Which language to learn in college as a pre-med student?

College Majors
1

Hello everyone!
I am an incoming freshman at college and wanted to take up a language. I am a pre-med student and thought it would make me more competitive if I spoke more languages and studied abroad.

Some INFO:
-I am fluent already in Spanish. I can speak it and write it.

  • I was considering Portuguese or an asian language such as Chinese or Korean.

If anyone has any suggestions, please post them. Thank you! :slight_smile:

2

Any language you want. It won’t make you more competitive for admissions. Might want to check into the various criteria that matter most.

3

For med school admissions, it doesn’t matter.

But for practical purposes, it may make sense to learn a language that you could see using with your patients. It’ll enhance your versatility as a practitioner and your ability to communicate with patients, not to mention your employability and the reach of patients you can get. (My insurance company’s docfind tool lists their languages spoken in their profile. So do tools like ZocDoc.)

Spanish is widely spoken in the U.S., but you already know that one. Chinese is the next most-spoken language in the U.S., so that’s a good choice as well. Tagalog (the national language in the Phillippines) is the next most spoken language if you exclude French Creole speakers from French. Vietnamese, Hindustani (Hindi and Urdu), Arabic, Korean, and German round out the top 10

If it were me, I’d probably choose Chinese, Arabic, or Korean.