<p>Hi, I am dyslexic. I was diagnosed with it when I was in 8th grade (yes it took them that long.) I had never really had any trouble with it until high school. I was always a pretty good writer and I taught myself to read when I was about 2 which my doctor said was good because if I had been taught to read it would have been much harder for me. Anyways, it had never become an issue until I took spanish. I had always been a 4.0 student but I just could not grasp foreign language. My freshman year I got a B+ then a B-. My sophomore year I got a B+ my first semester and I finally revealed to my teacher that I was dyslexic. After that she worked with me alot and helped me grasp the concept of foreign language. </p>
<p>I am now a junior and looking at colleges. I still have excellent grades and will be able to go to alot of top schools. My question is, do you think I should reveal in my college apps that I have dyslexia? Will it help or hurt my chances? It will explain the only B's on my transcript. It's not like I need extra assistance or anything, it's not that severe. I have taught myself how to do everything to overcome it on my own and do not intend on relying on anybody for help when I go to college.
Thank you.</p>
<p>If you like, I believe it might be a good idea to put it in your personal statement, if the school you want to go to uses it. Colleges like to see how people have overcame things, you know, and you have...which will show that you are a strong student.</p>
<p>No. It takes me forever and I can proof read my typing. Like I said, I have a mild form. My cousin has severe dyslexia and he can type with no errors, but he can't write legibly. My aunt also has dyslexia and she can type with no problems as well, she is a doctor and was my inspiration for not letting dyslexia hinder me in any way.</p>
<p>My son with mild dyslexia had repeated B-'s on his report card due to difficulty with spelling in French. He studied French for 7 years because he wanted to be verbally fluent, and in his senior year when the entire class was based on oral performance his grade finally reflected his effort.</p>
<p>He never received any accomodations or interventions in school and he became a good reader and writer with effort, but cannot spell in English either.</p>
<p>He did not mention this anywhere in his application, nor did the counselor. I guess the 7 universities he was accepted to, including the Ivy he attends, could see that he was persistent and hard working and not a grade grubber doing anything to get an A!!</p>
<p>Im a neurologist and I read that Italian comes more easily than other languages to dyslexics. Does sound like all of you have extremely mild cases. Many dyslexics don't learn to read well until 8-9 years of age.</p>
<p>nervedoctor, my son is on the extreme end of dyslexia and written foreign language is useless. He has learned to write well but often needs to dictate or use speech recognition but can type and write by hand as well. However, the writing (and reading) are highly fatiguing.</p>
<p>xxSheSaysxx, disclosing the dyslexia will help and hurt. At some school, they will say, "she's an overachiever but she'll never be able to handle the workload here at Overly Self-Impressed University." At other schools, they'll say, "this girl really is a gem. She is smart, hard-working, and overcomes obstacles. She's going to be a success in life and deserves a spot here at Good Guys University." I would guess that the impact on your record and course choices is so small that I am not sure it is worth mentioning.</p>
<p>What would really be useful on this board is a sense of which colleges are in the "over self-impressed university" category and probably shouldn't be told about LD's up front, and which are "good guy universities" that take a more enlightened approach.</p>
<p>I am an advocate of full disclosure re LDs<br>
If the school is going to give you grief about needed accommodations- you want to know up front, because it will be enough of a pain working with a school that is trying to be helpful.</p>
<p>Some schools like my older Ds, aren't known for their learning support services, but actually were pretty good -
My younger D who also has LDs, used it for a topic in her essays and was admitted to all her colleges .</p>
<p>emeraldkity4, my son is going to disclose as it is part of the reason he chose an unconventional HS path and thus he will have to explain. However, it is not clear that the left hand (admissions) knows what the right hand (disabilities services group and the faculty) is doing. I can imagine a school where the professors and disabilities services are accommodating but admissions does not believe in admitting kids with disabilities. I can imagine very easily institutions in which the politically correct admissions officers will happily admit kids with disabilities whose records suggest that they can handle the workload (with accommodations) and the faculty essentially believing that any accommodations are unfair to their other students and being extremely reluctant to grant accommodations and the disabilities services group sitting quietly in the corner, afraid to advocate (or worse, working as many HS SpEd offices do as a gatekeeper trying to prevent people from getting accommodations). Based upon my participation in some discussion boards for parents with kids of learning disabilities, many high schools seem to be of the latter persuasion. So, I think one needs to learn both which schools are LD-friendly in admissions AND which LD-friendly in practice. They have to talk the talk and walk the walk.</p>
