<p>OP: As a parent of a college student with Asperger’s, I can understand your desire to find a school that “fits” the more structured and orderly learning styles and personalities of certain students; some schools will certainly be better fits than others. At the same time, I agree with some of the other posters; succeeding in college requires that the students can independently begin to use the organizational and time management skills and tools that helped them succeed in earlier years, and that they have now hopefully mastered sufficiently enough to navigate through college and will need far less guidance and support than was required in the past. We want them to be able to take advantage of the various resources available at the school that will allow him/her to create the kind of structure and order they need; eg classes or seminars that can continue to teach them the organizational skills they might still lack, tutoring services, making use of professors’ office hours, getting involved in study groups, seeking out and making use of other academic and career advising resources, living in dorms that offer a variety of organized activities to students. </p>
<p>I think the hope of most parents and educators is that by the time they are in college, they will be able to create this environment for themselves; the tricky part, of course, is finding the right school to do this (or perhaps more importantly, identifying the ones that absolutely are NOT good fits). Also, often the major or area of study plays a big part in “structuring” the student’s academic life; engineering, math and science students, for instance, will typically have a much more structured curriculum than many liberal arts majors (and their need for order and structure may, of course, be one reason why they gravitate towards such majors).</p>
<p>During our own college search, I came across a nice checklist that lists various factors to look for in schools for students with Asperger’s; many of these factors may be things you want to consider as you try to determine what kind of campus best “fits” your student (eg, campus size, location, faculty/student ratio, quality of academic program the student is intereted in, quality of tutoring, peer mentoring, and advisory resources, ease in navigating the campus (both physically and also its website), availability of organized social activities )</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.dixonlifecoaching.com/docs/IECA-Aspergers-chart.pdf[/url]”>http://www.dixonlifecoaching.com/docs/IECA-Aspergers-chart.pdf</a></p>
<p>For the record, DS does not receive any services or accommodations, and so although the type and quality of LD services was a factor we looked at, it was not necessarily the most important. Also, when it came down to finally choosing a school, we ended up throwing all our books and checklists out the window and went with our gut and although DS has had many bumpy moments, he HAS thrived - perhaps partly as a result of his new-found independence?</p>