<p>My other suggestion is to do an advanced search and then manually so through the threads. Since you said that you reference to this person on CC, then you should be able to find the thread with a little labor. I began one and went through a couple of logical threads w/o luck. Since you are the reader though, the titles of the threads may jog your memory and expedite your search.</p>
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<p>I’d say you’re missing the point. The point is you already answered your own question when you wrote: “I emailed the harvard admissions email asking if I can reapply as freshman and they said they do not allow special circumstance and would not let me appeal.”</p>
<p>@courier - yes and I also said someone apparently did get a special circumstance, which is why I am asking. Please courier i don’t want to argue with you, it’s pointless.</p>
<p>@silverturtle - try a little harder to see the analogy. But yea, i guess you could see it taht way. The test was not printed in the optimal format for my brain. Or you could say my brain was misprinted.</p>
<p>I did not say I was a slow learner, and I don’t necessarily know how severe my situation is compared to others. I do know however that my situation is severe enough to make the SAT and ACT invalid for me. I am not a slow learner, it’s just that I have to repeat a lot of things in order to observe them. So during a test it might take me significantly longer to do the problems regardless of the difficulty of the problem. Of course this has larger repercussions. For example it also impacts me on more technical classes like math and physics because it’s nearly impossible for me to follow along during lectures. So instead I usually read the text books at my own pace. I came to the US from canada in 8th grade and they placed me in the average math class based on a math placement test. However later in high school i took initiative and took summer math classes that weren’t offered in high school at a local community college in order to waive them. I was able to take Calc BC my senior year despite my counselor recommending AB, thinking I couldn’t handle it. Well I passed Calc and got a 4 on the AP as well as on the E&M portion of Physics C (the AP testing still worked against my ADHD). And in non technical classes really the only thing that hurt me were the in class essays in AP english. Bad memory recall and inability to focus under pressure do not go well with in class essays. So at least in my opinion I don’t have any problems understanding complex concepts or difficult theories. Learning the material is NOT a problem. In fact I usually understand complex ideas faster than anyone else, but the problem lies in my ability to process technical information. The testing, which screwed me over tremendously, is the main problem.</p>
<p>I think a lot of our conflict was started by some false assumptions that lead to misunderstanding. So silverturtle, please don’t misread my replies in any way meant to insult you, but please try to understand my situation here.</p>
<p>Wow I’ve said so much I might as well refer the admissions officers to this thread. Anyways thanks for the advice smoda. Calling them was going to be my next step. I did try advance searching but not luck yet. I think the person’s username was meg something. I left a message on her profile, any way to check where I left messages?</p>
<p>If you PMed her, go to the upper right hand corner of the CC screen and click on private messages. Then from the pulldown, select sent or outgoing messages. Then you should see all the undeleted messages that you sent. Both the title and username will show. You can now click on the actual message . When the message now come up, you will notice that the username now appears in blue just like it does for any of the posts on a thread. Click on the blue name. You can now selected “more posts by XXX” which will allow you to evaluate if this person is still active on CC and should also allow you to view the original post in question. Also, clicking on the blue will provide you access to all the ways she had agreed to be contacted. Hope this made sense.</p>
<p>just learn to be happy where you are</p>
<p>Have you considered that pregnant girl is maybe lying? Harvard told you no exceptions, so I would probably assume there are, in fact, no exceptions. Or maybe pregnant girl had something else going on. Maybe she was z-listed, or deferred for a year, or something. You don’t know the whole story so don’t assume that her situation is parallel to yours.</p>
<p>You could call. But seriously, you e-mailed them and they said no. Even if you find a special case, shoving it in their faces and saying “look, I found a special case where you made an exception!” will not impress them or move them to action. It will probably just **** them off.</p>
<p>well I might as well try. can’t get any worse than rejected.</p>
<p>@thirdfloor - maybe she is. I highly doubt it. There was no reason for her to lie.</p>
<p>@thecount - sure. I’ll do that AFTER I try this.</p>
<p>"As a processing disorder, it means I am slow, or that information is slow to intake. "</p>
<p>“I am not a slow learner, it’s just that I have to repeat a lot of things in order to observe them.”</p>
<p>I’m not trying to be hostile, but I don’t understand how these characteristics differ from those of a slow learner.</p>
<p>Sure, I’ll try to explain.</p>
