<p>I'd like to donate my allowance to your charity, "The Impaired Past Foundation." Your courage is an inspiration to all of us who have broken a nail or missed a meal.</p>
<p>Yalebound, your wit is overwhelming..............</p>
<p>On another note, posts like your's has caused this thread to be exceptionally futile, so if you have nothing meaningfull to say beyond some feeble display of attempted humor or cynicism, which is most likely an outlet for an inability to be entertaining in your "non-cyber" life, then please don't post in here.</p>
<p>Samp0342, I can understand that vagueness is irritating, but please allow for the fact that I am not comfortable disclosing that information, regardless of the fact that the majority of you don't and will never know who I am. The situation is largely personal and painful, and is something that only the closest friends of mine know about. Believe me, there was much hesitation in even including it in my application, but I was prodded by my counselor to do so, because she told me that it is the proper way to justify the fluctuations in my grades.</p>
<p>we cant really predict since we dont know much about your extenuating circumstances. you certainly dont have to say them, but you cant expect us to tell you that theyll waive your low for stanford gpa.</p>
<p>If your extenuating circumstance is rape, I advise you to NOT write about it in your application. From my own personal experience, writing about it in the app does not help (contrary to the opinion of my guidance counselor). In fact, I'm pretty sure that doing so messed up my chances at a few schools. Anyway, good luck with Stanford.</p>
<p>No it is not rape, and what I am trying to tell you folks is to please stop speculating as to what it might be. I can assure you it is not a typical issue, nor is it one that gets nearly any media-attention (which is why the majority of you would never "guess" what it might be). The nature of it is that it is neither my fault, nor does it amount to any weakness, it is truly severe, yet ultimately enlightening and unique. I addressed this in my essay, and rather then writing some mundane sob story, or a somber "tear-jerker", the essay itself cumulates in a positive note which amounts to much learning, an enlightened social perspective, a successfull foundation, and an immeasurable amount of growth. </p>
<p>However, if any of you are geniunely interested in providing a more complete analysis of my chances, feel free to send me a private message, and I'll respond with a little more detail as to my circumstances. However in this event, I would appreciate it if the response was sent directly back to my private messages, and that the person does not relate the information back to the public forum.</p>
<p>first, does your chance indictate your strength of character?</p>
<p>for example, certain hardship is a representation of a person's weakness, not strength.</p>
<p>avoid overly negative stuff.</p>
<p>as far as I know, Stanford does like to take ppl with special circumstance, and by that, i am talking about:</p>
<pre><code> 28 year old single mothers who dropped out from highschool but got GED on her own.
business man who started a dot com company
royal family from Sudan
ppl from russia, etc
</code></pre>
<p>remember, the "hardship" of yours, while u think it's harsh, applications reviewers may just laugh at you for it being ridiculous. while you had a year of hardship, some of us suffered life long challenges</p>
<p>let say there is a guy named Joe, he moved 6 times in a year, and messed up his GPA.</p>
<p>and a girl named Sally, who suffered a very bad breakup, or had an abortion, etc, etc, etc.</p>
<p>they think they are unique, or are they?</p>
<p>here is a few question my father asked me about hardship.</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Have you ever been on a ship, full with human cargo, and can't sleep and eat for months? a ship where you have to pee and poo around you? a ship where people is dying everyday?</p></li>
<li><p>Have you been so hunger driven, that you eat grass of the ground?</p></li>
<li><p>Have you been living in a inner city, where kids would sell you drug and pimp would pimp you hoes?</p></li>
<li><p>Have you lost a limb?</p></li>
<li><p>Were you separated from your parents at 4 years old and you gotta learn everything on your own?</p></li>
</ol>
<p>And even if you had those problem, what did you do to overcome it?
I had a problem and my grade went down. that's an excuse, not an answer.</p>
<p>And last of all, you are overly arrogant. I remembered I used to like you to, yelling at everyone that "I am special, I been through hardships, etc", I used to have a lot of false confident (to conceal my inner weakness) like you do.</p>
<p>and I ended up getting rejected from EVERY school i've applied to.</p>
<p>I've made a joke out of myself.</p>
<p>don't do the same.</p>
<p>LAST WORD OF ADVICE: college doesn;'t care about how a class challenge you (we like harder classes, that's ******** BTW). hardclasses only give you advantage if you have the same GPA as the others</p>
<p>GPA cut off DOES exist (despite many college deny the fact), and it's commonly around 3.8 (even for schools like UC San Diego). Rumor has it that they would not even REVIEW your file (much less read your essay about your uniqueness) if you doesn't meet that goal.</p>
<p>here WAS my status:</p>
<p>GPA: 3.5, 4.2 weighted
SAT: 1480
EC: I wrote a book
Unique EC: being separated from parents at 4, learned all my English with in 4 years of coming to the States (in fact, I had the highest SAT verbal score of ALL recent immigrants)
AP: 5 AP courses, 1 college courses during my senior year, 2 AP tests from my junior year, with 5 on Physics B and 3 on US history.</p>
<p>not a strong qualification, but definitely enough for schools like UC Santa cruz.</p>
<p>yet they all denied me. I am worried that this may well be your fate.</p>
<p>I wasn't making any assumptions about your situation. I merely drew two potential scenarios, and two potential outcomes. Either one, or neither one, could represent you. Just trying to help.</p>
<p>Joey</p>
<p>it is amusing to me that being a good writer is interpreted as arrogance. it is equally as amusing that everyone in this thread has the insecurity to put down someone who went through something horrible earlier in their life...however, what takes the cake is the people who put things like depression and rape down to the fault of the victim, that actually makes me sick</p>
