<p>Thanks for the vote of confidence, poetgrl. As poetgrl mentioned, ShawSon is an extremely smart, severely dyslexic kid with a speech delay. He has no social issues. He’s a self-declared geek. He likes fantasy novels and has not figured out girls – despite the apparent overtures of several very nice, attractive young women. He’s maturing slowly in that dimension, we think. But, he has no problem advocating for himself. And he has brass balls – as a severely dyslexic kid, he chose to compete in Moot Court in HS (and nothing helped his writing more as the desire to win trumped the pain of writing) and Debate in college (and his speech delay is receding).</p>
<p>ShawSon chose his school, one of the elite LACs, in part because they have no distribution requirements to speak of and in part because after he was admitted, the dean for disability services and the dean of freshman both assured us that they would work with our son and make the needed accommodations – and they have. He actually won a prize for academic performance last year and had great grades and a terrific academic experience. He is working very hard and is frequently quite tired.</p>
<p>Here are some of my conclusions:</p>
<ol>
<li><p>Choose a school with no or non-intrusive distribution requirements. There is no way, for example, that he could have survived at my alma mater, where he would have been stuck with some humanities courses with 400 pages of reading a night. I am a math-y type but am not dyslexic and I suffered in those courses as well. Unlike me, he can do things like literary analysis, but his brain would explode if he had to take the courses that I am recalling.</p></li>
<li><p>Have all of your documentation in place by April. If your son needs accommodations like extra time or note-takers, he will need them at least as much in college. He will not get them unless you have documented things out the wazoo.</p></li>
<li><p>Visit the schools to which he is accepted AFTER he is accepted and meet with the Dean for Disability Services at that point. Send the Dean of each such school your documentation before the meeting. Ask them what kind of accommodations they will offer. If you go before being accepted, they will not give you a thoughtful answer but will give you the normal lip service about doing all kinds of things but after your son has been admitted, you may be able to specific information about what accommodations your son will get. Some schools will say, “We have a process. Once you choose to accept, then we will run it through the committee … and let you know.” That was not good enough for us. ShawSon can’t do foreign languages (this is not a statement that he finds it hard, but he doesn’t hear things the way we do – he puts the T in Tone Deaf). We asked his first choice school, an Ivy, that has a foreign language requirement if they would waive it. We got the process response and replied, “Look, ShawSon won’t attend if he has to do a foreign language. We need to know before the witching date.” While according to our neuropsychologist, it was an open and shut case, the Dean sent it out to his psychologist and asked for raw scores (which our psychologist said would give him no information but we provided nonetheless) and eventually let us know that they would waive the requirement. But he was so bureaucratic and let us know that to get a note-taker or a scribe would require the same sort of review. So that school became second choice and the LAC became first. At the LAC, once they reviewed the documentation, they told me, “If we admitted your son, we’ll do everything we can to make it work.” They’ve been good.</p></li>
<li><p>We still provide support from afar. We have someone record stuff electronically for him – chapters of textbooks, etc. – that we cannot get on audible or RFBD or from the manufacturer. He’ll sometimes call and ask to dictate an email or even a short paper. He’ll dictate on Skype and I’ll email back. [He should be using Dragon, but he doesn’t use it often enough and especially not when he feels the pressure of a time crunch.]</p></li>
<li><p>ShawSon needs to advocate regularly. He has to talk with the Dean at the beginning of each term, with each of the professors from whom he wants accommodations to work out the logistics of exam-taking. He works out arrangements with note-takers. He goes to a person at the library to get her to order audio versions of text books (but he has been weak at that).</p></li>
<li><p>ShawSon didn’t need a program that would supervise and check in. We provide some support from home (the reader used to provide help with work planning, but ShawSon has become good at that, but she reminds him about life planning – year abroad meetings, internships, health stuff as he is pretty fragile from an immunity standpoint). There are programs like the one at Arizona and I think there is also one at University of Vermont, where there is more hand-on supervision. That may create less of a need for self-advocacy.</p></li>
<li><p>A small school is very good for ShawSon because he likes to talk/debate in class and professors can see how smart he is before he completed any written assignments. [Less relevant in math class, but has been relevant in economics]. He also aggressively gets to know professors, which a shy kid who recedes to his room might not.</p></li>
<li><p>Incidentally, some schools may not be staffed by competent personnel in their disabilities services offices. I know one mother whose son went to a small-ish engineering oriented school and the one person disabilities left and was replaced with someone with no competence and it was very difficult. </p></li>
<li><p>ShawSon took a gap year and would recommend it. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>I hope our experience was helpful to you.</p>