<p>Anonymom, we'd love to know which are the talkers and walkers as well. We decided to hire an external guidance counselor and interviewed a number. Many claim to help the student find the schools that are a good fit for him/her. This is largely a process of navel-gazing in which one discovers the inner college student within one and then matching it to a database of colleges. But, the main aspect of their process is introspection. I don't think that will be helpful in answering the question you and I'd like answered. Another specialized in kids with LDs and was likely pretty knowledgeable about which schools were LD-friendly. And, she said, she was experienced with gifted kids with LDs. But, when I asked which schools her top kids had gotten into, I think they may have been Clark University and maybe Carnegie-Mellon (both good schools, don't get me wrong) and didn't have a strong sense of schools at the higher end. I opted for someone who with her partners is pretty good on high end placement with some knowledge of LD-friendliness but whose main attribute seemed to be a subtlety about the admissions process and a willingness to work and learn more. They are starting their work now on school identification, but I think my son will ultimately have to apply to more schools than his peers, for whom the major issues are what kinds of schools fit them and picking an array of reach, match and safety schools that fit.</p>
<p>If I understand you right, xxSheSaysxx, you do not think you need accommodations to be successful in college and your HS record is independently strong except for a little blemish in Spanish in freshman and sophomore years. So, you don't care if a school walks the walk. You just care about whether they talk the talk of really being impressed by your managing everything beautifully and even overcoming mild dyslexia and mastering Spanish. This is a different problem than the Anonymom's and my kids will need to confront as they will care about walking the walk as well.</p>
<p>If so, you may be better off not disclosing. This is a guess and only a guess but I suspect that there are more "overly self-impressed universities" than "good guy universities." The Adcom at an OSU might say to itself, "Applications went up 25% last year. We can get the absolutely cream of the world's crop. Why should we take a chance on a kid with LDs when we can have six other applicants for the same slot who are equally good in every other dimension who do not have LDs?" Given the increasing competitiveness of the last few years, I suspect that some GGUs have switched over to becoming OSUs. We've seen that happen in the local private high schools. My daughter attends what is now a very good, difficult to get into private high school. This was once a girls school and was really aimed at the more creative, artsy types (it still has superb art and dance programs). It was a school where an academically gifted kid with LDs and an edgy, creative streak might have been quite comfortable. But, as HS admissions became more competitive, they discovered that they could become more prestigious and raise a lot more money if they became more rigorously academic. It is now very hard to get in and we talked to the head of admissions when my son wanted to apply as the middle school he attended is probably the largest feeder to this school. The head of placement at the middle school did not want us to reveal his LDs because he was sure they wouldn't accept him. The HS's admits are a little edgier than some of other private schools but much look much more conventional than they used to, and they don't have spots any more for bright kids with LDs because they don't need to. And that's the story of how they turned from good guy school to overly self-impressed private high school. And, I speculate that some colleges trying to cope with a surfeit of extraordinarily well-qualified applicants may do the same. But, this is speculation about how organizations are likely to work rather than real knowledge so do with it what you will.</p>
<p>our families experience has been that full disclosure has worked in their favor.
Each of my girls first choice school ( different schools) had higher average GPA & test scores than their own, in addition, my older daughters first choice school was a competitive expensive liberal arts college that was need aware, and she needed a generous aid package to attend.</p>
<p>They each wrote about their learning challenges in their application essays, not to excuse their grades, but to fill out things they had learned in high school. They each were admitted to their 1st choice school, and while my younger daughter hasn't begun college yet- her sister did attend her college and recieved the aid she needed as well.
