Re: A professional job …for a hijabi?
My mistake in how I wrote out my first sentence. They weren’t rejected BECAUSE they were hijaabis, as far as they were told. What I meant was that every hijabi I know who applied to professional school did get rejected, and either dropped the idea and got married, did something else, or went overseas for further schooling. Whether it was because they were hijaabis or just weak applicants, I don’t know. I’m just reporting a trend.
Secondly, I don’t agree with this business of counting your “missionary” aspirations as a plus point on a student’s application for medical school. But again, I’m reporting something I’ve seen quite often, and its mainly because of the Christian sympathies that some med school faculty harbor. Of course, no one goes screaming about it. Its one of those things that gets brushed under a rug. Its the same thing with the Jewish population. There are some schools that are very nice about giving Jewish applicants a chance. Depends on who runs the school. No one talks about it, and you’ll never be told that you were rejected because you’re a muslim (and chances are, really that wasn’t the main reason anyway), but that doesn’t mean favoritism for other races and ethnicities doesn’t exist.
Managing of time and energy, etc are all basic skills, and if you need to design your resume to reflect those sorts of skills, then you’ve got way more issues to be worried about than whether or not that hijab is going to get in your way of getting into professional school. These schools look for intense skills that the vast majority of applicants probably do not have, and a characteristic personality that they can work with and mold. Working at a sunday school teaching wont get you those skills. If its law school, you need to work on debating skills and get an internship or a job in the industry that maybe shows your professionalism and leadership. Its one thing to stand in front of a group of muslim school kids and teach them about the Prophet’s life when they’re more intent on smacking each other and playing games. Its another to get a group of self-centered egoists at a law firm to listen to you and follow your leadership. Just to give you an idea, I took time off from school and taught. I taught because that’s the only thing that my degree would let me do that I actually didn’t mind doing, and it gave me extra time to pursue some other hobbies before my life got totally absorbed by prof. school. I was literally told that my application was fabulous, and whether I taught or not made no difference to my acceptance. In fact, I was accepted before I took the teaching job. But, I was told that if my application wasn’t what it was, that teaching job would have done nothing to increase my chances. Teaching in general, whether you’re teaching Islam or history or whatever, isn’t something that makes professional schools sit up and really take notice.
Remember, professional schools give you very specific education and skills. They want to see things on your resume that build you in that direction. Sure, they’ll want to see peripheral things, like your personality. But even the peripheral stuff - they’re fitting that into the picture they create of you which determines whether they think you’ll make it in the field or not.
Its not the same process as applying to college, or more generalized graduate school programs.
I am betting that the reason why you don’t see that many muslim girls in professional school has less to do with their religious affinity, and more to do with the cultures they’re raised in - most muslim cultures do not give their daughters as much freedom.
When you have applicants who are flying around the world doing amazing service projects, or applicants who are living in cities away from their parents to internships and attend IVY leagues and doing research in labs 10 states away, and staying up late at night at their internship offices to work on that marketing presentation…its hard for a desi girl who’s parents insist on driving her to college and keep her busy on weekend dawats to rishta hunt for her to compete with that.