Our daughter has dyslexia and scored 17 on the ACT. We are searching for small liberal arts colleges that offer comprehensive support for learning differences. Naviance is giving us a list of schools that may be matches, most of which we have never heard of. How do we decide which schools to visit or which of these schools are relatively better than others? Some that we are considering are Endicott, Curry, Iona, Westfield State (MA), St. Thomas Aquinas, Centenary, Adelphi, LIU Post, Hofstra, Fairleigh Dickinson, Sacred Heart. How does one begin to rank schools that are already at the lower end of the college rankings?
Rating East-Coast colleges with comprehensive LD support for student with Dyslexia and Low ACT score
You can look up the schools on sites such as https://www.usnews.com/best-colleges to see where they rank regionally and nationally. However your daughter may want to consider ranking based mostly on student life and fit rather than academic prestige. If she is interested in more competitive prestigious universities you could definitely consider looking into test optional schools, since she will not have to report her ACT schools for those. I imagine you already took advantage of it, but I know that ACT offers testing accommodations for those with dyslexia and other learning disabilities, as my cousin is dyslexic and took the ACT with accommodations. So if your daughter hasn’t yet taken advantage of that she might want to consider taking the test again. Hopefully this is at least a little bit helpful and I wish your daughter lots of luck as she begins the application process!
Fairleigh Dickinson is actually pretty well-known for helping students with LD’s.
Endocrine and LIU are extremely overpriced. Centenary is one of NJ’s worst schools.
There is a terrific organization that tracks all of the services provided at colleges for LD students. Families can order individual reports for each college ($2.99) or if you are working with a consultant or can get your special ed department at the high school to get an organizational or institutional subscription they can get unlimited reports. They are called College Supports for Learning Differences. The website is college supports.com (but take out the space…I think cc filters websites so I added the space so it wouldn’t get asterisked out). Hope this helps!
Iona is probably the most ‘traditional’ liberal arts college on your list. Sacred Heart has a fair amount of commuters as well as athletes.
Original poster here. Daughter had accommodations for the ACT and will retake the test. We are hoping for a few extra points, but don’t know if that will make a difference for her school prospects. She has dyslexia and dyscalculia. I’ll look into the college supports website. Getaclucy makes a good point about looking into student life and fit. New jerseygirl98, Endocrine? Did you mean to say Endicott?
We are wary of schools with a lot of commuter students and those with a very imbalanced male/female ratio. Iona is looking like one we will definitely visit, and maybe Fairleigh Dickinson, but we will need to add a few more matches. We also don’t know anything about two that have been mentioned as safeties: Mt. Ida and Dean.
Here is a link to the Gow school where they keep an ranking sheet of such schools based on students who have/are attending and other resources. This was very helpful when my children were looking at colleges.http://www.gow.org/uploaded/files/LD_Colleges_2013.pdf
Could the poster elaborate more on Centenary University? What makes it one of the worst NJ schools? Centenary does pride it self on it structured support program for students with LD. It would be helpful to know if there are areas lacking in the school. It was on my child’s list for a while but was crossed off due to other college choices.
Check out Mitchell College in CT.
@hop, What can you tell me about Mitchell?
Smaller, traditional, residential 4-year school in New London, CT, same town as Connecticut College and the US Coast Guard Academy.
They have a fee-based, adaptive support services for ADD. ADHD and other learning disabilities. What I appreciate is that they have coaching services for Executive function issues, which is an important area that can often get lost in LD service offerings. http://mitchell.edu/academic-support/
Other than that, they have limited academic offerings, meaning that they are not trying to be everything to everyone.
They do a few things really well, such as Humanities and Behavioral Sciences, Hospitality and Management, Sports Management, Life Sciences and Legal Studies.
I know this is a long way, but have you considered Coastal Carolina University? I think it is a great liberal arts school with very good research opportunities. Plus, you’re 10 minutes from beautiful Myrtle Beach, SC.
Have a brand new science center, a very good business school that offers MBAs, a rapidly expanding campus of 10,000 students, and an office for learning disability services.
Best of all, the student life is wonderful. Athletics is very important to the students here (especially since the baseball team just won the College World Series), and student life in general is very vibrant. They often can’t wait for homecoming and other spirit things like that.
It might be a bit big, not enough liberal arts feel, or too far from (presumably) upstate NY, but it is a beautiful campus with good people and actually gives you an excuse to have a Myrtle Beach vacation.
@Nojotennis you don’t mention support for learning differences. We are looking for a school that offers comprehensive support for learning differences. That generally means an extra fee that covers once or twice a week meetings with a learning specialist who can help with various things like time management, organization, accessing accommodations, tutoring, etc.
What’s her GPA?
Also, what’s your budget?
She could look into test optional ctcl schools like Wheaton (Massachusetts not Illinois) , Goucher, Millsaps.
I’m surprised no one has mentioned Landmark College in VT. Have you looked into their program?
@MYOS1634 Her school doesn’t report GPA, so we had to calculate it ourselves. We calculate 3.3 GPA. We don’t have a budget limit. We are looking at schools that offer “comprehensive LD support”. I am not aware of too many of these in the northeast/mid-atlantic area that will accept middle to lower GPA/ACT students. I don’t think there are too many outside of the list I provided. We are hoping to get some feedback on these schools. I don’t think Wheaton, Goucher, or Millsaps offer comprehensive LD support. @lr4550, Landmark in Vermont and Beacon in FLA are the only two schools in the country that cater exclusively to students with LD. She doesn’t need that much support, but she does need the next level down, which is “comprehensive LD support”. As stated above, there is usually an extra fee for this service, which includes regular (once or twice a week) meetings with a learning specialist. @newjerseygirl98 can you provide some more information on Centenary? What makes it one of the worst schools in NJ?
@upstatenymom An earlier poster asked if you are using a consultant? Have you considered? Also a test prep tutor for someone who is experienced with dyslexia? I’m west coast and there’s a group in Berkeley. I’ve talked to them about my kid and they told me they have helped a kid with dyslexia get a perfect score on ACT with accommodations. They referred me out for SSAT but also told me because of my tutoring experience I could tutor my own kid. And based on that tutoring experience it sounded like they were for real. I was referred to them by a private college counselor.
I don’t know about your high school counselor but wouldn’t you submit psych-educational evaluation with ACT? Especially if there is a discrepancy between IQ and ACT score? I’m not there yet so I don’t know how this works.
Also, in addition to other criteria that other posters listed–what about what DD wants to do post-college? College should be able to prepare her for post-college.
My BF at Scripps College, 20 years ago, was a bad test-taker had Dyslexia accommodations at all the Claremont Colleges. I can ask her what her SAT score was. But it was prob low. She got her medical degree from an Ivy. Also didn’t do so hot on MCAT. And she took multiple times to get to a number she was happy with. She’s one of the best OB surgeons in one of the biggest cities now. She usually gets the toughest cases because of her spatial abilities.