LD and Elite Colleges

Parents Forum Learning Differences and Challenges - LD, ADHD
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<p>My school has a somewhat abused LD accommodation practice in which it awards extended time to any student with a note from a psychiatrist (which is about 5% of the grade). I find that a lot of these students definitely do not require such accommodations; for example, a student who says he has dyslexia openly volunteers to read aloud in class (and can do so better than me). </p>

<p>Anyway, college decisions have come out, and the acceptances to top universities (harvard, yale, stanford, etc.) are saturated by many of the students who took extra time in high school (many also took extra time on things like the PSAT and became NMF). I don't think this is fair, but I hope that colleges won't tolerate their exploiting of the system. </p>

<p>So, my question is this, how do the elite universities handle people who claim to have LD's? About what percentage of students receive extra time?</p>

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<p>No one here has experience in seeking accommodations at top universities?</p>

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<p><a href="http://www.beloit.edu/%7Edss/faq/parents_guardians.htm%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.beloit.edu/~dss/faq/parents_guardians.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>this may help you</p>

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<p>Here is some info about Stanford which I think is one of the schools you asked about in another thread. According to this, only 1 in 5 applicants with disabilities are even accepted since Admissions look at many other factors besides gpa or SAT scores. </p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/group/DRC/new_students.html#undergraduate%20admissions%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/group/DRC/new_students.html#undergraduate%20admissions&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.stanford.edu/dept/diversityaccess/access/student_request.html#eligibility%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.stanford.edu/dept/diversityaccess/access/student_request.html#eligibility&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

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<p>Ihope --</p>

<p>I think that your school is the exception and not the rule for accomodating LD students! A psychiatrist wouldn't even be the correct professional to write a note about an LD, as psycho-educational and neuro-psych testing is ordinarily performed by a licensed psychologist, and a professional letter about an LD would have to include actual data. There are objective criteria for scoring and interpreting the relevant tests, ways to determine if there is an LD impeding performance that would otherwise be consistent with core intellect, and it is difficult to imagine how a young kid could in any way tamper with the outcome. My kid underwent more than 15 hours of testing, with an extensive battery of tests specified by his school, and then had the results scrutenized by the school's own psych. consultant before accomodation was granted.</p>

<p>It really drives me up a wall to hear about LD accomodation being abused (although I really do hope that there's an urban legend factor in play when I hear these wild stories) because then students with legitimate LD's who actually work their tails off to succeed at a level consistent with their intelligence lose credibility. Places like ETS make it harder and harder for accomodations to be granted to students with legitimate LD's, and on top of having to cope with the stigma of an LD, LD students have to cope with the stigma of classmates who think they're opportunistic cheaters.</p>

<p>For what it's worth, Stanford has an excellent support program for high intelligence/high performance LD students, as do a number of Ivies. But the folks who assist students with LD's in these kinds of institutions are pretty sophisticated, and a note from some random psychiatrist is not going to cut it. </p>

<p>That said, I am concerned that you really seem to have it in for students who receive accomodations, with a blanket notion that they are all somehow taking unfair advantage of you in high school, and inordinate anxiety that they might continue to take advantage of you by gaming the system at Stanford. If you do actually know someone who is cheating with an improper use of accomodation, I can understand being more than mildly annoyed. But having this as one of your central concerns about college just feels a bit off. </p>

<p>LD students who make it into elite colleges are unusually determined, hard-working, and often creative people who have had to overcome a variety of barriers to succeed at the level of their non-LD intellectual peers. It would probably benefit you to get to know some of them in college and I hope you will be able to do so without resentment and suspicion.</p>

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<p>I appreciate the responses and concede, AnonyMom, that I may have been too harsh on some folks on this board. To them, I am sorry and I am trying to change so that the LD situation does not bother me. The thing is just that at my school, LD accommodations ARE abused. I personally know of several students (~15 in my grade) with many academic accolades (and acceptances) that essentially cheated their way through high school. For the past four years, I've been driven almost mad by the constant, but unfair, competition for grades that I've had to endure with such students. It feels that I must work twice as hard just to keep from being trampled as these opportunists. In consequence, I've grown severely annoyed and even hostile. </p>

