<p>My son is a junior doing well enough that Ivies and other highly competitive schools are definite admissions possibilities. He is above the 75th percentile of admitted students in terms of grades and test scores and has some interesting extracurriculars that will stand out. Now that we're in this position, I'm worrying about whether he should go to one of these tough schools! The problem is that he is very bright, loves learning, and is a perfectionist - combine those qualities with dyslexia and slow processing speed and the result is that it takes him forever to complete his work. It's not that the work is too hard
conceptually - it's that it takes him a long time to read, process, and write. He's been o.k. in high school - still has a social life and is involved in interests outside of academics. But we worry that if he attended a school such as HYP, where his peers would be equally bright and motivated but not so slow, he might not be able to keep up. The ideal college would be a place with bright peers and a stimulating envioronment but less output required. It occurs to me that much as we love the idea of liberal arts, that a larger university where one is evaluated more by exams than papers might be better. Perhaps the college major is also an issue? He likes lots of different subjects, but wants a career in engineering. Please advise.</p>
<p>If he’s planning to study engineering, his work would be evaluated more by exams than by papers at any school. My brilliant, dyslexic brother, who studied engineering at Rochester, boasts that he never wrote a paper in college. My nephew at Stevens doesn’t expect to write any papers either.</p>
<p>My engineering son, at Rice, has had to write some papers - distribution requirements - but most are long lab reports (still lots of pages, but not 'creative writing"). Sorry, I’m not sure what type of school would be good for engineering, if there is a problem with processing speed. They move pretty fast…</p>
<p>befuddled, It’s obvious that your S loves learning and I’m sure he will do well at virtually any school. There’re laws in place (Federal laws, I believe!) that mandate giving time and a half for students with documented medical problems that may cause learning difficulty.</p>
<p>I personally don’t recommend engineering as it’s sometimes very demanding and maybe a bit stressful. However, I think your son will have the right recipe for grad school and maybe would consider a career in R&D.</p>
<p>Consider a reduced coure load with summer session work to graduate on time. Instead of 4 or five courses, take three or four. Then take one or two in the summer session.</p>
<p>He could take five years to graduate. Lots of engineers without documented learning disabilities do this. </p>
<p>College is generally more flexible than high school. Use this to your advantage.</p>
<p>There is R&D activity in engineering, despite the efforts of MBA’s to eradicate non-financial creativity from American business.</p>
<p>Befuddled, I don’t have time for a long post, but have been working on this problem for a couple of years with an extremely bright, extremely dyslexic kid. I can get back later. We’re considering the same issues now as he has gotten in most places he’s applied (but we’re waiting for Tufts and a number of Ivies on Tuesday).</p>
<p>Three quick thoughts: Choice of subject matters a lot. Engineering is where lots of dyslexics go, but math, physics, economics, operations research, statistics, applied math can all work. Unfortunately, my son is not interested in engineering or science but social science (I see applied math or econ in his future). Not having extensive distribution requirements so that he doesn’t have to take Russian history with 300 pages of reading a week at the same time as a philosophy course that has an equivalent slog will likely make a lot of difference. I don’t want to rule out literature/history courses for him, but the ideal environment would be one that lets him choose what he wants to take. No distribution and language requirements is best of all.</p>
<p>Second, the law that provides for IEPs does not apply to college. What applied to college, the American Disabilities Act, did not mandate 50% extra time and gave colleges a lot of wiggle room to decide who needed accommodations and what they could be. In January, Congress passes a much law the ADAA Act, which tightens up tank-sized loopholes that the Supreme Court had opened up and that Congress explicitly says were not its intent. It still won’t mandate 1.5x time but it will be harder for colleges to reject. So, talk to the schools disabilities services office – I’ve done a little of that and will do a lot in April on ShawbridgeSon College Tour 2009.</p>
<p>Third question: Is it better to be a big fish in a small pond or be with kids who are equally smart? We’re going to take a look. Because at the end of the day, I want to see my son in an environment that allows him to show his capabilities and be successful. In the wrong environment (e.g., lots of distribution requirements, little flexibility and very bright kids), our kids might well suffer.</p>
<p>Extra time to graduate could be a good idea. We actually thought about doing that for HS but ended up instead with a gap year.</p>
<p>That said, we have a friend whose daughter is mildly dyslexic and went to Princeton. She’s bright but probably not at the apex for the school and incredibly determined and hard-working. She didn’t place out of the language requirement and ended up studying Swahili, which is apparently phonetic and not so hard, and became an anthropology major and did a lot in Africa, where the Swahili actually came in handy. After a rough first year, she is really enjoying it.</p>
<p>Question for those of you who know-- Can you suggest questions to ask the disability office and what to look for?</p>
