<p>My son is very bright (34 ACT, 2010 SAT, 233 PSAT no prep). All that being said he suffers from a combination of ADD, OCD and social anxiety. He ec's are ok but not great. GPA is about 3.5 weighted, not sure unweighted. Will have 3 or 4 ap's. Interested in civil engineering perhaps. He gets the information, just has a problem either regurgitating it or doing it fast enough. Had a full educational evaluation done, currently has a 504 plan. Basically according to the evaluation there is a processing issue and it stops him from the quick recall that most have. He's not slow...just not fast. We are in Ohio and are on the low end of the financial scale. Currently looking at Case Western, Vandy, WashU. and Rose-Hulman. Any thoughts on schools or anything else? Any input is appreciated. Thanks.</p>
<p>I'm not an expert yet and will likely never be but we're starting our work on this also, though we won't be looking at engineering schools and probably not much in the Midwest for our son. But, there are a few questions:</p>
<p>Do you think he would fit in bettter at a big school or a small one? There are good Midwestern state schools (e.g., Michigan and Illinois) but they are huge. I don't know Ohio State's quality, just its size. Would the social anxiety be lessened at a smaller school? If small is what is important, I have known several kids who went to Kenyon (to pick a school in Ohio) and were very happy with their educations. At the extreme, Hampshire College has no requirements or curricula but I have met some very well-directed, well-trained graduates of Hampshire (they are Birkenstocky kind of folk who are now professors -- the one I still track is at Penn).</p>
<p>If engineering/science is a strong interest, there's also RPI and Harvey Mudd, which I think are on the small side. Carnegie-Mellon is a terrific school as is Rice. </p>
<p>I would spend time speculating about the kinds of support your son will need in a non-home environment, researching the schools to see if they are good, bad or indifferent with those kinds of support. Start on the web, then during the visit, meet the head of the DSS or equivalent of SpEd office to get a feel for what they do. See if your son is comfortable with them. Clark in Worcester, MA is a very good science/engineering school that does very well with kids with LDs. They were the first school in the US to have an office of Disability Services.</p>
<p>Thanks Shaw!</p>
<p>I thought the top engineering programs tended to be unis - - MIT, Caltech, etc. - - and that LACs with strong engineering prgms (Harvey Mudd) are less common. Also at a LAC one often receives a BS instead of a BE (bach in engineering, the first professional degree in engineering). </p>
<p>And because the uni engineering curric is often more focused/limited/specialized than at a LAC, it can be easier to avoid some of the humanities or soc sci courses that LACs require to satisfy geneds. A friend's son (w/ similar profile to your S) chose UMich engineer for precisely that reason (doesn't have to take a lot of classes outside of engineering, math and sci). </p>
<p>If your S's skill set is more evenly developed and geneds are not a problem, you might want to consider some smaller unis in addit to the "usual suspects." In addition to Clark, Case (offers merit $), URocn (very supportive), Union, Trinity, Lehigh and Tufts are all small unis offering engineering. Sorry, other than Case, no small mid-western uni came to mind.</p>
<p>Thanks for the input.</p>
<p>For small teaching-oriented engineering schools, consider Rose Hulman. </p>
<p>I'm going to WPI this fall. Small school, but still (somewhat) grad/research oriented.</p>
<p>You're in Ohio and mentioned financial concerns. The Honors College at the University of Cincinnati is worth a look. It is a small program and the students get excellent mentoring from the faculty.</p>
<p>I can't say enough good things about Rose-Hulman. I have a son with similar stats and similar concerns. He did a summer program at Rose and we loved everything about Rose. They have a very supportive staff and a very high student satisfaction index. My son chose to attend Notre Dame and is doing very well there, but Rose was a very close second choice.</p>
<p>RPI (as was mentioned by someone else) on the other hand, was a disappointment. We went to visit and were so turned off by the school that we left halfway through. I would not feel safe having my son attend that school. He did not even apply.</p>
<p>Something else we looked at...
Is housing guaranteed for all four years? If a kid has social anxiety and doesn't mesh well with his first roommate and then can't get a room on campus, what is he to do?? There is a lot of stress involved in having to arrange off-campus housing.</p>
<p>My advice would be that once you find schools that seem right for your son academically in terms of the quality of civil engineering, whether or not he is required to take a bunch of gen ed requirements and in terms of the academic culture (nurturing versus weeding people out, sink or swim), talk directly with the office that supports students with LD's and other challenges. </p>
<p>Think about what accommodations and support your son will need and see if they've got those services. Do you like his 504 and if so, will can they continue the plan? (Colleges may offer more than high schools can, particularly in terms of assistive technology, tutoring, and note-taking, none of which may be relevant in terms of your son's plan, but good to think about.) Try to get an idea of whether they're supporting other students with similar issues, and the range of things they're doing for those students. Also try to get a sense for how proactive students have to be on an ongoing basis to get what they need. If your son needs extended time, or if he may need the flexibility to take a reduced load, or if he needs ongoing counseling and support around the social anxiety, will this be there for him? If a teacher or TA gives him a hard time about accommodations, will the support office run interference? Do you have to pay for any of the things you get from them? Can it be set up for him to have one go-to person who is familiar with his issues so he doesn't have to connect with someone new and different every time he contacts the office? Will his contact person be a professional or a work-study student who answers the phone? (If you have trepidation about making calls like this, you can always start with a college that doesn't particularly interest S, just to practice.) </p>
<p>Although your S is, of course, unique, college support offices have seen processing issues, ADD, OCD, and social anxiety before. A lot. They are there to support bright kids who despite these challenges have managed to succeed academically and want to continue to succeed in college. Many of them are large and well-staffed by a variety of professionals because they have a lot of kids to serve. The way you assess a school and whether it's right for your son will be influenced by how you feel about the support they offer, and you might even want to cross some school or other off your list because the support office creeps you out, but you might end up as pleasantly surprised as I was.</p>