<p>I’m not a slow learner. It is just takes me longer to absorb information specifically technical information because I have to repeat it. The reason why I have to repeat it is because I become too focused on repeating it or, in timed conditions, i become focused on “doing the problem” rather than actually doing the problem. So if it is some long math word problem I’d have to repeat it to see what they are asking and this makes it take longer for me. But as soon as I understand what they are asking it is really easy. It is a matter of information absorption, especially under pressure. So given enough time to absorb information I can easily understand complex concepts–philosophical, mathematical, or scientific–as well if not better than others. When I say given enough time, i don’t mean hours, days, or years, i mean a few extra minutes to be able to focus on absorbing what is presented to me. So it really doesn’t affect the pace at which I learn, in fact I learn at a faster pace than other people. In essence it is really a diminished ability to communicate because it’s harder for me to grasp traditional methods of communication and likewise communicate in traditional ways. It’s harder for me to communicate because so many thoughts flood my mind that I become inundated with things to the point that I don’t know where to start. A lot of my friends characterized me when I chat with them as a stream of random lines (chatting with instant messaging). The ADHD hinders me in the short term, not the long term. A test is a short term process. Learning something for class is a long term process. In other words for a test the extra minutes I take for each problem is large enough to be a problem, while in learning the few extra minutes to absorb information becomes irrelevant because many people take much longer to absorb those concepts anyways. Again, i said in math i can’t follow along because of this info absorption but I make it up by reading the book at my own pace.</p>
<p>I hope this has helped you understand what’s its like to be ADHD inattentive (I can’t speak for hyperactive or combined type). Let me know if you have any more questions because it seems a lot of people don’t understand or believe in ADHD. Especially with many of the initial responses to my post (I never even asked them about my ADHD). I know some ADHD (combined or inattentive) people tend to be annoying *******s and some seem to be lazy and it becomes somewhat of an inconvenient truth to admit that it isn’t completely their fault for being that way.</p>
<p>“That’s not correct, if you read my whole first post you’ll know that someone DID get an exception.”</p>
<p>How do you really know that? Did you see all the correspondence from Harvard?</p>
<p>it is very possible that harvard offers guaranteed transfers to a very very very select few students. the only school in the Ivies that openly uses these is Cornell. but the point of this is that it does not apply to the general applicant pool. and if you read the fine print on most applications, you know, the part you sign…it usually says that “I understand that Harvard can do whatever it wants to my application and can form a judgment without having all materials complete,” etc. </p>
<p>chrischen - if you find others, it may be like 5 or 10. so it would be rare, though not impossible that someone who is on here might have an exception. and if they did because it is so rare to get one, i don’t think they would post. in the end please know that harvard can do whatever it wants. it doesn’t have to chose the best applicants, it just has to chose the ones it wants the most. no where does it say that harvard chooses the 2k best applicants that apply. they could admit only people with 23 ACTs if they felt like it.</p>
<p>I just want to make an appeal.</p>
<p>Then e-mail, ask to appeal, and be prepared for them to refuse. The gist of their position seems to be that even if others were granted an exception, you would likely not be.</p>
<p>I understand your issue here. It does not matter how many people have ADSD or ADD, and a disability like ADHD and ADD is as legitimate as any other handicap, whether from a car accident or since birth. You have clearly worked harder than most, since compensating for your disability and still doing well is quite impressive. Certainly, Harvard and other schools are impressed with kids who overcome obstacles to excel.</p>
<p>That said, it does not make sense to expect Harvard to go through an appeal process. Can you just reapply next year, or did they say that you cannot ever apply again? That is not clear. I would add that Harvard should not be some kind of holy grail, and if you have a decent school that you can go to this fall, do it. Don’t base your life on getting into Harvard by waiting a year to go to college, unless you actually want a gap year or something.</p>
<p>Listen, the error here is not Harvard’s. It may be yours, your family’s, or your school’s, but you should have gotten this diagnosis BEFORE taking the SAT’s and before applying to schools. College Board has an accommodation process that you can apply for, with documentation from MD’s and school, and then you can get extra, or even unlimited, time.</p>
<p>You just can’t do this retroactively. You can’t say Harvard was unfair when you gave them no information about your disability, because it was not clearly diagnosed yet.</p>
<p>The most important thing for you to do now is to meet with the disabilities office at whatever school you are actually going to attend, meet with your doctor and/or psychologist, maybe even call the federal office of education/Office of Civil Rights for info on accommodations for your problem, and start college off with a really good plan.</p>
<p>Clearly, you can do well by compensating, but there is no harm or shame in setting things up so that the playing field is level for you, so to speak. But asking admissions to realize they made a mistake because you had an undiagnosed disability is not right at all: you failed to get a diagnosis in time, that’s all.</p>
<p>Well I’ve never had enough of a problem in school to bring attention to ADHD. That’s why it was not diagnosed.</p>
<p>Here’s the situation. The email said that i cannot apply as freshman as long as i have completed one year of school elsewhere (I have technically not done that yet, but why would I drop out now just so I could have a chance to transfer that will likely result in failure anyways). Harvard does not have a transfer program right now, so this means I cannot reapply to harvard.</p>
