Dyslexia, full disclosure?

shawbridge
Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:57:19 +0000

If there were no need to disclose in the application, I would not do so. I do not believe that most colleges will see this as a positive. They’ve got enough good applicants and many will see this as a potential problem rather than evidence that your child is a great candidate because she’s been able to surmount this difficulty. I would disclose upon acceptance but before deciding where to attend to get a sense of (or in my kids’ cases) commitments about the support that would be offered.

We did disclose in the case of my son. ShawSon is an extremely bright kid who is severely dyslexic. He is determined, goal-oriented and highly ambitious (e.g., wants to have the highest grade in each course). To help him learn to write well and to enable him to go faster in math than the HS permitted, I negotiated a partial homeschooling arrangement with his HS. He also did not take a foreign language. His high school record is thus rather unusual and needed an explanation. As such, he did disclose. He also wrote about his dyslexia not in the main essay but in an essay that talked about other stuff you should know about me. He had gotten the highest grade in Harvard Summer School’s version of the expository writing class Harvard requires of freshman and was working to complete a novel and had scored 99+ percentile on reading and writing parts of the SATs, so there was evidence that he could write. But, he does get and does need accommodations.

He got into quite a number of the top schools in the country and wait-listed at a few. He was rejected at my alma mater (which has a strong preference for alumni kids) despite a pretty impressive record (as well as at another Ivy), but I had advised him that it would not be a good fit (distribution requirements that would make it hard to avoid classes with 400 pages of reading per week). I thinks some of the wait-lists and the two rejections were probably influenced by the disclosure.

He chose a very highly ranked LAC that has no distribution requirements over an Ivy at the end of the day and has done well. He won a prize for academic performance after his freshman year and was contacted by the fellowships office as a sophomore to think about fellowships.

ShawSon applied to a lot of schools and got into a lot, but he did triage to three and we visited them. At each, we met with the dean of disabilities services, presented his testing info (emailed in advance) and asked specifically what they would do for him in terms of accommodations and what the overall process was. The different schools were quite different in their approaches and one (the Ivy) dropped from first place to second based upon how they handled my son’s situation.

ShawD is ADHD and not dyslexic and only applied to two schools. Upon acceptance, she visited each and asked for commitments. She had not disclosed in her application, but with the right documentation, the requested accommodations were supplied (plus additional support).

On spelling, ShawSon’s spelling/proofreading have improved markedly, but this requires a lot of effort. He also has a speech delay (takes him longer to get his thoughts out) but by virtue of choosing to compete in Moot Court in HS and the debate team in college, his speaking has improved markedly and the delay, while still there, is not noticeable.

poetgirl, audiobooks are a savior for ShawSon as well. ShawSon’s school also supplies him readers and notetakers if he requests it. His school has been fabulous. Dragon is less exciting as he has to read what it is producing to make sure that it doesn’t go off-track. He’s learned to type reasonably well.