Does having diabetes has a negative my application ?
No.
Please be aware that the American health insurance system is not kind to foreigners with expensive health conditions. Your best bet would be universities with a group health insurance policy for their students that explicitly covers pre-existing conditions. Some universities have them, but many will not.
Stand-alone health insurance policies for international students are cheap but always exclude pre-existing health conditions. The average American adult with diabetes incurs healthcare costs of about $15,000 a year. Insulin seems to retail at $200-$400 per 10ml vial. A brief hospital stay costs upwards of $10,000.
Regular individual-market policies (e.g. sold on healthcare.gov) would cover your diabetes, but these policies are comparatively expensive and have high deductibles. (In my zip code, a 19-year old would pay around $300 per month for a policy with a $6,000 annual deductible. That means you would pay the first $6,000 of medical expenses each year yourself before the insurance kicks in.)
Applicaation itself? No. But health insurance, like Barium said, will be a very difficult and tricky thing to deal with. US has probably the most complicated health insurance system in the world.
No. Medical conditions would be neither a plus nor a minus per se. Why would they be? You will be judged on how well you did in school, on tests, in extracurriculars, on your essays, etc… not on your health unless it impedes any of the above factors.
But, anyway, they will not know you have diabetes unless you mention it. My son has Type One Diabetes but did not mention it in his application. It wasn’t that he was hiding it or anything… it just was not relevant, any more than it would be relevant for him to announce, “And I have brown hair.” I have no idea whether any of his recommenders mentioned that he has diabetes.
If it inspired you to do any related volunteer work, or helped you discover a core value or lesson or anything, then you might include it in an essay, in a positive way.
b@r!um
I can get the Insulin from my home country. They give about 50ml every 3 months.
Please think through the logistics of importing insulin very carefully.
- If you plan to ship insulin to the US, how will you protect it from extreme temperatures during shipping? (American consumers have experienced problems where their mail-order medications arrived frozen in the winter and had to be discarded.)
- What will you do if a package with insulin doesn't arrive? It is generally illegal to import medications from abroad, even for personal use. Customs may confiscate your package in transit.
- If you need medical care other than insulin and diabetic supplies at some point in the next 4 years, how will you pay for it?
- Can you get insulin from your home country in perpetuity, or would you need to see a doctor every-so-often to renew your prescription? If you'd need to see a doctor, can you afford the flights back?
When I was in college, the poorer international students stayed in the US year-round. Flights home were not included in our financial aid budget and were a luxury we couldn’t afford. You said in another thread that your family income is below $2,000 a year. That doesn’t leave much room for error in your financial planning.
I see. I will work with your first advice.
You told me to see ‘‘universities with a group health insurance policy’’
can you give me some examples?
I second GreyKing’s comments above. My college freshman son has Type 1 and he didn’t mention it in his various applications last year. Just deals with it and doesn’t like to draw unnecessary attention to it. No impact on his college admission decisions.
@phokie I can use it as a mark of perseverance. I hadn’t know I have diapetes until 5 months ago. Just 2 weeks before the bac exam. I had to prepare for the exam in the hospital.
But I don’t know if I should mention this.
If you search for “health insurance” on a university’s website, you’ll probably find a page that tells you if the university has a group policy for students or if they refer their students elsewhere for coverage. If they have a group plan, you need to check the plan documents for exclusions of pre-existing conditions.
Examples of group policies that cover pre-existing conditions:
https://vaden.stanford.edu/insurance/cardinal-care-overview-and-benefits
https://hushp.harvard.edu/student-health-insurance-plan
https://www.haverford.edu/health-services/insurance
Example of a group policy that does not cover pre-existing conditions:
https://offices.depaul.edu/global-engagement/student-resources/student-services/health-insurance/Pages/default.aspx
Example of a university without a group policy:
http://www.msj.edu/admission/accepted-students/financing-housing-health-and-dining/health-insurance/
It’s not always easy to tell if a policy excludes pre-existing conditions. Here’s a few hints that should trigger suspicions:
- Policies that only international students can enroll in
- Policies that are called “sickness and injury plan” rather than “health insurance” or “medical insurance”
- Policies that define the term “pre-existing condition” in the plan documents
- Policies that have a maximum annual benefit (this means the policy is exempt from the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, which would also mandate the coverage of pre-existing conditions)
Here’s where DePaul’s policy excludes coverage for pre-existing conditions: (Page 9 of the [plan borchure](https://offices.depaul.edu/international-admission/student-visa-requirements/health-insurance/Documents/ISO_Med_2016_2017_DePaulUniversity.pdf))
Cursive emphasis mine. Notice how it defines “sickness” to only include conditions that started while the policy was in effect. Your diabetes started before, so wouldn’t be covered.
For comparison, here’s the definition of the term “sickness” from Haverford’s policy ([Page 22](http://www.firststudent.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/Certificate-Plat-Enh-2-PA-62-12-7-17-v4.pdf)):
Loss = expenses. Notice that there’s no requirement that your condition started during the policy, only that the expense (like the cost of a prescription or a doctor’s visit) be incurred during the policy.
Haverford’s policy documents even has a section titled “Benefits for the Management and Treatment of Diabetes” where the policy explicitly states that diabetes-related costs are covered.
The group coverage is not free, but odds are the cost of the coverage are included in your financial aid budget and would be covered by need-based financial aid. Even with health insurance, you may have to pay for part of the cost of your prescriptions and treatments (called a “copay” or “coinsurance”). That may make it more cost-effective to bring insulin and supplies from home when feasible, but you’d have the option to seek care in the US for a cost that’s compatible with a student budget.