Personal Statement: Using A Foreign Language

[mexdoc91]

I am in the process of revising my Personal Statement and was wondering if using Spanish would be inappropriate.

In a nutshell, my statement is about how being a Spanish translator for an underserved clinic has heavily influenced my passion for medicine. Also, I have pretty much been translating my entire life for my grandpa during his doctor visits.

I don't want to come off as a "show-off". I just feel like my experiences with translating are very important and I want to showcase that in my statement.

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[Ace-Co-A]

How long would the excerpt be in Spanish? Might be a nice literary device if used appropriately.

 

[jturkel]

i wouldn't put more than a sentence and explain what it means. also, i would indicate on your application that you are fluent. keep in mind, you may be matched with an interviewer who speaks spanish and it would NOT be an unlikely scenario where part of your interview may be conducted in spanish

 

[infinitessimal]

Ditto on the nice literary device. You can probably get away with 2-3 sentences, or maybe a few spread throughout the essay. A lot of people can speak or deduce at least a little bit of Spanish, especially in the medical setting. It wouldn't seem like something crazy or out-of-the-blue.

 

[jturkel]

Ditto on the nice literary device. You can probably get away with 2-3 sentences, or maybe a few spread throughout the essay. A lot of people can speak or deduce at least a little bit of Spanish, especially in the medical setting. It wouldn't seem like something crazy or out-of-the-blue.

yes and no. depends on where the school is located. and even then, can't begin to count the number of attendings and fellows i've worked with who couldnt speak a word of spanish and requried a student, nurse, phone, or physical translator on rounds asking basic questions. also, the main hospital i'm at is at least 50% hispanic and about 25% don't speak a word of english excpet for "no"

 

[infinitessimal]

@jturkel I just meant Spanish is so common in the medical setting (heck, most schools I've looked at offer medical spanish as an elective) that it wouldn't be preposterous or show-off-y for OP to include some of it in his/her PS. Of course one shouldn't assume readers will understand it without translation.

 

[jturkel]

@jturkel I just meant Spanish is so common in the medical setting (heck, most schools I've looked at offer medical spanish as an elective) that it wouldn't be preposterous or show-off-y for OP to include some of it in his/her PS. Of course one shouldn't assume readers will understand it without translation.

indeed. thank you for the clarification. i misread/misunderstood

 

[infinitessimal]

indeed. thank you for the clarification. i misread/misunderstood

No worries! Enjoy the tundra

 

[mexdoc91]

Thanks everyone for the input!

I have narrowed it down to 4 sentences total in Spanish. They are very basic sentences though. Should I put the translation of the sentence in parenthesis? Is that doing too much?

 

[mexdoc91]

i wouldn't put more than a sentence and explain what it means. also, i would indicate on your application that you are fluent. keep in mind, you may be matched with an interviewer who speaks spanish and it would NOT be an unlikely scenario where part of your interview may be conducted in spanish

Does that really happen?

I feel like the interview is already stressful enough!

God bless my parents for forcing to speak nothing but spanish as a kid.

 

[Goro]

One sentence and one sentence only; anything else may risk coming across as pretentious or showy. If your reader doesn't understand Spanish, you might lose them early on.

I am in the process of revising my Personal Statement and was wondering if using Spanish would be inappropriate.

In a nutshell, my statement is about how being a Spanish translator for an underserved clinic has heavily influenced my passion for medicine. Also, I have pretty much been translating my entire life for my grandpa during his doctor visits.

I don't want to come off as a "show-off". I just feel like my experiences with translating are very important and I want to showcase that in my statement.

 

[EngineerPreMD]

Thanks everyone for the input!

I have narrowed it down to 4 sentences total in Spanish. They are very basic sentences though. Should I put the translation of the sentence in parenthesis? Is that doing too much?

4 seems like a lot to me. I would pick the 1 or 2 most meaningful sentences and provide translations. Make sure it is a central part of the theme, and give good explanations in english. If you're fluent in spanish, you're already getting a boost for the skill, and very few people will doubt your fluency if you're hispanic (I'm assuming you are since your grandpa needed translation). If the reader can't understand spanish, 4 sentences will be a long time to feel left out of the loop.

