My exceedingly bright son with severe dyslexia and other LDs but no Aspergers or physical disabilities is now a graduate student. My recommendation is not to mention the LDs if possible in the application. The reason is as follows: These schools have 8 to 12 applicants per slot. AdComs are looking for reasons to reject otherwise highly qualified kids. Dyslexia or Aspergers gives them a reason to do so if they are so inclined. [She might be really bright and have overcome the LDs, but this is a wholly different environment. Will she be able to continue to overcome the LDs in the highly charged pressure cooker that is Yale (Princeton, MIT, Penn, …)? If she crashes, there will be meetings with deans, etc.] She will get crossed off some lists because they can find another equally bright kid without LDs. She may also get a few boosts from the LDs, but in on balance, the costs of informing them outweigh the potential upside.
The argument that if a school would reject your kid because of the LDs, then it would not be a good place for her to go is, I think, flawed. The admissions folks are completely separate from the disabilities services folks and the rest of the administration. The admissions folks are doing some kind of strange social engineering bit on picking the “perfect class” and may well have a bias against kids with LDs. And they may be partly right that there is a higher probability of crashes and burns (or not) among LD kids and that the costs to the school of any such crash are higher. They are disconnected parts of the organization and the Adcom has no effect on how they treat kids who are attending.
After getting accepted, I would go have a serious talk (including the parents) with the Disabilities Services Office, explain explicitly what the issues are (send them the neuropsych and other exams in advance of the meeting) and maybe a Dean. Show them what accommodations have worked in the past, what you think will be needed in college, and ask explicitly about whether they will provide these accommodations. Prior to acceptance, they will all mouth platitudes (about being inclusive and working with all kinds of learners, but some will deliver and some will not. An Ivy was on ShawSon’s list as number 1 and one of the very top LACs was number 2. We then met with the head of Disabilities Services and a Dean at the LAC and the head of Disabilities Services at the Ivy. The Ivy was originally unwilling to commit to a decision prior to admission – “we have a process” – and only when we said that ShawSon would not come unless there was a favorable decision, did they commit. Even there, he asked for more testing data before committing and waffled on some of the accommodations that the other school offered without our asking, [Incidentally, I later spoke with a former client who is a trustee of the Ivy and he was a bit disgusted by what his DSO guy had handled my son – the board doesn’t want to lose the brightest kids because of LDs.] But, ShawSon said, “this is going to be just like high school.” The Dean of the DSO at the LAC said to me, "If we admitted your son, we are going to do everything in our power to help him succeed. And, they were always cooperative and proactively helpful. The other Dean, who was Dean of Freshman, offered to be his academic adviser during his freshman year. ShawSon said, “I like the Ivy better, but this LAC is the right place for me to succeed.” The DSO at the LAC lived up to its word. The Dean of Freshman vetted his original schedule and said, “Make the first semester easier. I want you to learn how to succeed here.” I met several of his professors at departmental open houses on Parents Weekend (which now has a more politically correct name). One of his professors in his freshman year, said, “I was wary when I saw the accommodations he was receiving. Kids with learning disabilities have typically not done well in my course.” He expressed surprise that ShawSon had gotten the highest score on both of the exams to date (as he in fact did in all of his course the first semester). So there was an initial bias among the professors against kids with LDs.
I could not test my approach – my anecdotal data isn’t compelling. In high school, ShawSon was not learning to write (most neurotypical kids pick up writing by osmosis and his high school didn’t really teach writing) and found the honors math curriculum insufferably slow (“We discussed the idea on Monday. I got it on Monday. We are still discussing it on Friday”). So, I negotiated partial homeschooling with the school in which we were responsible for English (with a heavy emphasis on writing) and Math. This meant that we could have him rewrite the same paper, with feedback, 6 times . With a lot of work and pain and agony, he learned to be a very good writer over time. And it meant that in two 1.5 hour sessions per week, he covered junior honors math in a semester. As such, his transcript was very odd and needed explanation. So, we would have had to disclose his dyslexia anyway. And, so his supplementary essay was on how it affected him (negative, how he overcame, positive effects). And, I had to address it in describing the home school program. I suspect that the disclosure had an effect. He did not get into my alma mater, which was surprising given the boost they give for legacies and how strong he was (compared to other legacy kids who had gotten in). He also used dyslexia at the core of his applications to two of the top business schools in the country – but it fight because he was explaining that he learned from dyslexia to be strategic and take non-standard approaches to problems; to have a group of bright, loyal, to support him, and to get work with people who have non-standard intelligences. He was admitted into the more selective of the two (but not the other one) as well as an MS in what I suspect is the best Data Science program in the country.
Sorry, probably TMI, but i don’t have time to write a shorter response.