<p><strong>"This posting was intended to be helpful, and I think grown men and women should either keep their mouths shut, or thank him for it - there is no excuse for a parent saying that they are glad ilcapo "is not their own". It's simply rude, and a horrible thing to say to someone who is being gracious."</strong></p>
<p>This posting is not helpful. It is entirely misleading, and does a disservice to any impressionable applicant. As with so many acceptance tales, the situation is unique to the applicant. In particular, Ilcapo did an extremely poor job of connecting his own dots. It took the parents who have been following his tale to demonstrate why his acceptance might have been justified, notwithstanding the shortcomings in his application about which Ilcapo boasts.</p>
<p>As Sybbie so accurately noted, since his acceptance he has come off in some of his posts as arrogant, condescending, and seems to be looking down at others who won't be wearing the orange this year.</p>
<p>As for rude and horrible, this phrase accurately identifies Ilcapos characterization of his guidance counselor. And where was he being gracious in his original post??</p>
<p>And when his post backfired, as earlier ones have, he waives his mothers illness as some sort of wand to make the whole mess go away.</p>
<p>Robyrm, Sybbie - I, too, have tried to stay away from commenting on Ilcapo's personality, character or some of his more grating posts and comments. I stand by the notion that posting "How to break the 'rules' " does not help most applicants, and is misleading, because he is such an exceptional young man in exceptional circumstances.
I understand what you are getting at R, but it does seem too well organized. My sense is that his mouth (or more accurately keyboard skills) run way ahead of his common sense and compassion. From what he has said, he has a single Mom who is ill, there may be some need for an audience. Then, again, as always, we don't really know what is true about anyone in cyberspace.
And, sluggbugg, yes his qualities may well take him a long way in life - I'm just not sure I want my child to go with him.</p>
<p>This is what I don't understand. This was the 3rd thread he created where people were giving him a very hard time. There has to be a reason why someone does that- keeps coming back for more, that is.</p>
<p>Kirmum, I don't look at it as being a gratuitous insult, I look at it as several parents calling someone on being rude, self-centered, and obnoxious (and not the breaking of rules, which is a red herring, save that it may mislead others as Marite notes)...which is independent of the amount of talent possessed. </p>
<p>I am not overly endowed with, or restrained by, a delicate sense of politesse myself. However, if one is going to be a high-profile poster with such a stance, then one takes the heat when it comes. (I need to get back to reading the novel of manners in which I'm currently enagaged.)</p>
<p>I have talked to ilcapo a lot on AIM, and I must say, he's quite paradoxical. Sometimes I think he's funny and can even be nice, sometimes I think he's arrogant and annoying. It's really quite odd. Basically he's a multifaceted fellow and you have to take everything he says with a grain of salt. It IS a message board, after all.</p>
<p>"It just boggles the mind that adults take time to insult kids on boards."</p>
<p>Kirmum, I am not sure if that statement clearly reflects the situation. Over the past months, posters have jumped through unbelievably high hoops to help Ilcapo see the light. He has received more help than anyone on this board, but has contributed close to nothing in the process. This board has taken his word for everything he said, despite glaring inconsistencies.</p>
<p>The original thread in this post was not meant to provide help for the "generations to come", but to seek validation for his choices and actions. I have had no problem recognizing his accomplishments, but finding him worth emulating is too much of a hurdle. I find it hard to respect someone who is so ungrateful, so uncaring, and does not hesitate to criticize anyone who comes along his path. As far as I am concerned, his comments about the GC and the interviewer eclipse all the accomplishment that earned him an admission at Princeton. He had the perfect scenario to make amends for some of his less than endearing feats, and there is little doubt that he simply preferred to follow the same confrontational pattern. Forgive me, but there is no excuse for such a behavior, especially for someone who is basking in temporary glory. </p>
<p>You have to wonder how much the GC -who doesn't do a thing- had to bury to write a statement acceptable to Princeton.</p>
<p>In fairness to Ilcapo, he has a single mother (one of his essays is about learning from his deceased father) who has been diagnosed with lupus. That came up when a parent posted about her child's diagnosis. His own diagnosis of possible Hodgkin's disease is new, however. The combination of elation over the Princeton acceptance and the anxiety over his mother's and his own health cannot but make for a roiling mixture of emotions.</p>
<p>Ilcapo wanted to be helpful by showing that it is not necessary to observe rules in order to succeed. In fact, a thread running through many of his posts suggest that he likes to push against limits. And I think breaking a few rules probably won't hurt an applicant. But it really depends on context. Stanford positively discourages supplemental materials while Harvard encourages them. Some application softwares cut the text after a certain number of words, so the 1,000 essay would not fly.
