I agree. And also for a dyslexic student. I’m not sure where that came from. I don’t think he identified as a math-oriented student at the time and was interested in behavioral economics, strategy and politics. When he went to college, he became an accidental math major as I suggested he take a math course every semester as they had no reading. Plus, if he was interested in econ grad school, what they cared about was his mathematical abilities. He inherited a lot of my father’s mathematical abilities (my dad was once described to me as a virtuoso mathematican among theoretical physicists). It turned out that ShawSon didn’t even read the text books except for one course – he only did the problem sets and took the tests always got A or A+. The course where he needed to read the book before doing the problem sets was Real Analysis. In either Real Analysis or Groups, Rings and Fields, he got the highest test scores in the class but the professor gave him an A- because he didn’t attend the lectures.
I think the attraction of Sarah Lawrence were a) a fairly fluid curriculum; and b) an attractive female to male ratio. Probably all of the safeties except Rochester (which is a very good school across a lot of fields) and UMass Amherst were odd choices.