learning disability..how do you disclose it in your apps?

shawbridge
Wed, 28 May 2008 20:57:33 +0000

My son will disclose and I expect he’ll do it in the essay, although eastcoastmomma pointed out that there may be room for a supplementary essay. His record is sufficiently unusual that it probably wouldn’t make sense without it. He’s partially homeschooled to get more intellectual challenge than the school could offer and partly to work on his writing (he’s quite dyslexic). He hasn’t taken a language but will do an immersion class in Central America. As a writer, he’s persevered and succeeded despite the LDs and has improved a lot. He also took the Harvard freshman expository writing class last summer. He’s co-authoring a novel. And, he reached the finals in a Moot Court Competition and one of the judges, who was judging the competition, offered him an internship (little does he know how slowly my son reads).

Without an explanation, it would be hard for an Adcom to understand why there were no language classes except for the immersion course and why there were so many unconventional English courses on his transcript. We are taking something of the position that eastcoastmomma’s son did. “If they don’t want me because of the LD despite my performance, I probably don’t want to be there.” We fully expect that some schools will not want him or at least will say that they can find someone equally gifted with no LDs so why take him? But the LDs are sufficiently pronounced that it would be hard not to mention them.