<p>I’m appealing to let me reapply, not to have my old application re-reviewed.</p>
<p>I was also rejected from every school but STATE university. It’s extremely unstimulating here for me. Plus they wouldn’t even let me in the honors college here at STATE because of quantitate requirements for the honors program. So I hope you can see why I am so adamant about this. I’ve been screwed a lot in the last year.</p>
<p>I’m sorry things worked out the way they did, but I’ll just offer some blunt advice, take it or leave it…</p>
<p>If you got rejected at all of the selective schools you applied to, your odds of getting into Harvard aren’t great. Think of the selectivity to begin with, 7/100 people that apply, and then consider that other schools felt the same way. Now maybe Harvard will feel different after reading your application again, but I doubt it. And I’ll tell you why. Harvard accepts people because they feel that they bring something to the college that is beneficial to the Harvard community (sometimes this is money…). So I am sorry to say that if they weren’t willing to overlook a poor SAT score to begin with, whatever the reason for that score was, they are probably not going to feel any different the second time they look at it. </p>
<p>I would go to whatever school you got into, excel as much as possible, and move on from there. There is more to life then fighting the battles that you already lost.</p>
<p>Thanks for the advice, but it is a little too much given what you know me. I could potentially have that special something for Harvard but the bottleneck was my SAT grades.</p>
<p>ANd it is easy for people to move on when they were accepted into stanford instead of harvard, but in my case it was not that. And not all the schools were that selective. Among them were UCLA and UofM. And i’ll be blunt too, I’m not going to just take it despite what anyone says because then whatever I get I will have to accept since I accepted it. I know I"m not in the right place and I’m not going to simply accept that. Also don’t interpret my willingness to go to Harvard as a need to go to it.</p>
<p>SAT’s aren’t always the bottleneck. I know people with surprisingly low SAT scores who get into Harvard and other Ivies.</p>
<p>I am a pretty passionate supporter of our state universities and colleges. The honors program at our state university is excellent. I know that once on campus, students can usually earn their way into the honors program. Have you considered that at all? It might improve your situation where you are.</p>
<p>I am confused by your posts because you say you have “ADHD” inattentive, but not hyperactive, but the “H” in your diagnosis indicates hyperactivity.</p>
<p>There are many people with ADD or ADHD who do not get a timely diagnosis, and almost everyone who finds out that they have one of these disorders in later life, experiences some bitterness about lost opportunities.</p>
<p>Even though you are quite young, you may be experiencing that. </p>
<p>However, there is almost something obsessive-compulsive about the way you are holding on to this issue. I don’t say that to be insulting, but as something to think about. Is it possible that the angry persistence you are showing may be part of your ADHD, meaning sort of focusing on the wrong priority? I have a daughter with issues similar to yours, and she sometimes does that.</p>
<p>You have not been victimized or “screwed over” by anyone that I can see here. You compensated well and your diagnosis came too late for your first round of college applications. You can go ahead and apply to places again, and get accommodations at the College Board for SAT’s, with MD documentation. Once at a college, you can meet with the disabilities office there and get extra time, with documentation.</p>
<p>If you are finishing a year at the state university, and want to apply somewhere else, there are lots of schools to apply to. If you want to apply to Harvard again, then just forfeit the last year and go ahead. You could take a gap year while you wait for an answer.</p>
<p>But noone has actually done anything to you, you know? Life brings tough breaks to everyone along the way, and just try to “change the things you can, accept the things you can’t” with some dignity and grace.</p>
<p>Another thing for you to know: Harvard is not a great environment for anyone with any kind of disability, whether medical or learning issue or anything else. There is absolutely no legal requirement for any college to accommodate you, and professors can refuse you extra time. The Americans with Disabilities Act applies, but there are conditions by which the college can do very little for you, in reality. Believe me, I have researched this. And one of my kids is at Harvard and has experience little support for her medical issues.</p>
<p>Why don’t you just finish undergrad and then apply to Harvard or wherever, for grad school?</p>
<p>I have been searching for a doctor recently, and I am noticing that many of those who truly excel in research and care went to little-known or state schools for undergrad. They are now stars in their field.</p>
<p>Work on the skill of extracting meaning from where you are. That is the most important skill for any of us: finding the best of what is right in front of us. And maybe find someone to talk to about your anger. It is understandable, but you have no way of knowing whether your ADD contributed to the situation, and it is really noone’s fault. I wish you some peace and acceptance so that you can move forward in your life.</p>
<p>Then just e-mail them and ask to appeal, already! They’ll say yes or no, and either way, you can begin to move on. If State U’s not a fit, then why not try transferring to another college that accepts transfer admissions? Plenty of challenging and prestigious schools do. If you’ve done well this year then you’ll be a stronger applicant at schools that turned you down for freshman admission.</p>