The purpose of this study is to provide a deeper understanding of learning disabled young adults who struggle with low literacy skills in order to learn more about their literacy profiles and, from an emic perspective, understand the affective factors that may have influenced their attendance and persistence in a post-secondary residential program. Pre-post literacy and affective assessments were given to 244 young adults. We found the students had relatively strong listening comprehension and vocabulary skills but were weaker in decoding and text comprehension. As a result of intervention, students' feelings about literacy positively increased as well as their self-reported abilities. Reasons for their persistence are discussed. (Contains 3 tables.)