So if you're not good enough, it's religious discrimination, right?

I found many many people, largely from Utah, who were entirely uncurious about Japanese culture, history, customs, etc. When I was in Japan. They would often complain about the way things were done since it was different from the way things worked in America/Utah. Some were even rather derogatory about the other whom they were supposedly supposed to serve. These folks learned nothing about Japan during their time there. Maybe the specific question raised above was somewhat irrelevant but the sentiment about “what did you learn about the country/culture/etc” is certainly valid and relevant to a highly competitive position in a higher education program. I think it’s valid to weed out the uncurious, intolerant, and narrow minded from such a program.

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They could be carried!

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I was in Guatemala and El Salvador. I learned a lot of folk history and I know that Guatemala’s national hero is Tecún Umán.(similar to William Wallace’s stature in Scotland). I learned a lot about the popular culture. I also gained an entirely new perspective on what it means to be literally dirt poor (I knew many people whose homes had dirt floors). I’ve done research since then and I now know more about the country’s great poet, but if someone had asked me about him in an interview for a federal judicial clerkship or for admission to law school I’d have had nothing to day. I think the medical school interviewer @SeattleUte is talking about was showing his own lack of cultural perspective and understanding (and an unfortunate bias) by attaching to the question the significance he did. It sounds like snobbery to me.

I’m not sure I can recall any Guatemalan or Salvadoran I spent time with during that part of my life who would have known much about the subjects that highly educated people do understand and are aware of. That just wasn’t what I was doing there.

That said, the med school applicant SU described might have fared better if he had said something like this: “I was really not able to learn about the country’s culture at that level. I did learn about people who had very different lives from mine, and I think that will help me to be an empathetic physician. I also learned another language, which will help me serve the ethnically diverse population we’re seeing more and more of in the USA.” He might even have said, if it was true: “Since then I’ve had the time to learn more and it’s become a real fascination for me. Understanding the common culture of the country made it possible for me to understand the higher culture.” Etc., etc.

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