Helping LD High School Seniors Successfully Transition to College

College acceptance letters are around the corner, as most decisions come out in the springtime, generally in March or early April. As college seniors await word from their “reach,” “match,” and “safety” schools, they dream of the beautiful changes coming their way as they ditch the constraints of high school for the freedom that college life brings. For parents whose aspiring collegian learns differently, the beauty of those changes and that looming independence may be marred with heightened uncertainty and anxiety and additional hurdles to negotiate. After high school, students with learning disabilities lose the guarantees to special education and accommodations they enjoyed in high school. Parents worry: Will my child be able to self-advocate? Will my child have the resilience to persist to graduation? Can my child get the accommodations necessary for success? In other words, is my child who learns differently be poised for making a successful transition from high school to college? On this episode of “A World of Difference,” we’ll visit a high school senior on the precipice of making the collegiate transition and see how one family is approaching this next chapter of life. Next, we bring you the straight dope from our panel of transition professionals on helping LD high schoolers make the college transition with fewer stumbles in our “Ask the Experts” segment. Finally, we’ll introduce you to this month’s “Difference Maker,” a real estate titan who learned later in life that the career he built was constructed upon a foundation of dyslexia, a realization that powers the caring heart he has for helping young people find their way.