Does anyone have experience, as a parent or student, with the disability services offices (sometimes called access services office?) and getting and using disability accommodations at Brandeis (for any type of disability such as dyslexia or ADHD, etc.) ? Are they one of the more supportive colleges that are easier to deal with and generous in granting disability accommodations (of course only to the extent warranted by applicable documentation etc.) with a genuine interest in doing whatever they reasonably can to help, or are they one of the less understanding college access services offices re: disability issues where it is an uphill battle the way it often is in a typical public high school (or even more difficult) with more of a gatekeeper attitude (that tries to NOT give accommodations if they can find a rationale to refuse them) for granting needed academic accommodations ? I know they have a website but websites don’t necessarily reflect attitudes etc. and I’m looking for some insight from someone who has had personal experience; good, bad, or neutral…Please feel free to pm me if you rather not discuss it publically…
My son requested accomodations due to color blindness. I found Brandeis to be cooperative and helpful. The process was very straighforward and easier than some of our HS/Middle school experiences. Hope this helps.
I have a couple of children and have experienced meetings with a few different colleges (all of similar overall academic caliber to Brandeis) about accommodations, including both before and after matriculation. Our experience is very recent and was regarding accommodations for very well documented and longstanding learning disability (or related) types of issues. We had a pretty poor experience with Brandeis compared to the other colleges. Your mileage may vary depending on what your accommodations needs are. Based on our actual experience, insofar as if your accommodations needs are anything more or different than very basic typical common accommodations (for example, nothing more than 50% extra time), and regardless of whether you have very strong documentation, strong history of using the accommodations, and obvious strong need for the accommodations that are beyond that, I still would not recommend Brandeis…they seem to resist anything different or more than the very basic typical common accommodations and also in our experience didn’t seem to “understand” (or want to). In our experience, they also seemed to think it was okay (in their decision to grant certain accommodations or not) to defer to individual professor’s decisions or preferences (including professors who don’t empathize with accommodations needs). We found the attitudes and experience regarding getting accommodations quite similar in the gatekeeper’s attitudes and as poor (or worse) than our (difficult) middle school and high school experiences with that process.The other colleges we had experience with (all equally academically strong or moreso) were light-years more understanding and supportive in attitude about accommodations. We think Brandeis is a truly fabulous school, other than for that aspect.