@maya54, it would be a crazy world which would rule out people of talent in one area because they don’t have talents in other areas. However, the world is not entirely sane. At the elite levels (Ivy, NESCAC, Stanford, etc.), my sense is that in addition to appearing to be really strong at something, successful applicants have to appear to be good at everything. But, ShawSon’s dyslexia makes learning foreign languages very difficult to impossible. He was able to get into some elite schools despite not taking any foreign language courses even though foreign language was a stated admissions requirement for a number of schools. We had to show that he was doing something useful and creative with his time.
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