I posted this on the LD forum but no responses so far, so I thought I’d try here. 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. She has a 3.6 UW GPA at the moment but is having a tough start to her junior year and finding it difficult to keep up in 6 classes. 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 and a leading contender at the moment. 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 a compressed timeframe, and she often functions best when focused on one thing and under thread of imminent deadline. 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?
Sorry, I can’t be much help, but we did have one of ours who had some similar issues, executive functioning, time management, and dysgraphia. College was a struggle. We had looked at a few schools with modified schedules: Colorado College and Cornell College. Knox, Tusculum, and Spalding also offer modified schedules. However, they ended up at a school with a traditional schedule, which proved a challenge. We did also love Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI). Students there take 3 classes at a time, and they are very hands-on and project-oriented. Campus was beautiful, and there was a great vibe. We loved Colorado College. However, Colorado College, especially, and also WPI are very competitive these days.
It’s still very early, and your junior will still grow some before application time, though now is a good time to be contemplating options. It will be important that they take the lead in the process.
I would suggest that yours at least consider a gap year. It may not be the right thing for them, but we wish we had done that. Ours has always really enjoyed working and has grown enormously from their work experiences. I sometimes think that lots of problems experienced by students today (certainly not all) come from what we ask of them. School in lots of ways is an unreal existence. It’s lots of papers and tests, which is fine, but it seems to me that lots of students have a hard time visualizing why all of it is important. We, as parents, know that it will benefit them in several years, and for many years going forward, but for a young teen hearing that you need to do all this work for the next few years, so you can go somewhere else and do it for four more years, and maybe some more after that, might find it difficult to process all of this. It might be difficult to be motivated and focused on the end result. Whereas lots of jobs offering immediate gratification, even serving a pizza or burgers to a hungry group, or checking a tired traveler into a room. A little of that, I think, can help young people focus on what is important to them. Hell, being unmotivated and frustrated by the school experience might even be the “normal” response, in evolutionary terms, if frustrating from a parental perspective.
Anyway, maybe think about something a little different for a gap year–working in a national park, working at a local restaurant or hotel, working at a winter resort. Lots of kids will grow a lot from experiences like this. Sometimes ADHD/ADD young people suddenly seem not ADHD/ADD once they find something that motivates THEM. Good luck!
OP, I definitely encourage you to look at Cornell College in Iowa. My son, who struggled with organization, anxiety and having slow processing speed, is there and is doing great on the block system. As with summer school, taking one class at a time means that there is only one set of assignments to keep track of and the fast pace makes it impossible to procrastinate (or, in any event, procrastinators won’t last there very long.) There is quite a bit of work from the first day of courses to the last with no lulls like there tend to be during semesters, but there are also no midterm crunches or conflicts between courses where lots of assignments or exams are due at about the same time. And no finals weeks – how great is that? I think the lack of midterm and finals crunch periods really cuts down on stress and anxiety.
I don’t know much about dyslexia, but Cornell does say that students with reading-based LDs don’t do as well because some courses will have a lot of reading concentrated in only 3 1/2 weeks. If that’s a concern, you might want to talk to someone at Cornell about it.
One final thought: if your daughter is planning to be a science major, Cornell is currently building a beautiful new science center which will open in 2019.
Thanks @Bella723 . Actually we were at a CTCL event and talked to the Cornell rep which is what got me thinking about the block schedule in the first place. She does struggle with reading though (takes her forever) and does best if there is an audio option for the text. I’ll investigate further. And of course I’m hoping she matures in the next year!