No specific major is necessary to apply to US medical schools, although biological sciences like biochemistry conveniently overlap major requirements with many pre-med courses.
French and Arabic ability can be helpful in some regions of the US, though not necessarily the same ones.
You could, if that’s what you want to do. Your college will give a you a placement exam and start you at upper level coursework based on your fluency. Make sure the university offers enough UL classes in the language of your choice so that you don’t run out of options before completing the 6-8 courses required for a minor.
A more useful language for pre-meds is Spanish because Spanish is the second most commonly spoken language in the US.
RE: Loans
Undergraduate students are very limited in the amount of loans they are able to take.
Federal Student Loans are limited to $5500 for freshmen, $6500 for sophomores and $7500 for juniors and seniors.
Any additional loans would need to be either a Parent Plus loan (which your parents would need to take out) or a private loans (which would requires a co-signer with good credit and income sufficient to repay the loan).
@WayOutWestMom: Couldn’t agree more that Spanish is heavily regarded. Both my husband and I suspect that this was the situation when our daughter was admitted into her program.
My daughter is bilingual Spanish, but wanted to learn the “actual formal Spanish”, such that she completed a summer “internship”, in Madrid, while an undergrad.
She also volunteered in a “free” diabetes clinic whose low income/SES patients were primarily indigent Spanish speaking farmworkers. This clinic was sponsored by several UC’s, and originally, she was not supposed to be interviewed because the requirements were strict about language ability; her written application showed some errors in her Spanish. Later, she found out, that this clinic, was short in students with her job experience in labs and pharmacology, so they interviewed her-a panel of 10 interviewers. Once they heard her speak Spanish and saw her resume, she was chosen as a volunteer. This was just a volunteer situation.
Her friends, who also interviewed there, weren’t selected. They also weren’t strong in their Spanish skills. Now, from what she has mentioned, and what I understand, is that incoming professional Medical school candidates are very well-prepared and, as non-native speakers, are coming in with incredible fluency in their Spanish skills.
It’s a tough ride to get in.
If you can get certification for your Arabic (ie., one upper level class + work in a clinic where you can translate for Arabic speaking families) it’d be very useful.
French is useful if you can convert that to Haitian Creole, which is close to spoken French. There are lots of Haitian Creole speakers in New York and Florida in particular and due to Haiti’s poverty levels primary school completion is low and many need a lot of help in their native language to understand doctors’ prescriptions. This would most likely require you to work with community organizations since Haitian Creole isn’t taught at the college level, but these organizations would also be able to point you to clinical settings where your skills would be most useful.
The easiest would be to use your Arabic in clinical settings, something that is possible in Cleveland, so you could make it your primary focus, with Creole a sidebar if you can add it.
This would be more useful than taking up Spanish this late in the game. A strong Arabic and/or Creole speaker with local clinical experience will matter more than speaking Spanish as a late learner. Learn to play to your strengths, don’t follow the general playbook when it doesn’t apply to you.
There are enough Arabic speakers in the Cleveland area that CSU offers a full Arabic degree. The university’s policy is that you would meet with a faculty member, be placed in a 300-level or 400-level course (either “Media and writing” or "Advanced Language and Culture) and receive 16 “retroactive” credits once you complete that course.
However you would not need to minor in either Arabic nor French.
What’s interesting is that the Arabic major focuses heavily on “practical translation”, “field work”, “Cleveland service learning” and the minor is relatively not onerous, meaning you can take “Media and Writing”, “Practical Translation”, and 2 electives in fieldwork/service learning… and your minor is done. It would thus be very helpful to a student planning to include clinical experience in Arabic speaking settings for a med school application.
The CS minor is in the College of Liberal Arts.