“Wait – how do students with learning disabilities get into highly-selective universities?”
This question frequently follows when I tell people that I work as a learning disabilities specialist at one of these schools. Underlying this question is one of many myths and misunderstandings about college admissions for students with learning disabilities and ADHD.
Though I have no contact with the admissions office at all in my job (another myth), I hear people say a number of things about admissions and college fit that just aren’t true, and I worry that students and their families are getting bad advice from well-meaning people who don’t know the facts. I’ve tried to address the most common ones here hoping that the explanations will make families feel empowered.
Students with learning disabilities can succeed in college
Myth: Students with learning disabilities and ADHD should be directed exclusively toward colleges that have special programs, toward the two colleges just for students with disabilities, or toward community colleges.
Facts: Students with learning disabilities or ADHD are not a homogenous group, so no one rule applies in the college search. Fee-based programs that provide supports that go beyond the free basic accommodations all colleges have to provide (e.g., the SALT program at the University of Arizona or the PLUS program at Muskingum University) can be a good fit for students who still need a lot of support for academics and organization, and can be helpful for students who were identified late in high school and haven’t had a chance to learn strategies or get introduced to assistive technology.
The same is true for Landmark and Beacon – colleges that only serve students with disabilities. They may be a great fit for some students (especially those seeking a community of similar peers), but not for all who have a disability.
Community colleges can be a great starting place for all kinds of students, especially those who don’t know what they want to study yet and don’t want to spend a lot of money while they explore different subjects. Community colleges can provide an “on-ramp” for students who need to work up to meeting the expectations at a traditional four-year school, though this, too, is not exclusively the case for students with learning disabilities or ADHD. But if students have been taking challenging coursework and managing themselves independently in high school, there is no reason why they should not transition directly from high school into a four-year college, if they wish.
Something to keep in mind – students with disabilities shouldn’t attend a community college expecting that it will provide some accommodations they think they won’t get at four-year institutions, such as modified assignments (e.g., writing a shorter paper than peers have to write). All kinds of colleges (e.g., liberal arts, engineering, and community colleges) tend to provide similar accommodations, and there are some requests students make that commonly aren’t approved no matter where students go.
Also, while fee-based LD programs usually provide support from coaches or specialists that colleges don’t have to provide, these programs don’t have anything to do with accommodations — that’s the disability services office’s (DS’s) job. So students can’t typically get an accommodation or modification that DS didn’t approve by paying for a special program.
Myth: Students with learning disabilities and ADHD don’t get accepted to highly-selective schools.
Facts: I’ve heard people say, “If you’re smart enough to get into X school, you can’t have a learning disability.” Having worked with numerous academically gifted students who also had learning disabilities or ADHD (they’re sometimes called “twice-exceptional” students), I can tell you that this simply isn’t true. These students are studying everywhere, and many of them are going on to graduate degrees, law school, and medical schools, where they will also find accommodations available.
Myth: Students should not mention their disability at all if they want to get into highly-selective schools.
Facts: If you haven’t had a child go through the admissions process yet, you should know that colleges can’t ask students if they have a disability. This means that it’s entirely students’ choice to mention their disability in their application or not.
There are no statistics publicly available about how many students each year disclose their disability when applying to colleges or – of those who do – how many of them are accepted/rejected by various schools. What this means is that even if colleges wanted to gather this information, any numbers they could collect would onlyrepresent a count of students who actually disclosed their disability in some way in their application packet. I think it’s safe to assume not every student does so, so any number they could come up with with would not provide a complete picture.
This means that anyone telling you something like this is telling you what they think, i.e., that colleges seek to exclude students with disabilities. But these folks can’t point you to any statistics to support their opinion. And the admissions deans I’ve spoken to say that is simply untrue.
Myth: Students with learning disabilities or ADHD who get into highly-selective colleges haven’t met the same standards as their typical peers.
Facts: There is no “other door” for students with disabilities, as you’ll see if you try looking on schools’ admissions pages. Students with disabilities are expected to meet the same requirements, and while colleges can certainly choose to admit those who don’t, they don’t have to do so.
I can’t tell you whether colleges accept students with disabilities who don’t meet their requirements. I’ve seen no data on this, and I don’t think schools are actually recording these numbers. Again, even if they wanted to collect statistics, they could only count the students who chose to disclose their disability, so any number would be limited in what it could show.
Myth: Students with learning disabilities and ADHD who are admitted to highly-selective colleges should not enroll because these schools don’t have to provide accommodations.
Facts: The assumption that schools with very low admission rates get to decide for themselves whether or not they’ll accommodate students with disabilities is incorrect. Any college that accepts federal funds (which take various forms, such as Pell grants) has to provide basic accommodations, and even schools that don’t take that money also have to be both private and religious in order to be exempt. This leaves very few schools in the country that don’t have to comply with the relevant laws. All of the Ivy League colleges and other highly-selective schools, state university flagships, etc. (even those with big endowments) provide disability accommodations, and some (like my own workplace) go beyond the minimum the law requires in providing supports.
Myths: Even if they can get in, students with learning disabilities and ADHD shouldn’t go to highly-selective schools because the accommodations they’ll provide won’t be as supportive as those at other schools. And they should focus on private colleges instead of public ones because private schools are more interested in making students happy and will provide more supports.
Facts: Just as you can’t make any global assumptions about whether students with disabilities should attend a school with a special program, you can’t make any kind of generalization about how supportive schools in any kind of category (public vs. private, community college vs. Ivy League) will be. It’s important to know that the law only requires that colleges assign someone to be in charge of students’ accommodations, but it doesn’t set limits on how many students that person can be expected to handle, and it doesn’t require colleges to do more than provide basic accommodations and some services.
Colleges can choose to go beyond those minimal requirements, but that is a very individualized decision from school to school within various categories (i.e., state flagships, research institutions, engineering schools). While a state university may have a well-staffed office and additional resources (like a full-time assistive technology specialist who can teach students how to use various tools), a costly private college may not. And even colleges within the same state system may not have similar supports. The only way to know what each school offers is to research this by reviewing their websites and asking questions of the staff.
(This leads me to another myth. I assure you that if you call a disability services office to ask about the accommodations and supports, the staff member will not ask for your student’s name and send it to the admissions office. It makes me sad that people worry about this, but I’ve had parents ask me about it. It’s just not true.)
Remember – just because someone you know heard something about these issues doesn’t mean that any of it is true. I’m hoping that the discussion here will provide you and your student with some comfort, and help your student to make an informed choice about where to apply and enroll.
Learn more about the college search and admissions process, plus what accommodations students are or aren’t likely to be available at college, how students access accommodations, and how to prepare them for the transition there. Read Seven Steps to College Success: A Pathway for Students with Disabilities.
