I have this daunting question about whether mentioning proficiency in foreign language like Hindi in resume for college admission helps or will have any negative effect? I am proud of my heritage and I support my daughter to explicitly indicate Hindi along with English in her resume while she applies for college. However my husband thinks mentioning a language like Spanish or any other European language in resume was great but mentioning Hindi does not create same kind of excitement and might give negative effect in some cases as it may result in unnecessary profiling . My daughter is very keen on mentioning Hindi in resume. My husband suggests even if you have to learn Spanish… do that but replace Hindi by Spanish as its more relevant in US. When I search online, I do see they say if it is not relevant no need to mention but they were talking about resume for job application. How about resume for college apps? Is it good to keep neutral and avoid any thing which shows your ethnicity or it does not matter. Wanted some more thought on this topic. - Monika
Same answer as I gave on Reddit;
If she’s proficient in Hindi, it’s fine to list on a college resume. As far as profiling, if that were to happen, it could just as likely be gleaned elsewhere - her name, your name, your college, etc.
For a post-college resume, mentioning Hindi (or Spanish for that matter) will unlikely make an HR exec jump up and down unless those skills are needed for the job.
Interesting question. I do not know the answer, but I do see the concern.
Wow…it’s really sad if someone has to be concerned about their ethnicity/background when applying to colleges.
ETA: I am not criticizing the quoted posters; rather, I’m criticizing the sad state of affairs if this really is the case.
I agree with what was said above re. profiling, that can be done via name, parents’ university, demographic info, if she chose to indicate that, etc.
My personal opinion is that it is great to be multi-lingual and should be an asset (but of course I am not an AO ;-). My D22 is bilingual, though her language is not Hindi, it is a European language. She made it part of her story, besides that language she will also attain a seal of biliteracy in Spanish when graduating HS and she has a national language award, it all serves as backdrop for a global mindset and outlook in her applications.
Being multilingual was one of my D’s strongest selling point on her college application. The grades, and the tests were excellent but in terms of standing out, that was it (with just one more strong area, music). Yet every time I asked about it on CC, I was told it wouldn’t matter all that much, maybe in Middlebury, or in the School of Foreign Service but not really elsewhere.
While we haven’t seen her app materials with AOs’ notes, so no hard proof, I must assume that in the ultra-selective college that took her, it must have mattered. Now they sometimes play a little game in various groups on the campus: how many languages are spoken between us. In a 3-person group, it’s usually about 8.
I refuse to even consider a possibility that speaking a foreign language fluently could be detrimental to anybody’s admission chances, and if you suspect otherwise, I’d run away from that place, screaming.
But, which languages ?
I think that we have a different understanding of OP’s concern. The issue is not really about foreign language fluency.
I understand OP’s concern about profiling, I just refuse to believe it should be a valid concern in regard to any reputable institution of higher learning. What language, it doesn’t matter in my opinion.
Unless your daughter is somehow concealing her South Asian heritage in her applications (which would be tough to do unless she doesn’t appear South Asian, has a name that is not South Asian, and doesn’t have parents who were educated in India), I would only think that it would be an advantage to add her facility with Hindi to her application.
I really don’t think that any college would look at her and say that she is as less-desirable candidate because she’s South Asian as opposed to White, or because she’s fluent in Hindi. I think it can only help.
There are two situations here, which one is your daughter’s?
- she’s bilingual and speaks both English and Hindi fluently due to heritage language practice, Saturday school, travel, etc. Perhaps she even has an external accreditation showing her skill level. You treated this separate from learning a foreign language and she has foreign language credits on her HS transcript=> This is very good. Being bilingual is ALWAYS a plus, regardless of language.
- she’s bilingual and has not learned a foreign language in HS => this is more of a problem, depending on the college.
Being bilingual is not a “hook” nor is it going to tip her application from “denied” to “admit” (lots of competitive applicants speak more than English if they were given the chance to learn another language), but it is not an “anti-hook” and it is seen favorably, regardless of language.
I don’t think it will hurt or help to merely list one’s heritage language . The ethnicity is not going to be hidden either way. My child is a somewhat fluent heritage speaker of an Indian language (not Hindi) . He did not list it in his college resume. I think if he had more indepth experience with it , such as reading, writing and literature exposure, it may have been worth mentioning. Or if it was part of a significant EC, such as helping to design curriculum at a heritage language school, one should definitely mention it. In my son’s case , neither of those were applicable.
Some universities do offer Hindi courses. In that case, the student can mention something about taking those classes in a “why us” essay. My child is a fluent Spanish speaker, and has mentioned an interest in that in his essays. Not sure if it will do anything, but it is a passion for him.