 

[jturkel]

Does that really happen?

I feel like the interview is already stressful enough!

God bless my parents for forcing to speak nothing but spanish as a kid.

Yes it can and does

 

[gyngyn]

Una frase, nada mas.

 

[bakedbeans18]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?" A child was sitting in the emergency room, and their parents were nowhere to be found. This boy was frightened - almost as if he had been abandoned, and did not know what happened to his parents. 30 minutes earlier, a woman had coded after she was brought in from a multivehicle accident. She was in the morgue, awaiting identification. "Espera aqui, deja me buscar para unos medicos de sue abuelos." This was perhaps the most challenging night in recent memory, at Our Lady of The Lady Community Hospital - how could I tell this frightened child that his mother had died? Was it even my place to? :story about finding doctor, helping to translate for the child and coordinating with social services to contact the father....:

I'd say if you did it like this, only once every so often writing in spanish, I think you'll be okay. Could make for an AWESOME literary device, but as others have said, be prepared to discuss ANYTHING about your application, your interest in the school, or yourself, in spanish - because your interviewer may want to size you up linguistically.

Good Luck!

 

[mexdoc91]

One sentence and one sentence only; anything else may risk coming across as pretentious or showy. If your reader doesn't understand Spanish, you might lose them early on.

Noted!

 

[mexdoc91]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?" A child was sitting in the emergency room, and their parents were nowhere to be found. This boy was frightened - almost as if he had been abandoned, and did not know what happened to his parents. 30 minutes earlier, a woman had coded after she was brought in from a multivehicle accident. She was in the morgue, awaiting identification. "Espera aqui, deja me buscar para unos medicos de sue abuelos." This was perhaps the most challenging night in recent memory, at Our Lady of The Lady Community Hospital - how could I tell this frightened child that his mother had died? Was it even my place to? :story about finding doctor, helping to translate for the child and coordinating with social services to contact the father....:

I'd say if you did it like this, only once every so often writing in spanish, I think you'll be okay. Could make for an AWESOME literary device, but as others have said, be prepared to discuss ANYTHING about your application, your interest in the school, or yourself, in spanish - because your interviewer may want to size you up linguistically.

Good Luck!

This is exactly how I am using the Spanish!! I am weaving it into certain paragraphs and I think it gives my statement character. I am going to let my English professor read it and see what she thinks about the Spanish.

Interviewing in Spanish actually seems pretty exciting. Looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Thanks everyone!

 

[xffan624]

This is exactly how I am using the Spanish!! I am weaving it into certain paragraphs and I think it gives my statement character. I am going to let my English professor read it and see what she thinks about the Spanish.

Interviewing in Spanish actually seems pretty exciting. Looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Thanks everyone!

Speaking spanish is pretty common (one of my classmates speaks that and 3 other languages fluently). It's certainly a plus but it's not something I would center my application on.

 

[OneTwoThreeFour]

This is exactly how I am using the Spanish!! I am weaving it into certain paragraphs and I think it gives my statement character. I am going to let my English professor read it and see what she thinks about the Spanish.

Interviewing in Spanish actually seems pretty exciting. Looking forward to seeing how all this turns out.

Thanks everyone!

Just going to warn you, the only two people who recommended the strictest limit (one sentence) are also the only two adcom members on the thread. So keep that in mind!
I would also worry about putting in the translations because it would double the characters for a sentence (and I know my PS was right to the limit!).

 

[Catalystik]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?"

elludarme?

This is exactly how I am using the Spanish!! I am weaving it into certain paragraphs and I think it gives my statement character. I am going to let my English professor read it and see what she thinks about the Spanish.

This "awesome literary device" will lose most of your intended audience. You have not been listening. I agree with Goro and gyngyn that you should use one sentence only and I suggest you make the words used as simple as possible.

