<p>Dp, a learning disability in and of itself will not negatively affect your chances of admission to UMich. My son has one, and is graduating from UMich this year, so I know this first hand. In his case, however, he is also highly gifted, which to some degree offsets the impact of his ld.</p>
<p>However, a learning disability and your overall level of executive function can dramatically affect your actual success once at UMich. With some types of cognitive processing speed issues, etc. you need to be prepared to work twice as hard, and take twice as long on assignments. Frankly, this can be tough at a school like UMich, where the rigor level is fairly high and the semesters intensely compressed depending on your course sequence. (My son has a crazy habit of taking 18 credits each semester…he’s finally figured out THIS year that because it takes him longer to get work done, that is an insane thing to do if one wants to sleep during crunch time ;)</p>
<p>For LD students, this organizational capacity tends to develop a a few years later – eg. early 20s. So sometimes, it makes sense to take gap year, or study elsewhere and transfer in.</p>
<p>The question for admissions will be whether your high school experience has adequately prepared you for the rigor and pace of UMich, and whether you are equipped to succeed in its environment. Your GPA does suggest good work habits, if that’s unweighted and if your selected courses are rigorous, eg. AP or higher. Your ACT, however, suggests that you have some difficulty with timed tests, not unusual for someone with an LD, and that you may have similar issues with timed tests at the university level.</p>
<p>You would have a much stronger case for admission if your composite ACT were in excess of 30, maybe even closer to 32, which I believe is about the mean of OOS admits – or for that matter, most admits overall. </p>
<p>With admission statistics so competitive, and with your being out-of-state, and given that you did have accommodations when you wrote the ACT, I feel Mich <em>might</em> be a bit of a reach for you.</p>
<p>Be sure to have lots of backups/safeties you love. Michigan is a very expensive proposition for OOS students.</p>
<p>Also note that the “learning support” of the LD office at UMich is very different than the kind of accommodations you may have had in high school. First off, you will require and new Adult neuropsych report once you turn 18 even to qualify for LD services, no matter what accommodations you had in highschool. Secondly, they can’t really 100% control whether profs give you the accommodations or not (without a lot of bureaucratic or legal shenanigans) – my son rarely even actually asks for same, although he does have the letter to submit. He prefers just to tough it out. </p>
<p>Thirdly, the onus is truly wholly on you the student to self-manage and schedule. There are great counselors you can meet with for ideas but it’s really not the same as an IEP. And its a big PITA to get the LD office involved in any academic issues…and not exactly a great idea politically either. (Ergo, the one time said son had an issue with a prof, he just sucked it up and took the course over again.)</p>
<p>So the time-management and tools-for-success aspects are something that you want to master NOW, not then, at some “FUTURE” date, if you know what I mean. I am therefore a little concerned that writing to admissions that you PLAN to get support once there to address your weaknesses was perhaps not as meaningful for an admit as showing ways in which you have TO DATE overcome the challenges your disability presents.</p>
<p>I hope that info helps you, and is not meant to be especially discouraging. I just want to make sure you know that in this case, the statistical odds are not in your favor due to your stats – NOT YOUR LD – but that if you do gain admission, you will need to be prepared for a lot of compensatory work, depending on the nature of your LD.</p>