ADHD in College
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Will My Child Have an IEP in College?

Getting academic services in college is more complicated than getting an IEP or 504 Plan in high school, but it’s much more manageable than you may think. Here’s what you should know (and do) before your teen applies to university.

2 Comments: Will My Child Have an IEP in College?

  1. I’m so sorry to hear that you had this experience, Marianbookwarm. In my own experience working at college disability services offices over 20 years now, I have never worked at a place that took a “one-size-fits-all” approach. We have always approved accommodations based on each student’s individual profile.

  2. I did the get my Associate’s degree at a community college then transfer thing. At my community college I was provided alternative format textbooks, because I read extremely slow because of the ADHD. I get distracted and next thing I know I’ve read the same sentence five times and still have no clue what it said. The way this worked is I would buy the physical textbook, take it to disability support, and via the school’s online class platform I would receive PDFs that I could run through any document reading program that would read it out loud, and I would follow along in my book. It worked. Then I transferred. I was denied this accommodation, though they have it on file, because I had the “wrong diagnosis.” Yes, I was literally told that. Instead I was given early enrollment, to have early access to classes to make a schedule that works for me. Useless because there is only one or two sections of my classes. Extended/minimal distraction testing, which I have never needed. A recording pen, but with very little guidance on how to get the most out of it outside the classroom. I have been reluctant to speak with my coordinator in disability support because I was also told that, despite having a counselor associated with the school say that I would benefit from a single, the diagnosis of ADHD was “wrong” for an accommodation for a single and that I was taking too many classes for being a student that learns differently, even after explaining I had been easing myself into the load I was taking, with success (keep making Dean’s list, both at my community college, and at my university). I very much feel like the one size fits all method of university accommodations almost make the accommodations useless. That’s my experience.

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