There is another portion of the application where you are asked to give precise details about exactly how fluent you are. The PS isn't the place to showcase this.

 

[hmockingbird]

You need to also include the English translation somehow, or make it VERY clear in the context clues of the next sentence or two (as of now it's not and I don't speak Spanish so I have no idea what either of those two sentences say, or even how they are relevant to the rest of the paragraph - are they dialogue from the boy? what about the morgue quote?). This is standard for using it as a literary device. Otherwise, your readers who don't speak Spanish are going to be lost and lose interest.

 

[Syndicate]

Be conservative and go with English. What you are proposing is big risk, small reward.

 

[caffeinemia]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?" A child was sitting in the emergency room, and their parents were nowhere to be found. This boy was frightened - almost as if he had been abandoned, and did not know what happened to his parents. 30 minutes earlier, a woman had coded after she was brought in from a multivehicle accident. She was in the morgue, awaiting identification. "Espera aqui, deja me buscar para unos medicos de sue abuelos." This was perhaps the most challenging night in recent memory, at Our Lady of The Lady Community Hospital - how could I tell this frightened child that his mother had died? Was it even my place to? :story about finding doctor, helping to translate for the child and coordinating with social services to contact the father....:

I'd say if you did it like this, only once every so often writing in spanish, I think you'll be okay. Could make for an AWESOME literary device, but as others have said, be prepared to discuss ANYTHING about your application, your interest in the school, or yourself, in spanish - because your interviewer may want to size you up linguistically.

Good Luck!

It's my personal opinion that this is a terrible way to open your statement. It's not a frackin' novel, no one cares about your crazy clinic and the melodrama that's playing out there. Grey's Anatomy has already been done and better too. Meanwhile you've wasted a good 20% of your allotted space and probably 50% of your allotted attention span. Make sure you cut to the chase and tell us why you're going to be a doctor, especially at the cost of potentially incomprehensible foreign-language babble.

 

[caffeinemia]

Just going to warn you, the only two people who recommended the strictest limit (one sentence) are also the only two adcom members on the thread. So keep that in mind!
I would also worry about putting in the translations because it would double the characters for a sentence (and I know my PS was right to the limit!).

Agreed. I used exactly 1 line in my residency statement. No one had a problem with it.

 

[mimelim]

1 sentence max. And to be honest, I don't think you gain much by having it at all and you risk alienating or losing audience.

 

[Deadlifts]

elludarme?

Pienso que bakedbeans quiso decir "ayudarme."

@mexdoc91 , I help Spanish speaking patients at the hospital every shift (not at a fluent level like you) but I put it in my languages section of my primary application. While it may be useful to make a single, simple sentence make an impact in terms of a story that led you to want to pursue medicine (and utilize this skill of yours), that really should be the extent of it. You have most of the active posting adcom members of SDN in this thread telling you to keep it to one sentence.

 

[Catalystik]

Pienso que bakedbeans quiso decir "ayudarme."

Creo que si.

 

[repititionition]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?" A child was sitting in the emergency room, and their parents were nowhere to be found. This boy was frightened - almost as if he had been abandoned, and did not know what happened to his parents. 30 minutes earlier, a woman had coded after she was brought in from a multivehicle accident. She was in the morgue, awaiting identification. "Espera aqui, deja me buscar para unos medicos de sue abuelos." This was perhaps the most challenging night in recent memory, at Our Lady of The Lady Community Hospital - how could I tell this frightened child that his mother had died? Was it even my place to? :story about finding doctor, helping to translate for the child and coordinating with social services to contact the father....:

I'd say if you did it like this, only once every so often writing in spanish, I think you'll be okay. Could make for an AWESOME literary device, but as others have said, be prepared to discuss ANYTHING about your application, your interest in the school, or yourself, in spanish - because your interviewer may want to size you up linguistically.

Good Luck!

Boy, if I saw someone claiming to speak Spanish and they had this on their app... -10 points immediately.

