"There may never have been another student at Harvard that thought that," he says.
After three years at a public high school in Carlisle, Penn., Thorpe transferred to private Phillips Academy in Andover, Mass., with the aim of gaining admission to Harvard.
But he faced an unexpected obstacle. His senior year, he was diagnosed with Hodgkin's disease. At the time, he says, the survival rate for those afflicted with the disease was about 20 percent.
Although he survived his bout with cancer, the experience changed him permanently.
"From that point, I had a really different perspective on what was important," Thorpe says.
He spent a post-graduate year at Andover before applying to Harvard, "the only place I wanted to continue my education."
"Maybe I was foolish, but I had an idea that Harvard would be a place where there would be no closed doors for me...no limit to what I could do," Thorpe says.
He was wait-listed. But without any other place to go--Thorpe did not apply anywhere else--he attended a local college for a year. Eventually, he transferred to Harvard.
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