So while I can understand the points made by those who wish to be private about differences, since the girls were admitted to all their schools, including reaches, it worked for them not to. :)</p>
<p>So I randomly was going through old websites and found this one. </p>
<p>Just to update: I am a freshman (actually a sophomore because of AP credits) in college. The dyslexia became a major problem my junior and senior year. I was fine freshman and sophomore years because we weren’t forced to read a lot. When I started AP classes my junior and senior year, reading became a big problem. I had never read so much in my life and my grades plummeted. I ended up receiving help from the school and had accommodations for the AP tests because I was doing poorly reading the questions under pressure that I had never experienced before. When I applied for my university, I did disclose my LD. I did not harp on it or put it into any essays, but I did disclose it. They have been enormously helpful in everything that I’ve needed so far and it was probably the best decision I ever made (to tell the admissions people).</p>
<p>I’m so glad your decision is working out for you. It’s a staple of this forum to wonder whether to reveal a disability, and my contention is that if you’ll need the school to walk the walk, you should let them know and let the Good Guy Universities of the world reveal themselves while the Overly Self-impressed Universities eliminate themselves. It sounds like you found a place that fits, which should be everyone’s goal in the first place.</p>
<p>BTW, Northwestern was the only school (of six) DS (who revealed Aspergers) was not admitted to (waitlisted) with a 3.98 UW GPA, National Merit and National AP Scholar, and 2350 SAT (though few ECs). Does this make them an OSU (at least on the admissions side)? While there’s no way of knowing, we’ll always wonder if revealing made a difference. The sense we got was disability services was enlightened, but the rest of the university had some catching up to do.</p>
<p>I’m glad to read this SheSay. My youngest just entered high school. He was diagnosed in first grade and with some intense help was reading by 4th grade, but not “writing” until 7th grade. He manages to get all As because he has fabulous work ethic and has a high IQ, but I’m holding my breath for high school. I hope he doesn’t hit the “wall” for a couple years. He has an IEP, but it is really directed toward his writing skills. Interestingly he was invited into Spanish I has an 8th grader and I worried about dyslexia and a foreign langugage but he’s done really, really well. Struggles with the reading, but speaking and writing comes quite easily to him which is the opposite of his English mastery. Dyslexia is an interesting LD.</p>
<p>Hi. I am currently a graduate student in the United States. </p>
<p>I am also an elementary teacher for Japanese students at Japanese school in this country. When I have spare time, I also go to local language classrooms to help teaching Japanese to American kids. Through my teaching experiences, I realized some students with dyslexia also have hard time learning a foreign language in specific areas, especially reading. </p>
<p>As a teacher, I would like to know the best ways of teaching for this group of students. So I created a short survey to see how dyslexia in first language has an impact on foreign language learning. </p>
<p>Please take your time and participate in the short survey. It will take only a few minutes to answer the all questions. </p>
<p>Have you taken a look at the research on the variability of dyslexias between languages and writing systems? Years ago I saw an article on Japanese students whose dyslexia manifested itself with kanji but not hiragana/katakana and vice versa. Fascinating!</p>
<p>My 9th grade son is very dyslexic. Fortunately, he was diagnosed very early (at age 4, by my MIL, who told me that many of his mannerisms echoed those of my H, whose dyslexia was not diagnosed until college but who managed to become a lawyer). </p>
<p>I had to fight the SD to get him Orton-Gillingham reading. He progressed so quickly that he was switched to Wilson. His reading, while slow, is excellent and he regularly scores in the 99th percentile on reading comprehension. His vocabulary is extensive and he expresses himself in an extremely articulate manner, verbally. His handwriting is atrocious and his spelling skills are pretty basic. When he has to write on his own, his output is at about 4th grade level. The work produce improves greatly when he can dictate or scribe. He has used Dragon Naturally Speaking in the past with excellent results and we plan to reintroduce it next year.</p>
<p>He does not want to take honors or AP classes and that’s fine with me. I want him to have a good HS experience and to get into college.</p>
<p>We will fully disclose his LD in his applications. He will not be able to take the SAT or ACT without accommodations. In school, he has a scribe to write his math tests because he can’t keep his columns or numbers straight. Since we added the scribe, his math average has gone from D to A.</p>
<p>To touch on the subject of the OP’s post, my son took Spanish in both 6th and 8th grade. He attended a non-public funded LD school for middle school and is now back in district with resource room. 8th was a repeat of 6th. He failed both times. In 7th grade, he took ASL and excelled in it. My husband failed both French and Spanish in HS. </p>
<p>Our state requires one year of foreign language unless a student is exempt. My son is exempt. He is thinking about taking one year of Latin in junior year. Latin is a good choice because all of my other children have taken it and can help him and because our program is heavy into the culture and mythology, which he excels in, so he has a chance of passing. He will be spelling exempt in Latin as well.</p>
<p>When it comes to foreign lang at college, he will do what his sister (who is not dyslexic but stinks at FL as well) did. She took FL at a community college between her freshman and soph years in college. She only needed a C to get the credits transferred and the grade didn’t go in to her GPA. She did the same thing with her gen ed science course.</p>