So, while it may be helpful to keep some of the lessons Ilcapo learned along the way in mind, it would not do to think that they are applicable in all cases.</p>
<p>Ilcapo,
You wrote: "Here is where the guidance department places too much emphasis on the academic aspect of an application. Essays, recommendations, and extracurriculars can obviously get the job done."</p>
<p>I think this is misleading because you DID have the academics too! You have excellent test scores and GPA. It is not JUST about your ECs (good ones, I might add) or your essays (much improved after LOTS of help from very giving adults on this forum), or recs (which I assume were good too). You had ALL those things. Please do NOT discount the academic portion. You wrote something to that affect on the Princeton forum as well and the kids there also felt what I just said. You were kinda flaunting that you got in despite academics. But you see, you truly have excellent academics....test scores, GPA and have taken numerous college courses successfullly. Yes, your class rank is not at the top but it is not exactly bad either and just misses top 10% and can be overlooked when you have good grades, good scores and then since you took so many college classes and not a normal high school pattern/track, the rank is not really a good indicator as your program was "outside the box". There are no black and white rules here. The adcoms looked at EVERYTHING about you. You had a balance of many good things. I would not want my younger D's rank to be interpretted as the end all and be all of who she is as a student, for instance, just as in your case where it does not give the true picture. We do not have weighted grades here and kids ranked above her have taken the easiest classes and she has taken not only the most challenging levels in every subject but has accelerated beyond her grade level a lot over the years. She is also two years younger so one could put that into perspective when looking at her rank and that it is as good as it is but it is not the top student in the class. An adcom could say (and every rec seems to speak to this), that it is something she has done so well in school given her extensive involvement outside of school. It is not like her rank alone tells the full picture, in other words. I realize your rank bucked the statistics on Princeton but it is not unheard of. If you were ranked as you were, and did not have those other things going for you, it would have been a problem. So, while it helps to tell other kids to hang in there if they do not have a high class rank, it can also be misleading to believe that everyone with a class rank outside the top 10% has a good a chance as those ranked higher.....but it IS possible for such kids like you to get in if other things balance it out academically and in your case, there was plenty of good academic measures to negate the class rank. It clearly was NOT all about your ECs, recs, and essays.....though those also helped. </p>
<p>Ilcapo,
I hope that you do not have nonHodgkins lymphoma. However, if you do, the following should give you hope. When I started grad school, 27 years ago, one of my peers had been diagnosed with that the year before, the summer prior to her senior year in college. </p>
<p>When I met her, I had no idea that she had been diagnosed with that disease as she was very healthy appearing and active. In fact, I only learned about her diagnosis during a causal conversation.</p>
<p>Throughout grad school, she was a star student, and was the first among my classmates to obtain her doctorate. Almost 30 years later, she is still doing fine. In fact, she is beautiful, energetic, well regarded professionally, and looks far younger than her age.</p>
<p>I also had a former boss who was diagnosed when he was about 65. Ten years later, he, too, is still going strong.</p>
<p>I hope that you're fine, but even if you do have that disease, the outlook can be very good.</p>
<p>this is great news northstarmom. A friend of mine has nonhodgkins and is getting another biopsy result back today.