<p>If he wants to study engineering you may be looking at some large state flagships which are more highly ranked than HYP in this area. The suggestion to take 5 years to graduate is a good one and is very common in engineering, at least at state schools. Look carefully at the recommended sequence of courses and minimum semester hour requirements and see if it seems like something he could handle. At any engineering school there will be humanities elective requirements, but at state schools he may be able to avoid some of those with AP credit. If not, it is easy to choose classes that don’t have heavy reading loads. I would assume a place like MIT would be too intense, but there are plenty of other strong schools.</p>
<p>I’d suggest you and your son be honest with the disabilities office. Tell them exactly what your son’s disabilities are, and ask what accommodations would be offered. Ask in particular about reduced course loads. If your son came in with some APs, he might be able to have a reduced course load almost every semester.</p>
<p>OP, does the slow processing speed also affect your son’s math and science homework? When you visit colleges, talk to some students and professors to find out what the workload would be. If neurotypical students are spending most of their time studying, then your son might be in big trouble. Just from reputation, I’d say Reed College and MIT are two schools to avoid. Great schools, but not for him.</p>
<p>We have been very impressed with Rice’s disability office and the way they manage processing issues. But DD is not in engineering. With the support of the disability office, she makes arrangements with each professor for how her accommodations will work with that professor. When you talk to the office, ask specifics. Give specific issues and how accommodations are manged now, then ask how they are managed there. </p>
<p>Understand, that college will be very different. There will be much more responsibility on the student to ask for and manage their accommodations. As others have said, the workload will be very different and there is nothing like the HS disability office to make sure everything is going well. He needs to start to learn now how to articulate what he needs and really understand that he will work many things out directly with professors so will have to set aside ego and go ask for help. From experience, a harder thing for bright DS’s to do than DD.</p>
<p>2collegewego, I will send you via PM an extensive set of questions included those I started with and those I got from people on the web. The list contains too many to ask all at once and some may not be appropriate to your child.</p>
<p>2collegewego, I sent one list and it needs to be done in 3 parts. But your mailbox is full.</p>
<p>I’ll send to others or post if it is useful, but it is a long list.</p>
<p>I know of one student at P, who is Dyslexic and is doing fine. You should talk to disabilities at the universities for assurances of how they will handle things to be safe.</p>
<p>hikids, I will be doing that on the Shawbridge Pere et Fils College Tour April 2009. But, I think Cardinal Fang’s advice is good. If the students at a school are working all the time, it is probably a bad place for a kid with slow processing speed as they will likely need extra time to get the same work done. Hence we ruled out MIT for my son. The other thing is flexibility in course selection and requirements. For my son, doing the mathematical kinds of courses doesn’t seem to take much longer (just the reading, not the proofs or problem sets). But, taking humanities courses, he would need much more time.</p>
<p>Among the Ivy League schools, Brown University is very flexible about course requirements and grades. For reflections on pass/fail grading at Brown, read this:
[Liberal</a> learning at Brown University - Focus](<a href=“http://media.www.muhlenbergweekly.com/media/storage/paper300/news/2004/09/23/Focus/Liberal.Learning.At.Brown.University-727862.shtml]Liberal”>http://media.www.muhlenbergweekly.com/media/storage/paper300/news/2004/09/23/Focus/Liberal.Learning.At.Brown.University-727862.shtml)</p>
<p>However, I’d caution you not to get ahead of yourself. If your son has processing problems that are not showing up in his grades, he may not be in a challenging program. If he is getting nearly perfect grades even with the most demanding course load (which is what top schools tend to expect), then he may be working himself silly. </p>
<p>Have you had a full evaluation by an educational psychologist? Have you received more than a description of the problem, to include a diagnosis of underlying causes and recommendations to address them?</p>
<p>It is easy in your situation to talk yourself into believing that your son’s problems will “work themselves out” as he develops his own coping strategies. That may very well happen over time, and a non-intrusive approach may be best for him. However, if you (and he) expect the very most selective schools to see past these issues, you may be setting yourselves up for disappointment. Hardly anyone is a shoo-in for admission to these schools. Even if you turn his challenges into a compelling “story”, then what? He gets in, and at the end of week two, he needs to turn in a 5-page analysis of War and Peace. Can he cope well with that?</p>
<p>Brown (for example) may be a good fit; maybe he’ll get in and thrive. But to increase your odds you ought to cast your net a little wider, and in a variety of fishing holes. There are some excellent schools out there that are a little less prestigious, but that offer lots of individual attention and a less competitive atmosphere. Small liberal arts colleges might be worth considering. Most of them do not offer engineering; however, often they do have a cooperation program with a larger school.</p>
<p>Example: Macalester College in St. Paul, Minnesota. It is an excellent small college that attracts top students, but is slightly less selective than some of its New England or California peers. It does not offer engineering but it does have a 3-2 program with a larger school (Washington University in St. Louis, I think). It appears to have a top-notch Math department. It has a reputation for being a friendly, laid-back place. It also is one of the only small LACs that is IN a major city (albeit a very COLD one!)</p>
<p>Befuddled, I should have looked up your posting history BEFORE writing the above.
