Possibly controversial secondary idea for diversity essay

[gorillionare-mindset]

First post here so please forgive any format mistakes.

I'm debating writing my diversity essay on my experience being israeli-american/jewish, however I don't know if this would get me shut down right away due to current circumstances. I don't plan on making things at all political, I mainly wanted to outline what life's been like in terms of becoming close friends and coworkers with people from "unfriendly" countries, finding we shared more things in common than we had differences, seeing some people surprised to hear I wanted nothing but everyone to live in peace, and generally being the first jew and/or israeli a lot of people had ever met, that kind of stuff. I was thinking of including how a lot of my arab friends initially thought I was arab but maybe that one is ill-advised, I'm not sure. I would, of course, include something about how I know my experiences aren't as hard as most URM, and I'd probably try to tie it in with my work with the underserved.

Given all this, would it be smart to write about? My other potential topics are being bullied pretty badly growing up or maybe the run-of-the-mill "I worked with so many unique populations" that seems to generally be advised for ORM. I'd love to hear input from everyone, especially any adcoms. I do think the controversial one would be the most interesting but if it's too much of a risk to talk about at all then I'd go with a different one. I want to believe that just mentioning that I'm from a place wouldn't kill my app but i recognize its a tough subject.

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[Dee2daK]

All any diversity essay is asking you to do is apply your lived experiences and discuss how they support a diverse learning culture. The question isn’t about how “diverse” you are - it’s about how you you can look at yourself and others around you, compare and contrast experiences, and use that to enrich yourself, your peers, your school, and ultimately, the medical community.

How you answer these questions has to come from your own perspective - nobody can answer for you or give particularly specific insight as to how to answer these questions. ADCOMs want to know how you understand, appreciate, and contribute to diversity, and how well you can articulate that position. No more and no less.

 

[deleted929944]

Don't think the controversy level is high at all if you're pretty much saying is let's all sit around and sing "Imagine" despite the religious issues. There's also nothing special about it (like 99.9% of the essays so it's not a negative). Now it just comes down to how well your writing relates those experiences to your contribution to diversity of med schools.

 

[Goro]

Diversity is not about ethnicity, nor religion. What do you bring to the class? That you're Jewish? That's not going to fly. What's cool about you?

 

[sarcasmrules]

This is reading a lot like when people tried taking advantage of the George Floyd/Black Lives Matter movement for their diversity essays 4 years ago.

Diversity is about what you can do for your medical school's local community, something that would make schools think "we want what that person has to offer". The diversity essay is about "what I have to offer your school that few other applicants can".

 

[sarcasmrules]

Diversity is not about ethnicity, nor religion. What do you bring to the class? That you're Jewish? That's not going to fly. What's cool about you?

Brace yourself. You'll be reading a lot of essays like this just like the Black Lives Matter diversity essays 3-4 years ago.

 

[Goro]

Brace yourself. You'll be reading a lot of essays like this just like the Black Lives Matter diversity essays 3-4 years ago.

We see it every years. A lot of SDNers have a narrow definition of diversity.