It goes without saying (no it doesn't, or I wouldn't be writing this), that if you're gonna use it, it has to be pitch-perfect, not.... well.... something like what I've quoted above.

 

[Oso]

I just want to second everyone who's posted and recommend that the OP use one short simple phrase, nothing more. The PS is not the place to demonstrate foreign language skills, and to be honest, I don't think the one short phrase will really do much for the PS anyway. There will be a section on your app where you can indicate your fluency level. Even if you were to be paired up with an interviewer who spoke Spanish, I don't think the phrase in your PS would really impress them. If they wanted to gauge your fluency level, they would probably speak to you in Spanish a little bit during the interview. Note that if you put Spanish on your app and/or include Spanish in your PS, you better really know the language and be prepared to speak it at interview day.

So if you want to include a short phrase, sure go ahead. But make it short and simple, and make sure you either translate it or that the meaning is strongly implied. If anything, do it as an homage to the patients you translated for, but I wouldn't expect it to really make your PS stronger in the eyes of adcoms.

 

[bakedbeans18]

Boy, if I saw someone claiming to speak Spanish and they had this on their app... -10 points immediately.

It goes without saying (no it doesn't, or I wouldn't be writing this), that if you're gonna use it, it has to be pitch-perfect, not.... well.... something like what I've quoted above.

I speak spanish - I never learned to write. So if my spelling is off - there you go. Also, I have never taken a formal class - everything I know has been from working in restaurants and in hospitals and picking it up along the way. Try to stay on point here, this isn't about whether or not my sentence structure is poor or correct - it's about the principle. Jeesh.

 

[repititionition]

It's not just about spelling, trust me; there are numerous grammatical/prepositional errors in there as well.

As for the broader point, go ahead and try believing that it's about the principle (at the expense of "correct") in -your- PS. Good luck.

The OP asked for advice, I do not believe yours was sound. That is on point.

Also, OP, I have said before that I had the experience of an interviewer seamlessly code-switching during an interview. We conducted the last 20 minutes in Spanish.

You put it on the app and it's fair game. I rated myself as "good" in AMCAS, FWIW - better to under-play your hand, whatever it is.

 

[bakedbeans18]

It's not just about spelling, trust me; there are numerous grammatical/prepositional errors in there as well.

As for the broader point, go ahead and try believing that it's about the principle (at the expense of "correct") in -your- PS. Good luck.

The OP asked for advice, I do not believe yours was sound. That is on point.

Also, OP, I have said before that I had the experience of an interviewer seamlessly code-switching during an interview. We conducted the last 20 minutes in Spanish.

You put it on the app and it's fair game. I rated myself as "good" in AMCAS, FWIW.

I went to Costa Rica for a month and was able to get by just fine with my broken grammar. Get over yourself, sangano.

 

[repititionition]

I went to Costa Rica for a month and was able to get by just fine with my broken grammar. Get over yourself, sangano.

It's too bad the OP is not applying for a trip to Costa Rica.

 

[bakedbeans18]

It's too bad the OP is not applying for a trip to Costa Rica.

I am just saying that you grilling me over an example of how I would use spanish in a PS, attacking my spelling and grammar, considering that I AM NOT THE ONE APPLYING TO MEDICAL SCHOOL WITH THE STRONG SPANISH BACKGROUND, makes you look like a pedantic loser. If you want to counter my suggestion for the use of another language, that's fine - but it should end with that.

 

[caffeinemia]

umadbro?

 

[lunalight]

I am in the process of revising my Personal Statement and was wondering if using Spanish would be inappropriate.

In a nutshell, my statement is about how being a Spanish translator for an underserved clinic has heavily influenced my passion for medicine. Also, I have pretty much been translating my entire life for my grandpa during his doctor visits.

I don't want to come off as a "show-off". I just feel like my experiences with translating are very important and I want to showcase that in my statement.

