Spanish vs. Global Health Studies minor - help me decide!

Student Lounge College Life
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Hey guys, it’s been a while!

For those who don’t know about me (probably 99% of you at this point haha) I am a rising sophomore at Northwestern. Until this summer, I was a Biomedical Engineering major, with the intention of getting a minor in Global Health Studies. However, things have changed, and my new major is Neuroscience. The curriculum is surprisingly lenient, and I have enough room to get a minor in addition to my major and pre-med course requirements. I have two choices which I am debating:

Spanish minor: I love to speak Spanish (I am Hispanic although not a native speaker lol) and I took one Spanish class at Northwestern which I really enjoyed. I think a Spanish minor would be helpful as it would demonstrate my proficiency with the language, as well as boost my own speaking and communication skills. It might also set me apart when applying to medical schools (can somebody confirm or deny? Thanks).

Global Health Studies: This minor is less intensive than the Spanish minor, but requires some kind of study abroad program before graduation. I am looking forward to this just as much as Spanish classes, but think it may seem a little bit cliche to medical schools.

I think I can only fit one of these two options in too, so doubling up probably wouldn’t work. Thanks for any input you guys may be able to give me, and feel free to post your opinions so I can see them!

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bump! any help would be appreciated guys!

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It doesn’t really matter which one you pick with respect to medical schools. The proficiency in Spanish will be great, but you don’t have to minor in Spanish to demonstrate that - you can put it on your resume/application.

So just pick whichever one you like the best.

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Thanks so much for your input! I am already fully proficient (at least professionally) in Spanish, so the minor would be more to explore the culture and history of the Spanish-speaking world.

Any other opinions would be greatly appreciated! I would like as many different perspectives of this as possible :slight_smile:

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Can you study abroad in a Spanish-speaking country and put those credits towards a minor? I think Spanish is definitely a plus. As far as medical schools and how they’ll view it, it depends. I think a lot of people who want to go to med school look into studying a second lanaguage so they can reach more people, communicate better with patients, etc. I worked in a doctor’s office with 7 doctors and three of them spoke a second language. And I heard another one of the doctor’s saying they wish they’d studied a language. (In case you’re curious, one spoke Greek, another Russian,and another Spanish.)