shedding light as to how a committee may look at my situation because I am currently waiting to hear back from some schools and have been wondering if they may take my situation into account when awarding merit scholarships/acceptances because I have been driving myself insane with the anticipation.

URM (Mexican American)
Born to a single teen-mom (15 years old)
Parental income below the poverty level (annual income <20,000)
Recipient of food assistance/Medicaid for majority of my life
Lived in rural farmers community for 18 years prior to college
First generation college student
Father was a multiple-time convicted felon and I have a family history of drug abuse/mental health problems

I scored a 515 on the MCAT and have a 3.7 GPA as an honors college student
Biochemistry major
Philosophy minor
Biomedical physics minor
Writing honors thesis on death
6 months clinical volunteering (weakest part of app IMO)
2 semesters volunteering for epidemiology research group
Medical mission trip to third world country
Chemistry TA
Great LOR (3)
Physician shadowing >100 hours
Extreme level of emotional intelligence and interviewing skills


I just want to make it clear that I've been following your posts for months now and I would be honored to hear any feedback as this is not a deliberate act to brag or anything of that nature.

Thank you in advance.


Edit: biggest concern is lackluster volunteer hours (personal situations forced me to spend a lot of time doing other things)
Lack of formal research


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[LizzyM]

Merit scholarships will be offered if the school wants you there because you are a highly desirable applicant and is willing to sweeten the offer of admission by offering you money without regard to your economic status.

Need-based aid will be based on your recent FAFSA and not on anything else on your application.

 

[Blp1994]

Merit scholarships will be offered if the school wants you there because you are a highly desirable applicant and is willing to sweeten the offer of admission by offering you money without regard to your economic status.

Need-based aid will be based on your recent FAFSA and not on anything else on your application.

I appreciate your response, I guess my confusion really comes from not knowing how my application will be perceived holistically in the context of the adversity I had to overcome in my past. So in short, I didn't know if "merit" is blind to socioeconomic and ethnic background because it is well known that it can be difficult for disadvantaged students to perform to the same level as those who are not. Once again, thank you for your response.


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[LizzyM]

I appreciate your response, I guess my confusion really comes from not knowing how my application will be perceived holistically in the context of the adversity I had to overcome in my past. So in short, I didn't know if "merit" is blind to socioeconomic and ethnic background because it is well known that it can be difficult for disadvantaged students to perform to the same level as those who are not. Once again, thank you for your response.


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If you are a rarity in the market, you could have several schools trying to attract you. They will do that with merit scholarships. URM admitted students and admitted students with super-high MCAT scores are rarities that will often create bidding wars, so to speak

If the school does not value diversity of experiences and doesn't feel the need to attract an admitted applicant who grew up poor, or if such applicants are numerous and no incentive is needed to attract them, then it makes no sense to offer merit scholarships on the basis of a disadvantaged childhood.

 

[Blp1994]

If you are a rarity in the market, you could have several schools trying to attract you. They will do that with merit scholarships. URM admitted students and admitted students with super-high MCAT scores are rarities that will often create bidding wars, so to speak

If the school does not value diversity of experiences and doesn't feel the need to attract an admitted applicant who grew up poor, or if such applicants are numerous and no incentive is needed to attract them, then it makes no sense to offer merit scholarships on the basis of a disadvantaged childhood.

I will also add that medical schools often have multiple pools of money from grants, dozens of small scholarship from alumni and family of patients, and other sources, often targeted to specific student -types, including specific URMs. For example, here in NY a couple of top schools are famous for fighting over certain minority candidates. Several years ago I had a nontraditional Hispanic woman who finally settled on one school as they gave her an additional $15,000 a year scholarship out of the office of diversity .

Interesting information, thank you for the input.

I just want to make it clear that I really appreciate both of you. It is so difficult to gauge what is considered merit by admissions committees, especially when a holistic approach is taken to evaluate candidates.

First and foremost, I do not believe (and would not believe this for other URM/Low SES as well) that I deserve any scholarship/admission on the basis of ethnicity/SES alone. Rather, in the context of a "relatively" strong application, would those challenges having been transcended during my formative years show a certain level of merit in its own rite?

