College experience with kids with LD

Parents Forum
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This is from an earlier post:

We concluded in middle school that our severely dyslexic son couldn’t do foreign languages. He couldn’t do Latin in middle school and after a semester of Spanish in middle school pronounced “mas” as “mass.” He couldn’t hear the sounds in Spanish and couldn’t spell well enough for Latin. I had a conversation with the head of foreign languages at his HS, who said, knowing my son, he could take the lower track Spanish course, work very hard, get all As (that is what he does) and leave after three years knowing no Spanish. He recommended against wasting our son’s time. So, against our son’s wishes at the time, no language in HS.

It may or may not have hurt him. Rolling the tape forward, he got into several very good schools including Ivies. There is some probability that not taking a language contributed to him not getting into a couple of schools (one of these was my alma mater) but these schools have such a low percentage of admits that it could have been lots of other random things as well. He chose a school without any foreign language requirement and did extremely well in college. Rolling the tape forward a little farther, he co-founded a tech company and became its CEO. A bit later brought in a senior executive much more capable of growing it and started grad school jointly in data science and an MBA at a prestigious school. At the end of the day, I doubt he could be much better off.

But, in some states, the state universities require language for admission. If so, take language over the summer in week summer schools. Some Ivies he considered said that a FL was recommended but not required – however, if you didn’t take an FL, you had to show that you did something really challenging with your time. Also, not doing so probably means the application needs to mention the LD, which I’d advise against doing if it is otherwise not necessary.

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Both my kids have LD. DD’s is minor and DS is more of a struggle. Their school counselor and IEP advisor were invaluable in college searches. The one thing they said for both kids is when touring schools ask about accommodations availability and meet with the services department. Also for DS his IEP advisor actually had us print off the curriculum for his desired major at the schools he was considering and she reviewed them and offered opinions on what would be too difficult, etc.

We actually toured a school for DD that looked at me blankly when I asked about 504’s and accommodations. Didn’t know what it was. When I tried to explain it is college version of an IEP they snottily told me that “IEP’s end in HS” I said “I realize that, that is why I used the correct term 504 plan” Based on their reaction to our inquiry DD wiped that school off her list of potentials quickly as she not only needs a 504 for LD but more importantly for physical concerns.

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Rochester Institute of Technology has a spectrum support program (will support those with executive functioning issues I would think) http://www.rit.edu/~w-ssp/

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My freshman son will be tested for updated evaluations in early June and July of this year so he can get accommodations for the practice SAT and ACT next year. Since the evaluations are only good for 3 years, will we still be able to use them in 3 years when he is accepted to college, or do they run out in June and July of that year before he begins college? I know you usually request accommodations in the summer before your freshman year of college, but will they require an updated evaluation if the one he has is just reaching its 3 year limit at that time?

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My D has several LDs. She also has very bad short-term memory, which makes tests very difficult for her. She just finished her freshman year at a small LAC. We both wanted her to go to a small school (hers has 2,000 undergrads and 500 grad students).

We had a nightmare trying to get accommodations in her large public schools system, but at the college the LD director is pretty accessible. She was also accepting of D’s neuro-psych testing, which had been just about exactly three years before. My D is much better at writing than taking tests, so the LD director was helpful in pointing out professors whose grading focused less on tests. I don’t think you could get that kind of guidance at a large college.

At any rate, my D still ran into many of the same learning difficulties as in high school, especially with her memory and math issues. But she worked hard, and while she had to drop the required math, made it through everything else fine.

She limped through high school Spanish for two years. While she got FL waived at college, she has to take three world culture classes in exchange.

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twinmom, it is not exactly correct that a 504 is a college version of an IEP. Students have 504’s in high school (often health-related, though ADHD is often covered under a 504 plan if no LD is present) and the rights in the 504, which are a result of the Americans with Disabilities Act, continue in college, though at a lower standard of accommodation. Parental rights for advocacy under the ADA end and the student has to advocate for him or herself.

What does end at high school graduation is rights under IDEA, on which IEP’s are based.

http://www.wrightslaw.com/nltr/08/nl.0318.htm

Students don’t really have a “504 Plan” in college, or at least, I have never heard it termed that way. They have rights to accommodations under Section 504 of the ADA, is my understanding. We never used the term 504 or heard a college official use the term 504, but they certainly know about the ADA. I think high school principals know the term 504 and they often are the coordinator.

At the college level, the student is responsible for taking the letters from the disabilities office to professors. The letter won’t mention the specific disability, only that the student is registered with the DO, and then the student explains to whatever extent needed. Some schools will list accommodations, some won’t.

Accommodations at college cannot pose and administrative or financial burden on the school, or substantially change the academic program. Some disabilities offices function more to protect the school and curriculum from incursions, in my opinion. Some schools have deans or other administrators handle all this without a formal disabilities office, and some do a great job.

I believe kids should be able to choose a school based on criteria that “everyone else” uses and that advocacy will often work to bring the school around, and the latter benefits everyone. Some courageous individuals have advanced rights for everyone by going to court and establishing precedents, so we don’t have to. The idea that a student should choose based on the accommodations and support for their disability is against the whole concept of a level playing field as described in the ADA. Sorry, off my soap box.

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D applied to 10 schools, got into 9, and every one waived the FL requirement for admission. She did disclose on her apps to explain the lack of a HS FL. Her college allows her to substitute 2 cultural classes for college FL.

She had tried Spanish, then Latin, in HS. The only FL at our HS is Spanish; the Latin had been on-line. We put a lot of thought and discussion with the IEP team on dropping FL and it was a scary thing to do at the time. In retrospect, we are so glad she did. She would have put inordinate amounts of time into studying for little gain.

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I wonder if posters here would be willing to name the schools their LD kids did, or did not, have success with. In many of these LD threads, I notice people will say only that their child attended “a small LAC,” or “a large state university with a helpful/unhelpful disabilities office.”

It’s so difficult to evaluate colleges based on either published rankings that rely on college websites or surveys, or on college administrators who know how to say the right buzzwords. I have read many helpful, but alarming, stories on CC of parents and students who diligently researched colleges’ LD supports, only to find out, too late, after enrollment that the schools’ purported supports were smoke and mirrors.