I have known many people who have done amzing things despite their ilnesses, it is really encouraging!</p>
<p>My dad was treated and cured with Hodgkins disease in 1964. He got sick when we were at the World's Fair and when we got back to the Boston area he was darn lucky to find himself at one of 2 hospitals in the country (the other was at Stanford) which had the basic machinery to do radiation therapy. The side effects were brutal then and he is forever scarred, but he is still here almost 40 years later. Fortunately, the treatment now is highly refined and very successful, without the significant side effects. </p>
<p>There are other diseases (TB, sarcoidosis,etc) which can look like Hodgkins on a preliminary chest x-ray. If Ilcapo is unwell, hopefully his is a more innocent pattern. All of these diseases can be associated with intracranial processes and these can be associated with behavioral changes, etc...I have no idea what is going on with this young man but I want to be slow to judge, for many reasons...</p>
<p>Especially the person who said that Princeton did ilcapo no favors by letting him in early. He's worked ridiculously hard to get into that school and it's really upsetting that someone would undermine his efforts like that. </p>
<p>he's proud of himself for going against the current and getting in anyway, and I, as his friend, am also proud of him.</p>
<p>Posters are interchanging Hodgkins and non-Hodgkins lymphoma. They are different diseases with very different prognoses. Ilcapo said Hodgkins, which for him is comparatively good news, since the cure rate for that is over 90%. </p>
<p>For non-Hodgkins the odds are much worse --> very few cures. It can sometimes be controlled for many years, but it usually keeps comes back. In the end it comes back one time too many. The good news is that the biotech revolution has provided many new tools to battle non-Hodgikins with. It may be possible for someone diagnosed with it now to draw that fight out long enough that an eventual cure will be found in time.</p>
<p>I think some of you are being too hard on Ilcapo. Granted, I have not been around long enough to live through his entire application process, but I did see the first thing he did after getting accepted to Princeton was post a very nice and gracious "thank you" on the parent's forum. </p>
<p>He caught way too much grief for simply asking the question about peer recs. He asked for advice, then followed the advice, and still his character and integrity were questioned simply because he THOUGHT about writing a so-so peer rec! It didn't surprise me one bit that in the high pressure world of competitive college admissions a student THOUGHT about improving his position by bringing down the competition. He received some really harsh criticism for something he didn't even do - only thought about doing and made the mistake of posting it here. Except it wasn't entirely a mistake because he got some good advice.</p>
<p>As for this thread, I didn't interpret the original post as Ilcapo's HOW TO get accepted at the Ivy League school of your choice. I read it as, follow your heart and don't believe everything the "experts" tell you. Face it, if Ilcapo had posted his stats in a "chances" thread, somebody would have told him not to bother applying to Princeton! :) </p>
<p>And finally, we should all remember that these forums (foruma? forumae? forumses?) come with a search function that makes it very easy to view ALL of the threads started by a particular user, regardless of the subforum where the post was made. Remember, everything you write here is PUBLIC and can be read by anyone, can be cut and pasted and printed out and mailed to anyone!!</p>
<p>I wish you would not talk about "you people" so indiscriminately. Some of the people on this board, including myself have worked "ridiculously hard" to help him with his essays and other aspects of his studies and application. He used us as a collective sounding board. Perhaps some of the parents judgments are a bit harsh, but vindictive? Other college applicants should wish they got as much help--free, gratis and for nothing--from the parents.</p>
<p>okayyyy...the peer rec question he asked was perfectly reasonable. He was not trying to "bring down the competition". He was honestly concerned that the girl was not a good fit for Dartmouth. there was no reason to loose the attack dogs.</p>
<p>you have helped him and me so much with essays and other such advice. I thank you for that. but I really think these attacks on ilcapo's character and work are a bit much. i don't think you really have made them, so that's nice of you.</p>