IEPs and 504 plans don’t follow students to college.
Families have to provide recent neuropsych evaluations when the student enrolls. The college has to approve it and tell the student which accommodations they’ll allow. Then it’s up to the student to follow up with Students services to make sure they generate a Letter of Accommodations every semester which they have to forward to each of their professors. Every time they change courses at the beginning of the semester they have to sign another release form and get a new Letter of Accommodations that lists the current class schedule. It’s a time consuming process. Then the student has to remind each professor about the accommodations several days before every test. It can be a drastic change from high school, so it’s important that the college a student attends has a good Student Services department and responsive faculty.
Totally agree with what you are saying. All the colleges we inquire this about seemed to have solid plans if this was needed in college. All were more then willing to accommodate almost any request. It wasn’t used at all but I do guess some schools make you jump through hoops so good points.
Good Student Services- important. Responsive faculty- important. Kid who can stay on top of the paperwork, the face-to-face meetings with each professor and TA, AND remember that college isn’t HS (professors WILL comply with the accommodations when reminded, but most will NOT issue “extra credit” projects to bring up a grade, will only follow the U’s requirements in terms of incompletes, withdrawals, etc, and can only allow “do-overs” according to the U’s academic policies.)
Many parents and students do not understand this. There is nobody at college who will come to your dorm and wake you up in time for your 8 am lab if you are used to parents who do that for you. There is nobody at college who can “wipe the transcript clean” if you are failing every class because your organizational skills are not up to the task of balancing classwork. And there is no parent to tell you to go to bed the night before an exam.
Yes- support services are important but a kid who takes his/her responsibilities seriously is the MOST important piece of the puzzle.
Agreeing with the general thrust of this thread: make it clear what the budget is, then pick your battles.
Take a hard look at the severity of the LD, and how it, and your son’s ability to handle it, have evolved over the last few years. Recognize that the son sitting at your dinner table tonight is in or near a major developmental spurt, and will be maturing a lot over the next little while- and university will help some of that along. It is fair for you to ask him how he plans to deal with his LD when he is away - & what services are available to him at his preferred schools, but not to categorically limit the size or type of college or uni.
Go ahead and make a parent’s pick (or 2) rule - but don’t waste it on something he has made it clear that he hates, b/c he still has to write the ‘why us’ essays!
And then see what the choices are in the spring. As somebody upthread pointed out, there is a big jump between applying and enrolling!
Overall I think OP is a parent who cares and that is a good thing.
As a mom of a kid with LD (had an IEP at age 3 through high school graduation), I know its hard not to worry.
My son’s career interest is a tech school healthcare related field for which there is no bachelors equivalent. He chose a school 3 hours from home. It has small class sizes. All colleges will have student support services but once the kid is in college they are adults and nobody can force them to go. My son has chosen to NOT take in his neuropsych evals and does not get any accommodations for any of his classes. But thing is, my kid hasn’t needed it. I think his biggest class has about 25 people in it, his labs have been less than 12 students and he’s taking classes that interest him. His gpa went from barely passing high school to now a 3.0.
I wont lie, there has been some mental health challenges along the way. Hes now living with roommates who are not great for him. But I have to let him fly a bit on his own. I know my kid will be stronger in the end because of it. Allowing him some space to (somewhat safely) falter is helping him grow to be a responsible adult.
College is super expensive. You dont want to feel like you are wasting money. It sounds like theres too much anxiety and ambivalence regarding him going to college. If the kid doesnt care and isnt begging to go to a certain school, there is nothing wrong with sending them to the state flagship for a year and trialing things out.
I think OP wants her child to succeed but make sure you aren’t clipping your kids wings in the process because of your own fears.
I will add…the student needs to be a good self advocate as well. The student will need to deal with their accommodations. There will not be a case manager to meet with professors and do this. In college, students really need to advocate for themselves. Exceptions might be places like Landmark or Mitchell.
I think this kid and parent need to come up with about 6 reasonable compromise schools. Then have one or two parent picks and one or two student picks on the list.
If this student has a LD and is less than enthusiastic about college applications…try to keep the length of the list manageable so the student can actually get these done.
As a parent, I had to let go of MY expectations and accept and support my child for who they are, not who I wanted them to be.
With my son with LD, he ended up with 5 schools on his list. I put the list together and let him choose. I listened to my child and they strongly wanted a certain major and the ability to live on campus and not at home. Being within driving distance and price point were also factors for us (my son wanted to be able to come home when they could to support their younger siblings in activities).
I cant imagine forcing my child LD to sit through 45 plus college sessions. My sons brain would not be able to handle all that data and he would shut totally (which sounds like OP’s son has a bit). Listen to what is important to the child and then help them create a shorter list of maybe 10 schools that you as parents can afford. Then let the child pick.
We let both kids drive their lists and the final picks. They understood the financial numbers but we never really set a limit, rather we said $X is doable and beyond that would have been a stretch.
As I’ve shared before, D1 threw everything for a loop when she decided to apply to 1 school. She applied EA and knew by 12/15. Her thinking was that if she got rejected, she had 2 weeks to come up with additional schools.
We told S21 that a school’s financial standing (small endowment, etc.) could be reason to exclude it from his list. Too risky given the pressures of covid.
We didn’t veto it, but we advised D18 to think carefully about issues like impacted majors and difficulty registering for classes at her top-choice college. Once she learned that students routinely get shut out of her desired major, and that the school promotes summer classes as a way to get into oversubscribed courses, she declined. Even with the scholarship she was offered, it wasn’t in our budget to send her for more than 8 semesters. Maybe it wouldn’t have been an issue for her, but I’m happy she elected to avoid that challenge.
My college-bound kid is just a junior this year (high school class of 2022), but right now budget is the only constraint on universities. I started another thread about UK and Irish universities because she is really interested in going to the UK or Ireland right now. We have no problem with that assuming they will let Americans in.
On the close enough to drive issue, keep in mind that if they don’t have a car with them, then you will probably be the one driving them back and forth. So if they are 3 hours away, that’s a 6 hour round trip.
Other than financial considerations, we did not put restrictions on our son when shortlisting colleges. But it is important to discuss pros/cons of selected colleges with your child. It will help them weed out those that might not be the right fit. As our decision was in the pre-covid time, we did not some of the concerns of today.
I think it is reasonable to come up with some boundaries on colleges…
You will only pay so much
You only want to drive so far to get them as you don’t want to pay for/have them fly during Covid…
You want flexibility with Covid
It has their major