Student Sues Princeton Over Learning Disability Accommodations

foolishpleasure
Mon, 30 Nov 2009 14:42:11 +0000

“Our process of highly selective college choice for a student that needed accomodations was to wait until after admission, then call the disability services director at each possibility to find out what kind of documentation would be required and which accomodations would be routine for a student with the LDs that our student has.”

^^I did the same thing, with similar results.



“Honestly, I wish we’d done it before applying–I could have saved some application costs.”

^^ I attempted to do this, but pretty much across the board, the disability offices were unwilling to have a meaningful discussion (which would have required some review of D’s assessments). I did, however, SCRUPULOUSLY review the on-line catalogues not only for geneds, distribution requirements and graduation requirements, but also to read descriptions of courses that satisfied those requirements.



"While their answers were sometimes disappointing, we found the disability service directors to be quite forthcoming about the options at their institutions. What we learned greatly influenced the final choice, and made our student decide to reject what had been the top choice rather than try to change its institutional culture. Transitioning to college is hard enough for LD kids, without deliberately choosing a place where you know, going in, that it will take a battle to get necessary accomodations.

^^ True dat!! Based on my calls to disability offices and review of the catalogues, D scratched several schools from her list. D happily attends a selective LAC w/o geneds or distrib reqs (but a great disability office, which she uses less than I think she should); she struggled her first year, but made Dean’s List last year.

Too bad the P student and her family didn’t take MomPhD’s approach. (Princeton AND D1 sports!! That’s a very full-plate for any kid transitioning to college - - even w/o throwing LD into the mix.)