No health insurance= hardship essay

[rubisco88]

Along with financial struggles, should I mention not having health insurance in a hardship essay?

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[Doctor Strange]

That depends, I guess, on how your insurance status affected you. Were you forced to forgo or pay out of pocket for an important treatment?

 

[TheMightySmiter]

I think that if you actually experienced the effects of living without insurance while it happened, it's fine to mention. But I wouldn't discuss it otherwise. Only a few years ago, I realized that I never had health insurance growing up--my parents paid up front for doctor's visits and we always got billed later for the full amount. I wasn't aware of it at the time, so clearly it didn't have much of an effect on me. It's never something I even thought of bringing up.

 

[boshtrich]

I think that if you actually experienced the effects of living without insurance while it happened, it's fine to mention. But I wouldn't discuss it otherwise. Only a few years ago, I realized that I never had health insurance growing up--my parents paid up front for doctor's visits and we always got billed later for the full amount. I wasn't aware of it at the time, so clearly it didn't have much of an effect on me. It's never something I even thought of bringing up.

I agree with MightySmiter in that you should only bring it up if it had a direct effect on you. If you bring it up in secondaries, be ready to defend your stance during interviews as healthcare policy is becoming more of a hot-button issue in interviews.

 

[MedPR]

Along with financial struggles, should I mention not having health insurance in a hardship essay?

If a lack of health insurance was a big deal for you (assuming you didn't have some costly operation) then you probably weren't struggling all that much. I was legitimately homeless in 2010.

 

[scene]

I simply cannot fathom why people don't just make up these essays? Why does it have to occur for you to write about it? With some creative writing you can make yourself the perfect applicant (if these adcoms even read them).

 

[boshtrich]

I simply cannot fathom why people don't just make up these essays? Why does it have to occur for you to write about it? With some creative writing you can make yourself the perfect applicant (if these adcoms even read them).

Because then you get asked about the story you creatively wrote in interviews, give a generic/bad response, ad comms realize it was BS, and then you get rejected. Don't make stuff up, it doesn't work.

 

[MedPR]

I simply cannot fathom why people don't just make up these essays? Why does it have to occur for you to write about it? With some creative writing you can make yourself the perfect applicant (if these adcoms even read them).

Let us know how that works out for you.

 

[rubisco88]

That's stupid. Plus I'm sure they can tell based on other information you provide them with. If you list your parents as making 100k plus a year and they are docs or whatever they probably won't think you had it very hard regardless of what you write unless you are writing about abuse or rape or something. I'm sure they can tell if your being genuine by the way you talk about it in interviews.

 

[NickNaylor]

I simply cannot fathom why people don't just make up these essays? Why does it have to occur for you to write about it? With some creative writing you can make yourself the perfect applicant (if these adcoms even read them).

As others said, it will be quite apparent that you're lying if you're asked about something you made up in an interview. You're not as smart/sneaky as you think you are, especially when you're dealing with people that have been through this rodeo a few times and have likely interviewed hundreds of applicants.