Competitive Disability Friendly Colleges

aquapt
Wed, 25 Jul 2018 20:11:24 +0000

How cautious to be about venturing away from home is a very individual thing. When a condition is chronic, sometimes you end up feeling like you just have to take the leap sooner or later. (Especially if you are underwhelmed with your medical care at home in the first place.) I think the thing to consider is that ideally, it would be nice not to be pushing both envelopes - both life-adjustment and financial - at once. It seems to me it would be easier to roll with the punches in terms of adjusting to college and getting established in a new place, if you at least knew you weren’t “up against it” financially in terms of light-loading if you needed to and so on. It seems like you’re already weighing all of those factors.

And yes, health coverage… if you’re on a parent’s insurance then you need to look at how that applies; if you’re independently eligible for medi/medi then some states are better than others in that regard.

I do think it’s true that if you have a setback at a quarter-system school, it’s harder to catch up. Semesters are a little more forgiving of ups and downs. Cal Poly SLO is on quarters - it’s supposed to switch at some point but I’m not sure when - it will be the last holdout among the CSU’s - several are switching this year.

TBH, if I were you and looking at schools in the CSU system, I would look closely at SLO vs. SDSU. SDSU is a semester school with an actual city (San Luis Obispo is a lovely town but certainly doesn’t have the resources of San Diego), a great Honors College http://honors.sdsu.edu/ , and a film major with both production-focused and Critical Studies focused tracks. https://ttf.sdsu.edu/index.php/degree_programs/tfm/tfm-emphasis-in-critical-studies I feel like SDSU might be a better experience access-wise (plus, major medical centers in San Diego), but I’m speaking without direct experience so I could be wrong. Admissions-wise it’s all numbers-based in the CSU system, and OOS students are a little disadvantaged (AP’s count for rigor but OOS honors classes don’t, or something like that), but with a 1530 SAT and an almost-4.0 unweighted GPA I wouldn’t be too worried.

An option that would give you a lot of financial breathing room would be U of Utah https://www.film.utah.edu/programs/ba-in-film-media-arts It’s already a great financial value through the WUE program + automatic merit $ for high-stats, and you can actually establish residency after the first year and bring it even lower to in-state rates. (Very few states permit this.) Great Honors College. Not as diverse as most of the schools you’re considering, but it could be a good financial safety. (Again, I have no direct experience of its accessibility… and I don’t really know what public transit is like in SLC, wheelchair-access-wise or even in general. And I don’t know much about how it compares to other major cities in terms of medical care either… but if Seattle isn’t good for your dx, I’m not sure I’d hold my breath for SLC to be better. But still, could be worth at least a few minutes of research.)

Northeastern and Pitt both give some good merit to high-stats applicants. NMF/NHRP will especially boost your merit aid at Northeastern (and USC). Chapman gives good merit too I believe. But yeah… I don’t really know anything about extending aid (need-based or merit-based) for medical reasons. I hadn’t heard about Harvard’s policy on that. And I am foggy here as to whether merit aid or need-based aid is the priority in your situation, as it tends to be an either-or proposition at most schools. Maybe you’re in the gray area where it could go either way… in which case it will be important to weigh which would be more advantageous for you, especially in the hypothetical more-time-to-graduate situation. (i.e. if you attended somewhere on merit and used up your merit semesters, could you then get need-based aid?)

And, it can be really tricky to “chance” aspiring film students and determine what counts as a safety. The competitiveness of that major often differs from the campus in general, if it’s a school that admits by major. It helps that you’re not gunning for a production track, though.

Another Boston-adjacent option would be the two excellent schools in Worcester, Clark U and College of the Holy Cross. (#3 in the triumvirate is WPI which isn’t a fit but is also part of the cross-registration cluster). Both could probably be considered safeties that would offer merit aid. (Clark maybe/probably gives more merit aid, but Holy Cross is better on the need-based side, as it’s a full-need-met school and even a no-loan school for low-income students.)
https://www.holycross.edu/academics/programs/film-studies
https://www.clarku.edu/programs/major-or-minor-screen-studies
UMass Medical Center is in Worcester, plus Boston is just a 45 minute commuter-rail trip away.
(However, I know literally nothing about disability access/accommodations at these schools.)

Your stats are great, plus URM bump and probably great essays based on your writing/insight here - I think you’ll have a lot of choices; you just have a complex constellation of factors to consider!