You have come to the right place! There is help available for ADHD college students. Most colleges will have support for ADHD students, however it may vary depending on the school. Contact the learning disabilities support services at your college and talk with them about the accommodations they offer. You may need to provide some sort of documentation about your ADHD. Please note that it is up to you to approach the college and ask for help if you need it.

Here are a list of articles that will give you a starting point.

/adhd-guide/college.html"ADHD @ College - A Complete Guide"

College Survival Guide for ADHD Students

Preparing an ADHD Student for College

Good luck, Dena

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Being in college with ADD is downright hard. But learning to get the right accommodations can make college fathomable. Basically, I have learned that you must tell your teachers : "This is how I learn". Tell them you do not benefit from text books like other students, you need to meet with with them outside of class to go over materials. Now , I choose a small private school specifically for this reason, but universities should have a tutor for you, or a note taker. The way I see it they are like a buisness you are paying them to get a degree and if they don't help you , they lose money. So when I request help or assistance I am unapologetic but still friendly, and appropriate. Because it's thier job to help you learn as long as the student is working hard. Its our job as students to study and memorize as much as we can but its their job to assist us in our education and help us overcome barriers from ADD. They should meet with you as much as they can and you need. Also, it is a bit ironic that no one ever seems to teach students how to study. The best way for me to get all that info in my head is to be creative about it. Bazzare stories, visuals, slide shows, Quizlet.com (flashcards), taping it on my closet door, associations, and talking it out with my teachers. I have even created my own charts and guides from lectures. For me, if I can figure out how I memorize and study the most effectively, teachers admire me for being proactive in your learning and class mates will think your a genius for all the crazy ways to study . Because once they study with you , they can't forget anything! :) After you have devised some methods you will also feel less frustrated and more in control of the amount of material profs. ask you to absorb. I'm also requesting my textbooks for heavy memory content early so I can look it over this summer. With ADD the earlier and more you can start absorbing it the better. Oh, and ALWAYS tell your profs. about your disability RIGHT AWAY. If you don't they will lose trust in you because you only seemed to tell them about it just when the class gets hard. This is especially important for college students because as a student you are supposed to be gaining independence and if you cannot independently communicate to the teacher that you have ADD, eventually you will get a bad rap and teachers will not take you seriously.

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Thanks for the links, Dana! I will be sure to check those out.

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Tell them you do not benefit from text books like other students, you need to meet with with them outside of class to go over materials.

Actually, I'm having the opposite problem. I'm learning from the textbook just fine, at the expense of learning from the teacher. The textbook is much more structured, with questions and quizzes every couple of pages to help me make sure I actually absorbed the information the right way.

On the other hand, the teacher's lectures and essay prompts are almost impossibly vague. And when I ask for clarification, his response is "you didn't try hard enough, no one else is having any problems with it."

My biggest issue right now with accomodations is that I'm not sure what my exact problem is, so I have no idea which accomodations I actually need.

This has been a recurring issue with me; I can teach myself just about anything out of a book, but in order to get acknowledged for that I have to go through a class that I end up failing for reasons I haven't been able to ascertain. I thought taking an online class would help, but no luck.

And I have no idea what accomodations would help me sit still and focus through a 2-3 hour class. Judging from my high school experience (45 minute classes), my limit seems to be about 30 minutes. >.<

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One item that can help you in understanding the lectures; a digital recorder. Most professors don't have a problem with their students bringing them to class. The recording can help you with filling in gaps that you may have missed while taking notes. Also, if you didn't have an evaluation done for a learning disability; have one. I have both a learning disability and ADD, which makes it more of a challenge in completing my assignments. Once you have all of the information documented, you can present the information to the office responsible for assisting students with disabilities and start from there. Good luck!

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How exactly do I go about getting evaluated for a learning disability?

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