<p>What I also don't like is the tendency for some to immediately write off the possibility that LD abuse exists. I know from personal experience that it is real (and, to a certain extent, almost prolific) in my high school. There are always people who will bend the rules; I've found that until you start looking for them, many will fly under the radar.</p>

<p>I guess I'll try to let it go and just have faith in my college's ability to filter the opportunists from those with sincere need.</p>

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<p>LD Abuse exsits, I'll give you that. But there are also the few LD kids who work their asses off just to make it. I'm one of them. People may call me a suck up, teacher's pet, over-achiever, etc, but I'll work my ass off just to get to the bar that normal people are at. It sucks. Yes, it annoys me when others get extra time for no reason, but I've learned to get over it. Sure, I won awards in high school. Not many, and none that were GPA based. I won them since I worked my rear off and teachers noticed. Hard work does not go unnoticed sometimes. LD kids can be the kids who work the hardest knowing that they have to overcome a lot more just to be average. </p>

<p>My LD accommodations in high school helped me get to where I am( a highly selective engineering school). And right now they are leveling the playing field so I can continue to stay where I am, and keep up. I'm the person who becomes reclusive during finals time since it takes me longer to do things. I lose a social life since I'm LD at a challenging school. But its worth it. </p>

<p>All the LD accommodations do is level a playing field. Some people may take unfair advantage of that, and trying to slope the playing field to their advantage, but thats part of life. Life will never have a level playing field, you just have to learn to live with it. Accommodations try to level things, but they don't always work as planned. I realize I will always have a slight disadvantage, so I work my ass off to make up for it. So far its working OK. I've had good semesters, I've had bad semesters. My professors don't take much crap when it comes to having accommodations, they only trust notes from the office of student life, but after that, they are very willing to work with students to make sure LD kids have the opportunity to do their best. </p>

<p>just because you have extra time, doesn't mean something is easier. </p>

<p>I'll get off my soap box, and back into my cave.</p>

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<p>I think you're in no position to decide whether these kids have LD or not and are being extremely presumptuous to do so. </p>

<p>There are all kinds of conditions that require accomodations, and LD such as ADHD and dyslexia are just some of them. </p>

<p>Maybe the kid with dyslexia has worked hard to learn how to curb his dyslexia and reads in class, but maybe it takes him twice the effort that it does for you, and when it comes to a stressful situation like a test, he needs the time. Or maybe he doesn't have dyslexia, maybe he has something else and doesn't want to tell you because it's none of your business. </p>

<p>I believe that it is better to 'err on the side of caution in cases of LD or other conditions. I don't think you realize how difficult it is to deal with such conditions. I went through all of high school without accomodations, and I wonder how much better I could have done on the SAT etc if I had pursued them / even known I could get them.</p>

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<p>But to answer your question, it completely depends on the school. I've been to two elite schools (I'm a transfer to the second), and I felt much, much more accomodated and supported at my first school.</p>

<p>At my new school I have to jump through a lot of hoops to get the accomodations and don't get as substantial of ones that I and my doctors feel I need, because the school "doesn't do that." I may be able to get them if I jump through a lot more hoops, but honestly, why should I have to do that? You also have to send in the documentation EVERY semester. My situation has not changed and it will not change, at least while I am in college and perhaps ever. So I have to contact old doctors and request that they take time to write intricate letters over and over again, which is something most busy doctors aren't too thrilled about. Some times the doctor has misunderstood my request and sent the wrong kind of letter and I had to spend a couple of weeks trying to contact them again...yadda yadda.</p>

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<p>Can any of the posters on this thread say which elite colleges, particularly those with good engineering programs, have been best at providing support? D is gifted (>2300 SAT, NM finalist, without accomodations) but take about twice as long to complete schoolwork and lengthier reading assignments. We never got a 504 or IEP because she refused, although ed. psychologist said she would qualify. She sent apps to 11 top tier colleges, but I worry about how she will manage workload/competition and which colleges will best support her if she decides to request accomodations. Would she ultimately be better off in a lower tier college with less intense students (State U, for example)? Thanks for your thoughts.</p>

