<p>Because of a traumatic brain injury, my daughter has very lopsided grades and SATs. While she is an A student in all Honors English/History classes etc she barely passes her math classes. She has a weighted GPA of about 3.4 and is taking Honors and AP classes as a senior as well. We have a letter in her file from her neurologist attesting to the issue and she has wonderful letters of recommendations from English teachers and we are planning to get one from her math teacher attesting to her perseverence and hard work despite the constant frustration. My question is will colleges take this into consideration in her application? Her plan is to major in either Creative Writing or Communications.</p>
<p>Right now her number 1 choice is Loyola College in Md.
In addition she likes Roger Williams, Pratt, Salisbury, Towson, SUNY Purchase, Wagner, Quinnepeac and we did visit GWU - just because I am a grad student and will be graduated by the time she is ready to go - but don't know if that's enough to push her in. </p>
<p>Her ECs are theatre and dance, literary magazine and school paper. She has won many awards for her dancing.</p>
<p>I'd appreciate any feedback you have to offer.</p>
<p>Yes, colleges will take that into consideration. They will like how she overcame an obstacle and is still succeeding (especially in classes like English and history) or at least trying very hard to (like in her math class). Her recs sound like they will be a terrific asset to her application.</p>
<p>Kudos to your daughter for persevering in the face of adversity the impact of which most of her fellow students can't even image, and for doing so very well. So nice to think that in later life, she can run with her considerable strengths and no one will care whether or not she's a math whiz.</p>
<p>I wonder if you would consider going to one of the college boards that has an admissions officer participating, but where your daughter does not plan to apply, and see if they can offer any insight. (Johns Hopkins and Virginia, for example, both have officers participating on CC.) You might also try the LD board, where someone might have experience with an issue like this. (There is a college student with dyscalculia (sp?) posting there who is planning to enter graduate school in the humanities, and might have some insight.)</p>
<p>Also, if test scores seem to be a potential deal breaker, take a look at fairtest.com, which has an exhaustive list of schools that don't demand standardized tests at all, many of which are excellent schools.</p>
<p>Finally, given her interest in Pratt, I'm assuming your D has a strong portfolio. At my D's high school over the past several years, having strong talent in the arts appears to have made a clear and decisive difference for students being accepted to very competitive schools over fellow students with better grades/scores. And none of these students had the reason your D does for uneven transcripts!</p>
<p>It's hard to imagine that given the circumstances and given her outstanding achievement in her areas of interest, schools won't cut her some slack for her performance in math, but I'm hoping you'll hear this from someone more authoritative than a fellow-parent.</p>
<p>I don't know much about the colleges you listed, so I can't help with fine-tuning your list, but I will say this: One of the things that I've heard over and over again is that your application is considered in your own context (ie your HS, the opportunities avaliable etc) and colleges will definitely take her situation into consideration. It sounds like she has done an amazing job in high school despite her injury. With the types of letters of recommendation that you talked about, the lower grades and scores shouldn't be a problem at all. To get a more definitive answer, you might want to ask one of the admissions officers who frequents College Confidential (I can think of MIT, JHU and UVa off of the top of my head). Best of luck to her (and you)!</p>
<p>(I don't know if this is relevant and you probably know about this, but just in case you don't I wanted to point out the CB's site for testing</a> accomodations)</p>