Use of academic resources in college

[nancy57]

I have been off these boards for several years,but  I  use to frequent when my ADHD dd was first diagnosed back in elementary school. My question to those of you who have kids who successfully went off to college, is how much did they use the academic resource centers and if there is any advice on the importance of academic support in college. I worry mostly about her executive functioning(or lack thereof) and if she will need coaching. What has helped your kids the most in their college years? 


My daughter has only used testing accommodations for the SAT, but otherwise has not had accommodations at her HS. The college she wants to go to does not have a very good academic learning center and the other colleges she was accepted at are better in that department.  It is certainly her choice but I wondered how in general your kids did with or without academic support.
Thanks for any general thoughts on this.

[healthy11]

Welcome, or welcome back to Millermom's forum, whichever it may be! Can I ask if your daughter uses medication for her ADHD? What does she plan to major in, and what is the size of the college she wants to attend? How does that compare to her high school? Is the university "close to home," and does she know anyone else at that college? Having a little more information will help us give you better perspectives.

I'm one of the parents whose young adult made it through college, although there were a few "bumps in the road." My son is very bright, but has ADHD as well as dyslexia and dysgraphia. His executive functioning isn't great, either. Our local public H.S. had over 3,000 students, and kids there tend to be treated more as "numbers" than individuals, so we decided it would be better if he attended the area parochial H.S. of about 1,100. His main accommodation was extended time for testing "as needed," which he rarely wanted to use, although he admitted that it was very helpful when he took the ACT/SAT.

My son's strengths were science/math and he wanted to major in Engineering, but even technical colleges require core classes in the humanities and social studies, and we expected those to be more challenging, given his dyslexia/dysgraphia. He applied to a number of universities, big and small, local and distant. He actually got accepted by all of them, but after touring/doing "shadow" visits and talking to various Disability Dept. representatives, he decided to attend the most academically competitive one. It was a private institution with about 2,200 undergrads, about an hour from our house. We thought the smaller size would help provide more "individualized" attention, instruction, and support. The Disability Coordinator had described a number of programs that were in place to help Freshmen transition to college, beyond ordinary accommodations. It was supposed to include orientation sessions where they could meet fellow students with ADHD/LDs, a "mentoring" arrangement with upperclassmen in the same major, study groups, etc. Everything sounded great, but to make a long story short, that Coordinator quit in the summer before my son started, and we quickly realized that one of the benefits of being in a smaller university could also be a liability, because there weren't many of other people who knew what was going on. A replacement Coordinator was hired "at the last minute" but she was inexperienced and clueless, and didn't have any idea of what the prior Coordinator had done. What's worse, she didn't even know basic procedural information for the college. The end result was my son basically "gutted it out" in all his classes without ANY accommodations or support, and when he realized that he needed to withdraw from a course in order to salvage the rest of them in his first semester, the Coordinator actually gave my son wrong information on how to drop it...

To make a long story short, my son managed to keep his grades above "academic probation level," but it was a struggle. After living with a "roommate from h*ll" his sophomore year, he decided that maybe it would be better to switch to a different college, and at that point, he transferred to a large, 20,000+ student, public university about 1.5 hrs. away from our house. He registered with their Disability Dept., but the only accommodation he used was occasional extended time for exams, primarily in the humanities courses where more reading/writing was required. An unexpected way it was helpful for my son to have a Case Manager in the Disability Dept. was when he ended up having an emergency appendectomy and there was a "central figure" who could notify all his professors about the fact he would be absent. My son did "lose" some credits in the transfer (the 2nd college wouldn't accept all his prior courses) and in the end it took him 5 years to graduate (and he did take a couple of summer classes at our local community college, as well.) His final GPA was a bit under 3.0 (I think it would have been higher if he did use more of the accommodations he was entitled to...ie, a note-taker) but in the end, he got his degree and has a good job in his chosen field, and at the "ripe old age of 24" he's living independently.

I guess the reason I've rambled on a bit is to point out that there may not be a "perfect school." If your daughter starts out in one place and it doesn't work out, it's not "the end of the world." Financially, it may be more of a demand, but if your daughter was able to "ease in" to college with a reduced course load (ie, maybe 12 credit hours vs. 15) that might improve her chances of success in the long run, especially if she's reluctant to use any formal accommodations. There are plenty of "distractions" even for non-ADHD/LD kids in college, and life is more than just "book smarts" anyway, so it's wise to allow enough time in college to grow socially and emotionally as well as academically! Keep us posted on what happens.

[bros]

I have dysgraphia. I used accommodations extensively in college - mostly use of a computer. Occasionally, I would use my accommodation to record lectures (Came in use when I had to file a discrimination complaint against a professor). I also used my accommodation for extended time on written assignments twice (Both when I was really sick and I had 20 page essays due) - that accommodation was written very loosely, so the professors had to follow it, which worked out in my favor those two times.

