I’ve seen a few lists out there, and a few posts on this board, but wondering if anyone has had some recent success with college programs that have great autism support? My son is really smart (yeah…I know…we all think that) but truly struggles with executive function and is often resistant to our advice (we are both college profs) how to plan and manage his time better. We constantly tell him that we won’t be there to bail him out once he goes to college that he has to work through setting priorities and getting up on time for school in the morning. He is considering RIT and Drexel as he wants computer engineering and cyber security. Marshall has a new program but I know has a good ASD support program, and WKU doesn’t really have a good cyber program despite its ASD support program.
Does anyone know if any of the other big programs…MIT, RPI, etc have ASD support like helping kids regularly to plan their work for the week, helping them get up in the morning, etc.? He’d prefer a mid-range to small school size as his HS is very small.
I have a year and a half left to help him get to a better place but was hoping people could share what they know about college programs with ASD support.
Son is a freshman at UCONN. He is not reluctant to take advice, but hasn’t generally been able to generalize any of the lessons he received. He’s doing really well at UCONN, which I think has a great engineering program (my son is a math/linguistics major). He’s reading emails (which he never did), he’s sending texts and answering the phone. When we talk to him, he says “I’m working on a paper that’s due NEXT WEEK”. I am going to visit next week, so I should be able to get a better sense, but as far as I know, he’s doing great
@Robynphd hard to tell how much a kid on the spectrum likes school, but he seems to be thriving. I just returned from a long weekend with him, and he seems more self assured in his executive functioning. He has people he calls friends, but he doesn’t eat meals with them generally, but I don’t think he is that upset about it. His room was an absolute disaster (school paper strewn on the floor, packages never opened), and I’m not what one would call neat, but his roommate’s side wasn’t any better. He goes home today with his roommate for Thanksgiving. Not going to lie, a little worried about a full week, 9 days at someone else’s house, but fingers crossed.
He meets thrice weekly with a grad student who seems to be giving him good advice and he’s getting a B in English, his weakest subject, without any help from us, so I consider that a success. The first real snowstorm happened yesterday, so that may be his greatest challenge, adapting to real winter coming from SF.
I am trying to help my student decide between Uconn and RIT. Uconn was not my dream school for him but their Beyond Access has been unbelievably responsive to my inquiries and their program appears to be custom made for my son. It is also very close to our home and his therapist. They even allowed me to come in an dmeet with them and when I did there was no hard sell but they said all the right things w/o me even having to ask. RIT, while my son’s dream school, has a spectrum support program but they didn’t even want me to stop by. They said there was “nothing to see”. They didn’t seem to pick up on the fact that our family’s decision would be contingent on the ASD support the college would have in place. Could anyone here chime in a let me know what you know with regard to Uconn vs. RIT? Oh he wants to do Aerospace Engineering which is stronger at RIT than Uconn. I think. I mean, I don’t even understand that much about getting an engineering degree except that it sounds awfully hard and the student has no life. He would not consider any LACs though he applied to Union and Syracuse. Got into both those but Uconn and RIT are cheaper, and have the ASD support. Help!
@uniquefirsttry very interesting. I have heard from more than one person (including myself) the same things about RIT. I wonder if they understand how they come off. Where did your son decide to go? UCONN has been a dream. I hear what you are saying re: not as good, but not as good doesn’t mean horrible, because our instinct is to send our kid to the best academic school they can get into, but what good is that if they struggle?
Wherever your kids go, my advice is (and it’s not easy for me, hence my username) is to be there for your student but try to take the reins off as much as you can. Best thing we did was send our son farther away. He had to be responsible and in doing so, his confidence soared. I have seen unthinkable progress in my son.
@overbearingmom I just responded to another post of yours. Perhaps in another thread? My son is headed to Uconn! Do you see my other post that I just posted?
Please know that you help parents so much when you take the time to share your insights!!
I just reposted this using @overbearing mom. Hopefully it finds you. I will do that to the other post that I just sent as a reply to one of your posts in another thread. I probably don’t use college confidential as well as I should.
The University of Arizona in Tucson might be too large for him (~35,000 undergrads), but they have the SALT Center, which gives students weekly meetings with a specialist to help with things like planning and time management. They also have computer engineering and cyber security degrees, but I’m not sure how strong those programs are (certainly not on par with MIT). Best of luck!