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<p>No. Go to elite U. Definitely. Most have at least passable disability support services. My wager is what would make the less than satisfactory is that they are a hassle, not that they don't accommodate. Thats how it is at my prestigious school. </p>

<p>Is she willing to get accomodations in college?</p>

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<p>I second MomPhD's question. Which elite schools (other than Stanford mentioned above) are good at providing support to gifted kids with LDs?</p>

<p>I have not yet begun my investigation but have been told that MIT is very dyslexic-friendly and that Brown is generally open to different learning styles. For my son, we will look for schools that have few distribution requirements so that he can control his curriculum and have only one heavy reading/writing course per semester. He is really under-challenged in the AP courses at his "one of the best in Massachusetts" high schools and will be much happier when surrounded by kids who comparably bright. But, he could not manage the workload at a school like Columbia or Chicago that has a "rare books" or "canons of Western Civilization"-based curriculum with lots of reading/writing or even very strict distribution requirements. </p>

<p>I've heard that Wesleyan and Williams, like Brown, provide a fair degree of flexibility about one's curriculum. But, I've got no first-hand data and would love to hear from others who do. I'm guessing that Claysoul is or was at Brown, so perhaps Claysoul, you can report on your first-hand experience.</p>

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<p>Claysoul, whether she will be willing remains to be seen. She has developed her own compensatory strategies, which worked through most honors and math/science AP courses in HS, but in the past year discovered she is having trouble completing readings for AP classes like lit and history. This makes me wonder how she'll fare with liberal arts distribution requirements, though AP scores may let her avoid these to some extent (I don't know how she does it but she gets 5s on these) and they are certainly not as many required for engineering. I just want to know there is a safety net under her wherever she goes; that she won't burn out or crash under the workload--this year has been tough, bordering on awful for her because she has such high expectations of herself. If I know services are good and profs are flexible, I'll relax a little. </p>

<p>So even though she has full rides at two State U honors colleges (which are, as an added plus, much more generous about AP credit), you think she should hold out for the elites? I've read that state schools can have better LD services b/c larger numbers of students justify them and they must comply to keep federal dollars. Are there that many kids who need LD services at the elites? Is a degree from one of them going to be worth the $200K more in loans? And what kind of hassle is there at the elites? She hasn't developed self-advocacy skills yet; at this point she thinks she doesn't deserve accomodations, and is embarassed to request extra time. She would probably give up if confronted with resistance. Knowing her it will take a while before she becomes willing to push for herself on this issue.</p>

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<p>Two schools I've heard great things about in terms of willingness to accommodate and individualize LD services are UCBerkeley (See opramantranoodle's postings from a couple of years ago. Or it might have been opranoodlemantra.) and Yale. And I actually remember watching a news special maybe 30 years ago (It was that news program that used to alternate with Saturday Night Live. I feel ancient.) about a severely dyslexic engineering student who was attending Columbia, clearly with accommodation. Also, although I have no personal experience with them, I have looked at UCLA's services for students with disabilities website, and they certainly do appear to have extensive staffing and programs.</p>

<p>Shawbridge, we are also concerned about how our very academically strong but very LD kid will do with massive reading demands. Our thoughts involve taking a little longer to finish college with a lower courseload per semester if he opts of a heavy reading curriculum, or trying to balance courses. Also, everyone here probably already knows this, but LD students don't have to be blind or dyslexic to qualify to use the services of Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic, which has a vast array of books, including high school and college texts, available on CD. This program is very inexpensive after the initial expenditure for the appropriate reading device and membership, which some public school districts cover. (Obviously, it takes a lot longer to listen to a book read out loud than it would take a non-LD kid to read it to himself, but with processing issues, having the oral version available is really helpful.) Also, there exists software that allows students to feed in articles, and then shows the articles on screen while reading them aloud in a somewhat-human sounding voice. (We don't have this, but some families of dyslexic kids swear by it.) We may be acquiring a whole bunch of this stuff for college.</p>