<p>No, but it's disrepectful to come out and yell "I have this hardship, etc, etc", while other people may suffer much more than him.</p>
<p>Judging by this poster's writing, he's obviously well-educated. Therefore, there probably hasn't been any hardship that cripple his learning environment.</p>
<p>If I give you a learning environment, and you somehow can't learn, don't blame it to hardship. That really sounds like a lame excuse</p>
<p>Rape is never the fault of the victim.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, many individuals often think that depression and eating disorders are partly the fault of the vicitm, and therefore an admissions office might have less sympathy than one might expect. Universities also may want to admit the most emotionally resilient people (see MIT's dean of admissions previous comments). </p>
<p>I'm merely suggesting that something could possibly be interpreted one way rather than another. I'm not making any comments as to how I feel on any of these situations. I mean no disrespect whatsoever.</p>
<p>Joey</p>
<p>he's obviously well-educated ==> there probably hasn't been any hardship that cripple his learning environment</p>
<p>now that's a big assumption.</p>
<p>lol crippling his learning environment. first of all, learning environment is not just scholastic. if my dad beats me and my mom up every night while i should be doing homework, i could go to the best private school in the nation but i'm still in a ****ing awful learning environment. second of all, arguing that he couldn't have gone through something horrible if he can write well just doesn't stand up...</p>
<p>Go to a library and forget it.some people don't even have homes.</p>
<p>also it does sound arrogant when he can use "blame" or "bash" instead of "berate".</p>
<p>you're right...bluevelvet, please apologize for having a command of the english language. </p>
<p>i'm not sure how you managed to turn this around and make me look like the heartless *******, you're the one belittling the fact that this person went through something horrible. just because there are people without homes doesn't make the loss of a parent, for example, any easier to deal with...</p>
<p>lastly, depression and eating disorders are mental illnesses over which the victim has no control. that's like blaming someone for being schizophrenic or having down syndrome.</p>
<p>"depression and eating disorders are partly the fault of the vicitm"</p>
<p>those are both diseases that sometimes end in death, please dont trivialize them to sad people and insecure girls. they're mental illnesses and any well informed person knows thaty. a college wouldnt hold depression against you.</p>
<p>edit: just saw that tim said the same thing seconds before... just goes to show.</p>
<p>Blackman's hardship get them to prison
Whiteman's hardship get them to college.</p>
<p>this has nothing to do with race...but that's always an easy card to play if there's no way out of your nonsensical argument</p>
<p>but sometimes people do hold something against you, and it's done unintentionally.</p>
<p>I had this volunteer opportunity, and I progressed so far that the manager (an African American woman) told me that she would arrange a position for me in a few days, and informed me that I have no other competitors.</p>
<p>Being highly qualified, I walked into the office on an arranged date. But the new manager (a white person, interestingly) told me that all positions are not available, and advise me to APPLY again (while I was already pretty much a volunteer, just waiting placement).</p>
<p>Did anything changed? Nothing of me, nothing of the business, only its manager's skin color.</p>
<p>So yes, despite what people say, there are still barriers, and people do penalize someone for depression.</p>
<p>Command of English language? Do I have to write like our nation's founder fathers? In fact, their language was proven to be vague and the supreme court was dedicated to interpret their godawful languages.</p>
<p>I thought you guys fantasize yourselves being the future world leaders. If you want to command the general public, use their language. </p>
<p>I a not trying to bring down your hardships, but I do want to point out, that, some people's hardship (read, kids in rich private schools who somehow managed to have some hardships, namely depression, eating disorder etc) is nothing compare to real hardships.</p>
<p>Ok, so you live in this million dollar mansion, and you developed a eating disorder because this megapopular guy wouldn't go out with you, and then you committed suicide because you ended up with depression.</p>
<p>What is this? Some people interpret it as tragedy, I interpret it as weak-willed.</p>
<p>First, you are not trying to do anything good for mankind, you are trying to make yourself more attractive, and then killed yourself for no reason.</p>
<p>Ask yourself, if you devote yourself to a right cause, don't screw around, have a positive outlook on life, will you have those hardships?</p>
<p>Some people don't have a home, got no food to eat, yet made it into ivy leagues, I truly respect them.</p>
<p>But I do not respect self-important people who cry about their hardship, and wouldn;'t even share with us (do you want help or not?)</p>
<p>Area69, not to "bash" you or anything, but I question the motivations behind your posts. If you truly wished to post an opinion pertaining to the topic at hand (whether positive or negative) then I hardly concede that you would start defining the nature of "hardship" and dismissing all circumstances ranging from abuse to rape, as insignificant, since basic shelter is met. Based on this, I can only conclude that you are trying to get a reaction out of people. And in the spirit of using ridiculous logic to characterize somebody, based on a few vague internet posts, I propose that you are either insecure and lead an excessively non-confrontational life, which is why you try and "stir things up" in a arena where you know there is no risk of being hurt, or you have suffered some heinous hardship and you are in a state of denial, which you display by "lashing" out at others. The only other possible rationale for your idiotic posts, is if you have somehow formed a negative opinion of me due to the way I write, and became tormented as a result of constantly staring at the stagnant pixels on the screen which combine to form the "arrogant" diction which you so contemptuously disdained, in which case I advise you to try turning off your monitor, which should help alleviate your affliction. </p>
<p>By the way, TimR, I appreciate your effort to put things in perspective.</p>