Northwestern is a large, prestigious college. Nearly two hundred students are listed as having a learning difficulty such as dyslexia or ADHD. Many students with dyslexia aren’t sure if they will be able to be successful in college due to the extremely high amount of reading that is required in each class.
Avoid these common mistakes that dyslexics make when starting college.
Students with dyslexia at Northwestern face stress and isolation.
Feeling isolated is a common complaint. Many students with learning difficulty don’t talk about the condition that they struggle with. This leads to students feeling like the only one that can understand what they are going through. It is important for students to stick together and to help each other when they are faced with a learning difficulty.
In the words of AccessibleNU Director Alison May, “students here don’t talk about when they’re having a difficulty. So then the many students who have disabilities think they’re the only ones, and it’s all the more isolating.
Laura Lurns · Learning Success expert
Key takeaways
- Transitioning into college is hard for every student and especially so for those with dyslexia.
- College students with dyslexia exhaust faster and often do not take breaks and they burnout.
- Eye to Eye pairs college students with dyslexia and high school students as to not fall into the same pitfalls.
See MTSS for schools
Is your child struggling in school?
Get your free personalized learning roadmap
You describe what you see at home. We turn it into a plan you start this week.
- Answer 5 short questionnaires about what you already notice, 30–45 minutes at your own kitchen table
- Your child sits no test and gets no score: nothing to schedule, nothing for them to dread
- You do the answering, the AI does the writing, and a person reviews it before it reaches you
- Access all 40+ courses instantly: reading, math, focus, processing and more, with new ones added regularly
Why we use AI, plainly: it writes from a knowledge base our team maintains and audits. We work through it line by line and pull anything the evidence stops supporting. The roadmap you get on Tuesday reflects what we corrected on Monday, and a human still reads it before you do.
Your school district must evaluate your child free of charge if you ask in writing, whatever your income and whatever the outcome (US, 34 CFR 300.111 and 300.301(b)). That route takes time and answers a different question than you do. This one starts today, from what you already know.
Your answers stay yours. We do not sell your personal information, and we do not hand identifiable assessment data to outside AI companies to train their models.
A screener is a starting point, not a diagnosis. If your child might need formal accommodations (an IEP or 504 plan), or you suspect a vision, hearing or medical cause, pursue a professional evaluation too. That is the only route to those supports.
