Bumps Abound When Students Become Their Own Advocates

"It's frustrating," he said. He takes good notes, asks the teacher for extra help, studies hard and goes home at night and talks to his parents about everything he learned in his history class. "Then I confuse it with other dates and facts and names. I know I learned stuff. It just doesn't get down in a test."

College is going to be a lot tougher, he said. His grades will rely much more heavily on just a few exams and papers each term. He won't have the routines, rigid schedules and smaller classes of high school.

He and his parents are looking at colleges that put less weight on test scores for admissions. Nick wants a school with a Jesuit philosophy, and one that is small enough that professors will be able to tell, from his discussions during and outside of class, how well he has learned the material even if his test scores aren't great.

"It's been a very long, long journey," Spinelli-Samara said. "Just have faith that what you've done is enough, and they'll find their way."

Over the past couple of weeks, Samara has begun the intensive cognitive testing he will need to back up his request for accommodations such as extra time on exams in college. The tests focus on how his brain processes information, assessing language and memory. The testing process is a little weird, he said -- hours in a tiny room with a one-way mirror and a security camera, answering questions such as what a horse and a giraffe have in common. "But I know I have to get it done," he said. "I know it'll help in the long run."

This month, he and his parents visited John Carroll University near Cleveland. On a tour of another college this fall, he saw a history class with 25 or so students in it, a good size, he thought. When it ended, one stayed behind to get some extra help from the professor. "I thought, 'Oh, hey, that could definitely be me doing that, in less than a year,' " he said. "In a good way."

Staff writer Michael Alison Chandler contributed to this report.