Not disadvantaged

[ponyo]

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This is a slightly different question about being disadvantaged...

I was just browsing the thread where the new mom was asking about it and decided to look through the AMCAS worksheet & instruction manual, and I realised that, well, my answers would look like this:

--Grew up in severely underserved area
--Family income for majority of 0-18: <$5000 (Started my life in a shack with no floor, holes for windows and a bucket of coal for heat, lol. Actually had one of those fire-beds)
--Contributed to family income in HS
--Financed college education

But I'm NOT ACTUALLY DISADVANTAGED and have absolutely no intention of marking that. I'm just an immigrant. The families I lived with during my childhood treated me like their own kids and I don't feel like my education has ever been compromised ever except by my own laziness.

I'm worried that if I fill out everything truthfully (for which I don't really have a choice I guess) it'll look like I'm trying to look disadvantaged... and then they'll meet me during interviews and realise that I look and talk like your average lower-upper-middle class kid (and am just as boring)... and they'll think I lied 🙁

 

[LizzyM]

This is a slightly different question about being disadvantaged...

I was just browsing the thread where the new mom was asking about it and decided to look through the AMCAS worksheet & instruction manual, and I realised that, well, my answers would look like this:

--Grew up in severely underserved area
--Family income for majority of 0-18: <$5000 (Started my life in a shack with no floor, holes for windows and a bucket of coal for heat, lol. Actually had one of those fire-beds)
--Contributed to family income in HS
--Financed college education

But I'm NOT ACTUALLY DISADVANTAGED and have absolutely no intention of marking that. I'm just an immigrant. The families I lived with during my childhood treated me like their own kids and I don't feel like my education has ever been compromised ever except by my own laziness.

I'm worried that if I fill out everything truthfully (for which I don't really have a choice I guess) it'll look like I'm trying to look disadvantaged... and then they'll meet me during interviews and realise that I look and talk like your average lower-upper-middle class kid (and am just as boring)... and they'll think I lied 🙁

Were you born & raised abroad? Given cost of living, etc, elsewhere, annual incomes are always hard to compare. The AMCAS question is "do you consider yourself...." If you don't, say "no".

I interviewed a career changer who was making about $100,000 including bonuses who self-identified as disadvantaged childhood due to very legit issues in childhood. How you look & talk as an adult can change and need not reflect your childhood deprivation.

 

[ponyo]

Were you born & raised abroad? Given cost of living, etc, elsewhere, annual incomes are always hard to compare. The AMCAS question is "do you consider yourself...." If you don't, say "no".

I interviewed a career changer who was making about $100,000 including bonuses who self-identified as disadvantaged childhood due to very legit issues in childhood. How you look & talk as an adult can change and need not reflect your childhood deprivation.

The thing is, if you consider my living conditions as a child, they would probably be considered impoverished compared to American standards. I remember the first time I ever saw a telephone and how amazing it was. I once had to share a clinic bed with 5 other children with pneumonia and one of them actually died. Until I moved to America I was chronically malnourished & underweight, and had chronic bronchitis because of air pollution. But it didn't feel like I was disadvantaged, because I actually saw people starving to death, real poor kids being trafficked in the streets, etc. and I wasn't anywhere near that.

Most importantly, because of the cultural difference, there weren't any academic compromises (in fact if anything I got a way way way more rigorous education, because I had to get up at like 5 to go to morning study starting 1st grade, and if you didn't finish everything you didn't get to pee). Even after I moved here, despite not having a lot of money my family insisted on living in a decent neighborhood so that I would get a good education.

I guess my major question is: is the rest of all that childhood information considered only if you mark "disadvantaged"?

 

[LizzyM]

The thing is, if you consider my living conditions as a child, they would probably be considered impoverished compared to American standards. I remember the first time I ever saw a telephone and how amazing it was. I once had to share a clinic bed with 5 other children with pneumonia and one of them actually died. Until I moved to America I was chronically malnourished & underweight, and had chronic bronchitis because of air pollution. But it didn't feel like I was disadvantaged, because I actually saw people starving to death, real poor kids being trafficked in the streets, etc. and I wasn't anywhere near that.

Most importantly, because of the cultural difference, there weren't any academic compromises (in fact if anything I got a way way way more rigorous education, because I had to get up at like 5 to go to morning study starting 1st grade, and if you didn't finish everything you didn't get to pee). Even after I moved here, despite not having a lot of money my family insisted on living in a decent neighborhood so that I would get a good education.

I guess my major question is: is the rest of all that childhood information considered only if you mark "disadvantaged"?

Starting this year, everyone is asked to answer those questions, even a billionaire's kid.