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Will being bilingual help my odds?


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Hello, and thanks for taking the time to help me out!

 

I was wondering if anyone knows if speaking a second language will help my application stand out.  I am a junior at my university and I am getting ready to apply to PA schools for the first time.  It looks like at the end of the semester, the CAPSA will have my science GPA as a 3.05 and my cumulative as a 3.33.  I know that these are relatively low marks.  I had one devastating semester (family issues + financial issues + mono = disaster), but I have definitely been on an upward trend ever since. I am majoring in biology and Spanish with minors in chemistry and psychology, and I have over 1000 HCE.  Does anyone know if my Spanish could help me? Or should I start looking into other career paths?

 

Thanks!

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Medical Spanish won't hurt.  It's not a ticket to high-paying jobs, but there are plenty of good jobs with loan repayment baked in that need bilingual providers.  Now, here's the question... can you actually conduct a patient visit in Spanish? Seems like a silly question if you're majoring in Spanish, but there's a lot that goes into being conversant enough to speak and understand idiomatic healthcare Spanish.

 

If you actually DO something medical with your Spanish skills, that will show up very favorably to many AdComs.

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I just applied to PA school this year with no success. I am bilingual and have worked over 120 hours as a medical interpreter in a variety of settings from Dr.'s appt to ER to ICU (each appointment is about an hour). My undergrad GPA was ~3.1 and my post-baccalaureate GPA is ~3.75. I majored in Spanish and Econ so pretty much all of my prereq's are accounted for in my post-baccalaureate GPA. I also have over 2,500 hours of HCE at this point.

 

I think Spanish helps as it was brought up right away at my only interview, but you need to be able to demonstrate the ability to use it on a professional level as rev ronin said. In a medical setting you never know where each patient will be from and you have to be skilled enough to pick up on different dialects. The real test is being able to understand some of the dialects found in the Caribbean. I sweat a little bit when I have a patient from PR because their dialect is really challenging and fast. You will also need an extensive lexicon for the medical field. Also, if you are not fully competent in Spanish you could be communicating incorrect information to a pt and that is not acceptable.

 

It is funny because in my only interview this year I was asked about how my experience as a medical interpreter influenced me and then I was asked by a hard-hitting interviewer "Well if you like it so much why don't you just go start a medical interpreting company?"

 

Be prepared

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Having a second language, especially a common one such as spanish, definitely cannot hurt your application; however, I wouldn't hang my application on that fact. My GPA was about the same as yours 3.3 overall with 3.00 in sciences. I speak Spanish as a second language (conversational) and definitely threw that out in my interview, but it was only once or twice. The majority of my interview was based around why I wanted to be a PA, which I would have done anything to become.

 

Practically speaking, it can be very helpful, especially in emergency situations where you need an answer at that moment. As for your application, it's definitely a positive skill for you to have, but there are far more important things to focus on.

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