FWIW, I believe you mean to say that you were a Spanish interpreter?
Interpreter = spoken, translator = written

 

[emelizabeth]

"Oiga, Oiga, soy buscando para mis abuelos, puedes elludarme?" A child was sitting in the emergency room, and their parents were nowhere to be found. This boy was frightened - almost as if he had been abandoned, and did not know what happened to his parents. 30 minutes earlier, a woman had coded after she was brought in from a multivehicle accident. She was in the morgue, awaiting identification. "Espera aqui, deja me buscar para unos medicos de sue abuelos." This was perhaps the most challenging night in recent memory, at Our Lady of The Lady Community Hospital - how could I tell this frightened child that his mother had died? Was it even my place to? :story about finding doctor, helping to translate for the child and coordinating with social services to contact the father....:

I'd say if you did it like this, only once every so often writing in spanish, I think you'll be okay. Could make for an AWESOME literary device, but as others have said, be prepared to discuss ANYTHING about your application, your interest in the school, or yourself, in spanish - because your interviewer may want to size you up linguistically.

Good Luck!

Totally not trying to be annoyingly pedantic, I understand that you're just trying to give some advice. However it looks like from this story that you think abuelos = parents. (It means grandparents.) Just trying to help since this is a pretty important distinction. My apologies if I misinterpreted your meaning.

 

[Dr Lyss]

OP ask yourself why are you honestly including the Spanish phrase(s)? Is it to highlight your experience with Spanish? Or because it is an important/critical element to your story? If it's the former, drop them. If it's the latter, keep it limited or see if you get the same effect of telling your story with English. The PS needs to be as inclusive as possible and you don't want to isolate any readers, particularly schools that are not in urban areas or don't have a large Spanish speaking population.

Regarding interviews, I'm Latina and I had a lot of Latino interviewers - but no one ever interviewed me in Spanish. This is one of those SDN urban legends that I've heard about but no one I know has ever actually experienced. Not to say it can't happen, but I doubt it would be more than casual convo. Gd luck

 

[terp720]

Totally not trying to be annoyingly pedantic, I understand that you're just trying to give some advice. However it looks like from this story that you think abuelos = parents. (It means grandparents.) Just trying to help since this is a pretty important distinction. My apologies if I misinterpreted your meaning.

totally not trying to be annoying, but you know bakedbeans is not the OP and he just wrote that as an example of spanish being worked into a paragraph effectively.

not sure why everyone keeps picking on his spanish when he's not the one writing a personal statement with Spanish in it.

 

[emelizabeth]

totally not trying to be annoying, but you know bakedbeans is not the OP and he just wrote that as an example of spanish being worked into a paragraph effectively.

not sure why everyone keeps picking on his spanish when he's not the one writing a personal statement with Spanish in it.

I wasn't picking on him or discrediting his advice because of faults in his Spanish. He obviously likes to speak to people in their native language in everyday life, which is great - I'm not always so brave. Grammatical issues don't hinder understanding too much, but the one I pointed out definitely would. Maybe I should've PM'ed him to avoid this exchange we're having.

 

[LizzyM]

Please don't write a screenplay with dialogue in any language. It is so over done and so wasteful in terms of the space allotted. If we wanted lights and sirens drama, we'd watch reruns of Rescue 911.

 

[terp720]

I wasn't picking on him or discrediting his advice because of faults in his Spanish. He obviously likes to speak to people in their native language in everyday life, which is great - I'm not always so brave. Grammatical issues don't hinder understanding too much, but the one I pointed out definitely would. Maybe I should've PM'ed him to avoid this exchange we're having.

gotchya! sorry, all these different posts directed towards bakedbeans just were derailing the thread haha

 

[caffeinemia]

Please don't write a screenplay with dialogue in any language. It is so over done and so wasteful in terms of the space allotted. If we wanted lights and sirens drama, we'd watch reruns of Rescue 911.

I personally prefer Cops. Bad girl, what you gonna do?

 

[mexdoc91]

Thank you to everyone who provided me with feedback. I appreciate it!

Taking everything into consideration, I definitely do not want to isolate any readers from my Personal Statement. I am going to take out the Spanish to make my statement more accessible to everyone.

Thanks again everyone!