By Karen Thomas / USA TODAY
Imagine a brainstorm: colorful ideas chaotically careening through space, sometimes ricocheting off on a tangent, some crashing into each other, some overlapping.
Now capture it and splat it onto a piece of paper.
Welcome to Jonathan Mooney’s academic experience.
Colored pencils are essential tools in the writing process for Mooney, a senior at Brown University, just as quiet talks with his girlfriend are a — if not the — major component of reading comprehension.
Diagnosed with dyslexia at the elementary level, Mooney, 22, spells on a third-grade level and reads with the lowest 10 percent of the population.
Yet at the Ivy League school, he chose to major in English (against the advice of some less-than-confident professors) and has maintained a 4.0 grade-point average.
"The myth that learning-disabled students are somehow less intelligent and therefore less able to go to college, or to go to the Ivy Leagues, needs to be debunked," said Susan Pliner, an assistant dean at Brown and head of disability services at the Providence school.
Oh, did we mention that Mooney has a book contract with a major publishing house? And that his tutoring program, which matches learning-disabled students from Brown with elementary-age children with similar learning styles, may go national soon?
Not long ago, most colleges would not give serious consideration to applicants with learning disabilities. (It’s an umbrella term that refers to neurological blips that skew a person’s ability to get, store and/or spit back information.)
Today, students diagnosed with problems such as dyslexia and attention deficit disorder (ADD) face a college scene less stigmatized and much more promising than that of a generation ago.
"Colleges are much more understanding of the necessity of giving accommodations" for learning-disabled students, said Carol Loewith, president of the Independent Educational Consultants Association. "If a student has been successful in high school with extended time on tests or textbooks on tape, the colleges don’t consider that an excuse anymore. It’s just the way the student gets information best."
Most campuses have built-in support for those with the learning style of typical students. For students with quirks in the way they hear, see or remember information, provisions such as tutors, note takers, readers and time-management coaches "level the playing field," Pliner said.
The overall percentage of freshmen reporting disabilities remained stable at 9 percent between 1991 and 1998. Students with learning disabilities were the fastest-growing group among those 9 percent, increasing from 25 percent to 41 percent.
And students with learning disabilities are proving to be worthy contenders, said Frank Sopper, dean of admissions at Landmark College, a two-year institution in Putney, Vt., that specializes in teaching such students. "Colleges are starting to recognize that they always had students with learning disabilities or attention deficits, and those students have often been their best and brightest."
The key to success, experts agree, is for students to fully comprehend their disabilities so they can ask for and get the support necessary to compete.
Mooney is all for being "open and honest" in an application, but "it’s not helpful to simply say on the application, ‘I have a learning disability,’ " he said. Rather, discuss how "it is a struggle to grow up feeling different."
Mooney, who did not disclose that he was learning-disabled when he applied to a California college right out of high school, made his dyslexia the primary focus of his application to Brown. But he fears that the national trend toward understanding students with learning disabilities will have a negative side, and he warns college-bound students not to fall into that trap.
"I worry that the consciousness is coming more in terms of sympathy - ‘Oh, this person has a hard time spelling’ - and is not embracing the differences." Students need to be clear in their discussions with admissions counselors, he said, with statements such as " ‘I have strengths and weaknesses. This (spelling) is one of my profound weaknesses.’ That’s a better understanding of it."
By the time a student interviews for college, he should know his diagnosis and how it affects him, Sopper said. Students need to know what support worked in high school.
They need to be aware of the "invisible network" that isn’t documented in the almighty Permanent File: There are friends who share notes, classmates who discuss assignments and parents who make sure kids are placed with teachers open to alternative teaching practices. (Mooney’s mother, to whom he dictated most of his high school papers, is among "a thousand readers" who Mooney says help point out errors.)
Copyright © 2000, The Detroit News
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