As mentioned in a previous statement, the rarity of a candidate is ultimately what drives an admissions decision, and possible allocation of scholarship money. But rarity may come in many forms, and what I'm curious about is if my own sense of rarity that I "believe" I have seen in myself will also be recognized in a similar manner by AdComs.

The one aspect I pride myself on aside from my scientific/academic success is my emotional intelligence/humanism. I feel a strong sense of identity not only to those with whom I share a socioeconomic or ethnic background, but to all forms of life i.e. both human and non-human. I have tried to communicate this through my philosophy of death that originated from the stoic contemplation of my own mortality. This has driven part of my aspirations to become a physician as it stems from the reality that the experience of death is ultimately what people fear the most, is the one thing that is inevitable for all that experience life (human and non-human), and is what physicians/clinicians uniquely battle in the practice of medicine. Twice I've had the opportunity to prevent the near inevitability of someone dying, as a friend of mine was stabbed over a year ago and more recently a man walking down the street stopped on the side of the rode in which case I realized he was having a heart attack. Both times I was the one who called for medical attention and spoke to the operators/tried to do what I could to help the situation in the meantime. I also recently lost my closest relative and had to look her in the face as she passed away from an endocrine issue, so my experience with death has been pretty intimate and is a monumental factor in my outlook on life and my future career. All of this I have "tried" to communicate to the AdComs of my top-choice medical school in the context of my personal philosophical interests, research interests (regenerative medicine/gene therapy/stem-cell therapy), and reasoning for feeling inspired to study the work of a physician (also in the context of previous volunteerism and shadowing experiences with cancer patients on the verge of death).

My problem is not that my stats are lacking/don't somewhat shine (because I doubt a LizzyM of 71 for someone of my background will be frowned upon) but instead that my EC's- weak volunteerism and lack of formal research- will be perceived as not accurately reflecting my genuine interests, despite some of the reasons for lackluster involvement being due to finances that have often barred my involvement in ECs to the extent that I have wanted to be involved.

E.g. During the first two summers of my undergrad I had to return home to work for a temporary day labor service with a population of mainly undocumented immigrants, in order to make some kind of money to pay for things for school because my mom (having only a 15,000-20,000 annual salary) really wasn't in a financial situation to support me. Needless to say, these were not the only issues I experienced and I would never look to them to band-aid my own mistakes as an undergrad, but the reality is that these circumstances did affect me in a relatively negative way.

Other times in which finances posed a significant problem for me were during my sophomore-junior summer when I was taking out loans and donating blood plasma regularly to try to pay for my first apartment/summer tuition to fulfill summer credit hour requirements when I was taking Latin 1 & 2.

The point of all of this is that I feel I would've had a much more wholesome academic career i.e. Summer research internships, more medical missions, more time devoted to volunteerism, higher GPA/MCAT but I did not because I had to deal with personal circumstances that were more immediate instead.

In retrospect, I just wish I could go back and become more involved not only because it would have bolstered my application when applying, but because I know I would have flourished more with regards to my character.

The truth is that my application cycle is coming to an end, so all of this is truly to ease the anxiety I am experiencing in anticipation of results from my top two choices, but I would hope future applicants can read this and perhaps gain some insight if ever in a relatable circumstance.

Sorry for the long post but figured I may as well put it out there so maybe others can find peace in my situation, as far reaching as that is.


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[LizzyM]

Everyone who gets into medical school has worked hard and shown great promise. For every 43 applicants who matriculate there are 57 who don't get in anywhere. If you get admitted to even one school, you are special.

Merit money is not given for being "special". It is given because the school, for whatever reason, wants your butt in their classroom. It often has very little to do with the extracurriculars you chose, etc but with your demographic characteristics, your grades and scores, and the winning personality you demonstrated at interview.

 

[Blp1994]

Everyone who gets into medical school has worked hard and shown great promise. For every 43 applicants who matriculate there are 57 who don't get in anywhere. If you get admitted to even one school, you are special.

Merit money is not given for being "special". It is given because the school, for whatever reason, wants your butt in their classroom. It often has very little to do with the extracurriculars you chose, etc but with your demographic characteristics, your grades and scores, and the winning personality you demonstrated at interview.

That basically cleared up all of my questions in a nutshell. Thank you so much, LizzyM, that really makes me feel more confident and I hope it sheds light for future applicants with similar questions.


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