[dw]

I will share this info about my dd's experience but she really does not want me to talk about her, as it is her information to share. So I will be as general as possible.
My dd started at a public university and used extra time on tests for a variety of LD's that had only been diagnosed when she was 18, but her ADHD-inattentive was not diagnosed until she was 21, and the accompanying executive functioning problems caused academic issues. After a while, she attended Landmark College for a year where she learned about her LD's and ADHD, and how to cope with these factors in an academic setting. At Landmark, nearly all the students have ADHD coaching, and a strong relationship was started at Landmark with my dd's coach. I think they met twice a week for 30 minutes each.

When my dd transferred to a 4 year college (in 2010-2011, Landmark College was only conferring AA degrees, but now is granting BA/BS degrees), her Landmark college transfer counselor steered her toward colleges with strong LD support programs, and she applied to 5 academically strong colleges/universities; and she was accepted at all 5 of these colleges due to her excellent 3.9 GPA at Landmark. The time at Landmark was a life changing experience, as well as an academic turn around. She decided to go to a Boston area college.
At the transfer college, , she continued the ADHD coaching with her Landmark coach, via Skype 2 x a week for 30 minutes each, and used the learning center there a lot. The learning center, which also served students without LD's, so there was no stigma in my dd's mind, about going to the learning center. She graduated with a GPA=3.55 in May 2013.

Now, my dd is doing academic coaching with students with LD's. Coaching exists for ADHD and is a well established profession, but she saw a gap for students with LD's, who could use the support of coaching as they attend college. It is a new effort, she has a web site, I think. She said that doing this coaching was a way to turn what she had seen as a liability (her learning issues/differences) into something positive, i.e. is, helping her understand where other students with LD's are at, and helping them.

[aterry]

I have two adult children with learning disabilities. DS is severely dyslexic, my DD has extremely low processing speed. DS went to an excellent LD high school in Queens, NY, The Summit School. He learned a lot of coping skills there and as a result when he got to college, Adelplhi University (where I also work), he chose not to have accommodations. He did very well but Adelphi has a large LD program and many instructors allow accommodations, informally. Also ds is an excellent writer so papers were a breeze for him. DD chose to have accommodations--she had extra time for tests and she had a note taker for classes that had lectures--she was a dance major so many classes did not have lectures. She did well, also. Here's a BIG benefit that both had that's not available to most students... because I work at Adelphi both DS and DD had free tuition so they were able to take an extra semester and therefore were able to have most semesters be 12 to 14 credits. They didn't ever have to take a 17 or 18 credit load. Having a manageable load was very important to both of them.

[jisp]

dw,
So glad to hear your daughter is coaching. I suspect she is quite good at it.

Nancy,
My son is a complex kid and he went to a college that is not an LD school but because it is small and has an excellent academic reputation it attracts a lot of kids who have LDs. The school has an excellent academic center and provides quite a lot of services and we had assumed or at least hoped that our son would take advantage of them. But he didn't. He did however work directlly with the faculty and he chose classes wisely. For example he took Russian, which in any other setting might be a disaster for him, but because of the professor who teaches introductory Russian at his school and his methodology, it ended up being a huge success. Another example of how he advocated for himself was Freshman year he asked his Linear Algebra professor if he could type out the answers to the problems on his computer because handwriting them was too hard and meant he was prone to mistakes.

Because he worked with the Faculty directly on accommodations he needed, when he was applying to graduate school one of his professors was able to write about how our son's formal test scores did not come close to representing his in-depth knowledge of the material and his conceptual understanding. This was important because our son was applying to PhD's in a very competitive field to top institutions and his GRE scores were AWFUL.....and I mean they were completely unacceptable. There were some schools where I suspect our son was rejected because his application never even got read because they screened it out due to the GRE scores. Certainly for the programs that do not use GRE scores as a screening tool, his GRE would raise red-flags. Every professor we talked to told us they would. So the recommendation where his professor speaks directly to how our son struggles with formal tests and timed tests was very important. Our son got into about 1/3 of his Reaches and almost all his mid-range and safety schools.

[shawbridge]

My son drew heavily as an undergraduate and now as a graduate student on the disabilities office but largely to get accommodations (double time on tests, notetakers, etc.) He had learned a lot of the time planning during HS, but we had his HS coach continue to monitor things with him (she would read his email to make sure he hadn't missed things he needed to get). Plus she would record some of his readings. There was a writing center that he never used, but perhaps should have. In grad school, he gets a notetaker for his classes and extra time on exams. Plus, for those who remember the Schwab days, Schwab has funded a disabilities service office that has access to any and all technology. He will start using some of that as he switches from mathematically oriented classes to business classes.

In addition to extra time on tests, my daughter made use of a peer coach at her first school who helped her with time planning.