<p>MomPhD -- I'm wondering why you are assuming that the state schools in question have better and more available LD services than the elites to which your D has applied. (This is not a rhetorical question -- I'm really interested in what you did to find out, as I'm also trying to figure out the best way to approach getting specific data on the particular kinds of things my kid will need at college, and the ease of availability of those things at various colleges.)</p>

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<p>Yes, I am at Brown. I was at Tulane. </p>

<p>The DSS at Brown is not bad, it's just that I am totally spoiled by the magnificence that is Tulane's DSS. </p>

<p>The thing about Brown's DSS, and Brown in general, is that you need to be able to self-advocate. You really do. </p>

<p>That said, your daughter needs to (and I mean this in the most respectful and positive way possible) resign herself to the fact that disability support could help her. I don't like being labled "disabled." It has such negative connotations in our society. But by resigning myself to that (and STILL maintaining my separate sense of self), I have been able to get the help I need. </p>

<p>She may have compensatory strategies, which is fantastic, but think of how much better she'll do still with the help. </p>

<p>A LOT of people at elite U's get accomodations. A lot. And def worth the money imho. It's about the experience.</p>

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<p>A quick observation ... I do not have personal experience with this ... but if was my child who had a LD to the extent they had a time extention for tests like the SAT I would be wary about attending some of the elite schools. Some schools, like MIT, blow through material at a very rapid pace ... a big concern would be a student who can not do the work quickly for whatever reason (LD, english being a weak non-native languauge, etc). As I said I do not have personal experience with a LD but do have experience at a couple schools where the pace is, to me, the main challenge ... and it sure feels like a fit issue to consider.</p>

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<p>3togo, your question is the one we are wrestling with. But, since these kids' brains are all wired in unique ways, the question is what things take a long time. For my son, he has found the pace of the Honors/AP classes in our high school to be too slow. He says, "Dad, I got the concept on Monday and we're still doing it on Friday." If given extra time on tests (which he is), he is typically at the top of each class. He would not be at the top without the extra time on tests. So, a school like MIT might not be such a big problem for him (though it is a challenging place for everyone and would be for him and I worry about the intensity of the pace). In contrast, although he actually reads and writes pretty well by now (he took Harvard's freshman expository writing class over the summer and got one of the few A's), it is much more work for him than for other kids -- he couldn't go to a school with a great books curriculum or a serious set of distribution requirements like Columbia without doing college over 5-6 years.</p>

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<p>MomPhD, we've not had the same experience. The extent of my son's LDs earlier on made it impossible for him to slide by and compensate on the side (e.g; it took him an hour to hand copy a paragraph in 4th grade and he was so tired he couldn't work after that for the rest of the day). The only time we saw the "I don't want to be different" approach was when he wanted to take HS Spanish as a freshman, contrary to the advice of his neuropsychologist, the SpEd folks, and his parents. We said let's wait until sophomore year and see who things are going ("It will look weird to be starting beginning Spanish with all freshman when I'm a sophomore"), but we have not seen that since. I agree with Claysoul and we have steadily let our son take on the advocacy role except in structuring his partial homeschooling arrangement and when teachers wouldn't work with him. </p>

<p>Without a desire to advocate for herself, I would really shoot for a school whose curriculum matched her strengths. Even there, she may need to get help as expectations rise. In our case the help has been accommodations (longer time on tests; don't grade spelling), modifications in English classes (skip the small writing assignments, be responsible for math and science tests but do only as many problems as you think you need to to succeed on the tests), and assistive technology (Dragon speech recognition and Kurzweil screen reader [I think this is what you were thinking of Anonymom]). </p>

