It is not uncommon for intelligent students to get by, or even excel, in high school, then arrive at college and hit a wall. This is particularly confusing to students who are accustomed to doing well without working particularly hard or efficiently. When their first semester college grades come in, and they are considerably lower than those they earned in high school, both students and parents are confused. Parents may wonder if their teen’s attitude toward college is cavalier, whether he/she is doing too much partying and too little work, etc. Students wonder why their methods worked well in high school but don’t work now. Once parents are convinced that, truly, their teen is taking college seriously, they should suggest the student speak to someone in the Counseling Center or visit their academic advisor.
Assuming the counselor or advisor is on the ball, she will ask the student questions about academic history, need for tutoring, study habits, etc. As it happens, many students with learning disabilities are sufficiently intelligent to pass through high school “under the radar”, but due to the highly different nature of college, they no longer get by, much less do well. These students, besides being bright, probably have good long and short-term memory facilities and can get away with little studying in high school. Simply looking the material over before a test enables them to perform well on a high school exam.
The rules change in college. College reading and lectures are less literal and more analytical, and the work comes on more rapidly and in greater quantities. No longer can memory skills that served the student in high school suffice. In college, the absence of study skills quickly becomes apparent.
To assure your child is diagnosed before hitting that college wall, here are some behaviors that are red flags:
* Learns primarily through listening and doing and avoids reading
* Misreads and/or misunderstands information
* Trouble with subjective, or open-ended, questions on tests
* Weak memory skills
* Difficulty adjusting to new settings
* Works slowly
* Difficulty with summarizing
* Poor grasp of abstract concepts
* Difficulty paying attention or hyper-focuses instead
Students possessing many of the above traits should be referred for psychoeducational testing, despite good performance, to determine whether a learning disability is at the root of their deficits. Early detection gives students time to learn compensatory strategies before the work gets more difficult. Furthermore, if the student is presently earning decent grades, imagine how much better he/she could be doing with skills that shore up weaknesses.