I just did, and it’s pretty clear you do not need any advice from me! Not about evaluating your son, anyway, if you are a psychologist specializing in learning disabilities.</p>
<p>I guess I stand by what I offered about Brown, or small LACs, as options. However, you seem to be quite familiar with those, too. </p>
<p>The “processing speed” issues are interesting. I wonder if you have any thoughts to share about how you (or someone you hired) might have evaluated them. Can it be, basically, a matter of how the brain is wired? Like a computer that has a fast chip and lots of RAM, but a small bus? Or, is it possible that emotional, metabolic, or any number of other issues need to be teased out? Can processing speed ever be addressed safely by medication or diet? Is it possible that ADD (for example) sometimes presents itself as slow processing? etc.</p>
<p>Shawbridge, you may be right, but I thought they were thinking engineering. The kid I know is in humanities, math was always a problem. The school did let him out of the language requirement and he gets the extra time for exams. I know the mother spent a lot of time at the school to try an make sure it would work prior to going. What I don’t know is the severity of the problem. I assume, but don’t know, that there are different levels of the disability so that severe versus minor cases may make a big difference.</p>
<p>Wow! What helpful thoughts. To be specific about schools really helps - we live overseas so get little feedback from other families. Last summer we visited: Bowdoin (no), Dartmouth (liked it), Williams (really liked it), Amherst (legacy - didn’t fall in love with of course but liked it o.k.), Harvard (turned off by snobbery), MIT (totally flipped and fell in love with as technology and nerdy sense of humor right up his alley), Columbia (no thanks), Tufts (turned off because tour guide did not seem bright), Yale (legacy - totally loved every aspect - probably his dream acceptance but I have my concerns about whether he would thrive there). We were thinking of adding the following schools to consideration: Penn (legacy), Swarthmore, Princeton, Rice (interesting to hear that anxiousmom and Singersmom07 say nice things about it), Johns Hopkins, Carnegie Mellon, U Michigan, U Chicago, Northwestern, Olin, Rochester. </p>
<p>I think there are really two questions on my mind. First, does engineering make sense as a major? Kishtyler doesn’t like engineering as an undergrad major. When I looked at the course requirments at some of the schools it looked stiffling to me. My son will go to grad school - at this point he thinks a PhD in Mechanical Engineering. His interest is green/clean technology innovation. I doubt that will change - he really is into it. Does he really need to major in engineering now if an advanced degree is in his plan? I’d love for him to get a broader education and he does have lots of interests besides his planned career focus. I don’t like it when kids with broad interests specialize too young - its a lovely luxury of the U.S. educational system that allows our kids to explore ideas in college. When I went to college I most admired the kids who majored in things like Philosophy and went on to medical school. It seems if he majors in engineering, that a large state school could be good, but if he doesn’t, a liberal arts environment might be better?</p>
<p>Second, where would a kid with dyslexia thrive? I’m dying to hear what Shawbridge and son decide. I have heard from a parent (a psychiatrist himself) of three Brown students (one dyslexic/ADHD) that Brown is very flexible. Yale has Sally Shaywitz doing dyslexia research and advocating for accomodations for bright dyslexic college students - I’m in correspondence with her to get a better sense of the realities there. MIT’s Negraponte has claimed dyslexia is the “MIT disease” as there are so many dyslexics there, but I see what you all say about the work load. Could be brutal. I’ve heard Swarthmore and Carleton are two schools with huge workloads in terms of hours spent studying. </p>
<p>Shawbridge - could you also send me the disability office questions? </p>
<p>Yes, I am an educational psychologist but I haven’t assessed my own kids. It’s not kosher to do so and it would be hard to be objective. My son has been tested several times, including at Johns Hopkins CTY-associated clinic because they are good at teasing learning issues out when there are strengths disguising them. When you ask whether his slow processing is limited to reading/writing subjects, I don’t know the answer! It’s embarassing to know more about my client’s strengths and weaknesses than my son’s. I think I may pull out some test kits this weekend and get some answers. </p>
<p>I’ll respond to the specific questions about processing speed in the previous post later today as this is already too long.</p>
<p>
What does your son think of the course requirements? The fact that he liked MIT is a good sign for a potential engineering major, though I wonder what he liked about Williams. It is not unusual for a student to come from a SLAC with a degree in physics and then go on to grad school in something related like EE or engineering physics, or for a chemistry major to end up with a graduate degree in chemical engineering, but I have never heard of an undergrad humanities major leading to grad school in mechanical engineering. At the very least he would need a double major or minor in a related science field like physics.</p>
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<p>Would he be open to studying this from some approach other than engineering? Architecture, for example (if he has an artistic side). Environmental Science? </p>
<p>You mentioned the University of Chicago. Bad idea, IMHO. Very heavy reading loads. No engineering.</p>