<p>Your last question was whether an elite school is worth $200K more than a state school. Good question. I think this depends on the directions your daughter is likely to take. My experience is primarily with HYPSM -- I went to 3 of them and was a professor at one. I don't really know Penn, Dartmouth, Cornell, Williams, Amherst, etc. But, what I see is the following: all schools can provide their students good formal educations (and it is not necessarily the case that Harvard, for example, provides a better formal education than many other schools). But, what HYPS and in certain domains MIT and CalTech do is provide horizons and contacts. By horizons, I mean setting standards really high, "I want to be the best in my field in the world" rather than I want to be the best in my state or region. My Canadian nieces and nephews at McGill are more likely to aspire to be the best in Canada (or Ontario when they move back after university) whereas the student at HYPSMC may respond to the rarified atmosphere and set loftier goals. Contacts are what they are. My college friends now include the CEO of a Fortune 500 company, the dean of a major law school, several key partners in private equity or venture capital firms, senior investment bankers, doctors /professors of medicine, well-known academics, World Bank economists, partners in major law firms, etc. The latter two will be harder to find at State U. Is that worth $200K? On a strictly economic basis, not if you are going to be a painter or, as one of my classmates has become, a professional storyteller or a community organizer. But yes for a number of the other careers, for which elite schools open doors more easily -- if she wouldn't get blown out by the workload and lose self-esteem as a result.</p>

<p>Interestingly, we have made one such choice. My daughter, who has no LDs, attends a very strong private high school in our town while my son attends the local, very strong public high school. We didn't think he could learn the reading/writing skills that he needed at the private school that would pride itself on swamping him with volumes of work so he'd be prepared for Yale. In contrast, we thought there was a chance that at the public high school my daughter would find a group of girls who cared about clothes and boys and not push herself, so we sent her to the private school, where they are pushing her and she is learning to raise the bar for herself.</p>

<p>Finally, there is another potential consideration that someone may have mentioned. At State U, I suspect that it is typically easier to take fewer courses in a semester to make the workload manageable. I'd guess that is harder at HYPSM, though I have not investigated. This might be the most important thing a kid with LDs could do, especially if she were not getting accommodations. Best of luck with your choice.</p>

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<p>Regarding LDs, I think that everybody is different and different things will work well for different people.</p>

<p>One of my good friends has pretty severe ADD. His mind is always, always racing, he's always making new connections and thinking about random things, and for this he can't do things like have a social conversation or drive a car without extreme difficulty. He's doing fantastically well at CalTech, a school that is more or less suited to students who think like him (although maybe some of them can drive okay).</p>

<p>I don't have a diagnosed LD, but I wouldn't be suprised if I tested for one. I was extremely slow to learn how to speak and I've always had trouble with things like following recipes, remembering plots of movies and books, remembering what I read in the newspaper that morning. However, what I lack in framework, I think I make up for in abstract thinking. I always tended to "get" abstract concepts easily, I was the first to figure out a math proof, the first to see a pattern, the first to get a poem. My grades in high school and college have been good, not outstanding, but I've been extraordinarily happy at my school (the University of Chicago) because I think it's suited to the kind of student I am.</p>

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<p>I think unalove's post is very sane and offers really good advice. As a college teacher, I can say that I don't think the accommodations make enough difference to have that influence choice of school. </p>

<p>I don't mean to disagree with Clay Soul. I have read posts of this poster before and they are knowledgeable. And obviously, some schools have better accommodations than others.</p>

<p>That's not what I mean. I mean that if a school is too hard, it's going to be too hard, even with accommodations. And if she could succeed with accommodations, she can also probably succeed without.</p>

<p>Extra time is not that helpful in Humanities classes that are paper based, which is where it sounds like the difficulty lies.</p>

<p>And I think most students have trouble keeping up with the reading in AP classes and some college classes. My DD tried to teach her brother to skim.</p>

<p>I speak as a prof. and a parent to say your daughter should attend the school that inspires her if you decide the money is justified.</p>

<p>My S has ADD. He plays around with taking/not taking his meds. His grades are quite respectable, but not straight A's. I stopped worrying when he said, "I'd rather have a B at Williams than a A anywhere else." And now, after his first semester I think he knows how to improve his grades, though he did earn an A and nothing lower than B.</p>

<p>He has been inspired by at least three of his courses. He had sung in the choir, played in the orchestra, been cast in a production of the Tempest and done projects with the environmental club. So I think the money is worth it because whatever he wants to do, he can. He said, "Mom, I knew I was in the right place when everyone got the Schrodinger's cat reference on House." The kids are stretching themselves as another poster said about Ivies.</p>