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I am NOT up to speed on LD’s nor am I one to accept that what is will always be.
My D’s achilles heel is writing. Not test-taking writing but writing with style. Not research writing but writing with flair. College essays were much akin to Hell for her …and by “her” I mean everybody within earshot. </p>
<p>Everything was sooo formal and for formal read stilted, humorless, “just the fact’s ma’am” Jack Webb writing. Now understand, this is NOT a formal stilted kid . This is a witty , sarcastic, caring, personable child who is intuitive in face to face interviews and excels at them. </p>
<p>Her high school, small/medium size rural, just didn’t tax her enough. She could make A’s without getting any better. Again, like yours , mine tests very well (but also like yours, her essay scores , both SAT and ACT, were less than perfect). </p>
<p>The app essays were my bonk up side the head wake up call. Jeez, she’ll never get through an intensive college course with this skill level . Many hours of work later we came up with a system that she used to write some pretty good essays. She would talk the essay to a recorder, just ask herself the prompt and then go into interview mode. All that was left was for her to edit . </p>
<p>She chose to go a writing intensive college with strong liberal arts core type requirements for a science major. She took freshman writing even though she had AP’ed out of both freshman English courses (again, she is a master test-taker). She intentionally took the great prof who “gave no A’s” and made her first non-A. But she made an A- and more importantly she had faced down the dragon. </p>
<p>She still thinks it takes her twice as long as her classmates to write a good paper but that doesn’t bother her too much. She knows it takes her classmates twice as long to understand heavy chem and bio. </p>
<p>I know your kid ain’t my kid and I’m not saying that she is but there are some parallels. If she happens to make it into one of her writing intensive schools , she can make it. She just needs to find something that works for her, take great advantage of office hours and writing centers, and rely on (play to) her strengths. She has plenty of them. ;)</p>