I have a HS junior with ADHD, anxiety and some dyslexia. I’m exploring college options for her. She says she wants to go to medical school. She has a 504 right now. She really struggles with organization and time management. I’ve thought about various options including starting at community college for a year with a lower course load. We’ve also looked into the SALT center at the University of Arizona which is in state for us. But I’ve also wondered whether a block schedule could potentially be good for her. She has, for example, taken intensive summer school classes where she has to learn a semester’s worth of material in a single subject in 15 days. I’m not comparing high school summer coursework to college level work, but my point is that sometimes it’s easier for her to be forced to focus on a single subject – especially if it’s one that’s not her favorite. Any experience with this in college?
No actual hands-on experience with a college block schedule, but experience with a daughter with almost identical issues to your daughter’s, whose high school changed from a traditional schedule to a block schedule. Beforehand, we thought it might be good for her (for the same reasons you are surmising)…>BUT it turned out to be awful for her. Mainly because when there’s a block schedule, if you ever miss a day of school due to illness or any other reason, the stress/anxiety is super-intense for making up what you missed, since missing one day of class is equivalent to missing several days of class in a traditional schedule. Additionally, specifically for the college context, we were advised (when I looked into it) by a college with a block schedule that when/if a day of class or an exam is missed (due to illness or whatever), and it is a student that has an extra-time accommodation, it becomes additionally difficult to make up what was missed because often that requires missing something else while making up what was originally missed (sort of a domino effect, ongoing spiral) and that in their experience, students with extra time as an accommodation who occasionally miss a class or an exam due to illness (or any other reason) enter into a cycle of not being able to catch up and experience intensified anxiety difficulties. They (the college disabilities office of the college that has a block schedule) told me they had several students in this situation that were struggling intensely as a consequence. My daughter experienced the most stressful year of her life during the year of high school that was on a block schedule (due to only a few occasions of missing a day of class when she wasn’t feeling well ; which was never much of a problem with the traditional schedule but was a huge issue on the block schedule), and although many things contributed to that, we feel certain a very large piece of it was the block schedule. Your mileage may vary, of course; everyone is different.
Thanks @splokey that’s very helpful! Your comments make sense to me.